A flashpoint of this contention has been the executive order. Most notably, President Obama's statement that “I've got a pen and I've got a phone,” which covered more than actions requiring the secrecy and dispatch that other areas in which the presidency is accorded a freer hand, namely foreign policy: “Helping to make sure our kids are getting the best education possible, making sure that our businesses are getting the kind of support and help they need to grow and advance, to make sure that people are getting the skills that they need to get those jobs that our businesses are creating.”

On the one hand we’re told that politicians cautiously hold a finger to the wind before acting and lack the courage to get ahead of their constituents. On the other, when politicians step forward—as Obama did on the TPP or ACA or David Cameron did on EU affiliation or Angela Merkel on immigration—their positions are deemed proof of the growing gulf between the governing elite and the masses who would be impacted.

With the revolution in new technologies that was part of the larger revolution in industry more than just strong character and virtue was needed to be famous. In the age of television commercials, public relations and televised debates (as the Kennedy-Nixon debate amply demonstrated) it is questionable whether a man like George Washington could be elected president if he were to run for office today, when image has in so many ways supplanted substance. 

The logic of much lobbying is a two-step process.  It begins with the golf aphorism that every act leaves someone happy and someone sad.  Among the sad are potential clients.  Typically, there are two groups of sad people – one poor but sympathetic (perhaps people who’ve been denied a prescription drug they’re comfortable with because it has been found no more effective than cheaper options) and the other rich (perhaps the pharmaceutical firms making the expensive drugs) who are willing to spend to protect profits.

The government shutdown serves no discernible purpose beyond setting a very dangerous stage for competing political interests to try to advance their agendas and, of course, giving the news media and political commentators an urgent issue to cover and interpret. Yet it’s a fascinating time to be a student of political communication.  During these epic battles, we get to analyze rhetorical weapons while they’re still being fired.  We get to take a close look at who’s saying what and how what they’re saying is evolving.  

The spirit of John Hancock and his gang of aristocrats——optimists all who risked their lives and property as signatories to revolution——is rare. Regrettably, that optimistic spirit——that spirit that drives all American progress——has been at historic odds with an uncharitable impulse among the American people: a selfishness that paradoxically afflicts both the afflicters and the afflicted, as we see in this election season.