Football strategy does not originate in a scrimmage: it is useless to expect solutions in a political campaign.
Walter LippmannRead
The effort to calculate exactly what the voters want at each particular moment leaves out of account the fact that when they are troubled the thing the voters most want is to be told what to want.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Voters often seek guidance on their desires, especially in times of uncertainty.
Walter Lippmann suggests that in times of confusion or trouble, voters do not just seek information about their immediate wants, but rather they desire leadership that can help them articulate those wants. He highlights the paradox in political communication where the need for clarity and direction often overshadows the data-driven analysis of public opinion.
Themes
VotersPoliticsLeadershipGuidanceDesiresCommunication
In practice
Example use cases
In a political speech when discussing the challenges faced by the electorate.
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The tendency of the casual mind is to pick out or stumble upon a sample which supports or defies its prejudices, and then to make it the representative of a whole class.
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The private citizen, beset by partisan appeals for the loan of his Public Opinion, will soon see, perhaps, that these appeals are not a compliment to his intelligence, but an imposition on his good nature and an insult to his sense of evidence.
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