The practice of the popular arts is as old as democratic politics. Only the names that designate its various techniques have changed. America’s Founders were partial to expressions like “playing the favorite,” “popular leaders,” “sycophants,” and (most often) “demagogues,” a term that connected their thought back to the classical treatments of popular government in Thucydides, Aristotle, and Plutarch. The category “demagogue” includes not only lowly rabble rousers who appeal to anger and fear (Cleon or George Wallace), or those who incite envy and gin up class divisions (Gaius Gracchus or John Edwards), but also, in John Jay’s wonderful description, “those brilliant appearances of genius [who], like transient meteors, sometimes mislead as well as dazzle.”P.S. How did he get elected in the first place, how has he lasted so long? Here's today's Ramirez cartoon.
More. Outrage: Obama White House Intervened for Lockerbie Bomber's Release - Australian News Reports! And Robert Spencer. Obama's Lockerbie Problem. HT Pundit & Pundette.
Obummer is going on The View to burnish his credentials. Daytime talk. Seriously. (And Sarah Palin's supposedly the one who is an airhead.)
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