"Their leader? Their servant? Who am I?”

“The great political problem in our modern democracy is how to induce our leaders to lead. The dogma that the voice of the people is the voice of God tends to make elected persons the will-less servants of their constituents. This is undoubtedly part cause of the political sterility of which certain American critics constantly complain. No serious sociologist any longer believes that the voice of the people expresses any divine or specially wise and lofty idea. The voice of the people expresses the mind of the people, and that mind is made up for it by the group leaders in whom it believes and by those persons who understand the manipulation of public opinion. It is composed of inherited prejudices and symbols and cliches and verbal formulas supplied to them by the leaders.”

-- Edward Bernays

The political apathy of the average voter, of which we hear so much, is undoubtedly due to the fact that the politician does not know how to meet the conditions of the public mind. He alone cannot dramatize himself and his platform in terms, which have real meaning to the public. Acting on the fallacy that the leader must slavishly follow, he deprives his campaign of all dramatic interest. An automaton cannot arouse the public interest. A leader, a fighter, a dictator, can. But, given our present political conditions under which every office seeker must cater to the vote of the masses, the means by which the “leaders” lead is the use of propaganda. Today, the uber wealthy marionette owns and operates the politician. He has adopted the glitter and the caustic ballyhoo of the campaign and has set up all the sideshows. He has annual dinners that are a compendium of speeches, flags, and bombast. These sideshows are big business.

Political campaigns today are all sideshows, glitter, and speeches – and in the 2012 presidential campaign these speeches have not focused on solutions to the problems we face in America. Instead the millions of dollars have been invested in the manufacture and viral distribution of vile, bitter, ferocious attacks built on rumors, misspokens, and outright lies regarding the other candidate. To be clear, both parties have engaged in these despicable practices. These are for the most part unrelated to the great need to study the public scientifically, to supply the public with an idea, a solid party, a strong leader, a workable platform, and a dynamic performance selling the voters these ideas and solutions as “products.”

Emily Newell Blair states, “The drive for votes is just as an Ivory Soap advertising campaign is a drive for sales." She finds it "amazing that the very men who make their millions out of cleverly devised drives for soap and bonds and cars will turn around and give large contributions to be expended for vote-getting in an utterly inefficient and antiquated fashion."

A gifted politician, who understands the benefits of political strategy, can develop campaign issues, can devise strong planks for platforms and can envisage broad policies and fervently promote them to the voters. Instead, we now have candidates who are beholden to the media moguls who make their millions by manipulating those who are complaint or complacent in our country – the sheeple.

Where is Abe Lincoln? Where is Teddy Roosevelt? Where is FDR? Where is Truman? Where is JFK? Where is Ronald Reagan? Where is Bill Clinton? 

Today’s politician no longer understands the public – nor does he need too, most unfortunately. He is not a man who knows how to secure mass distribution of ideas relating to solutions to the serious problems from which this country currently suffers: unemployment, immigration, poor education, homelessness, health issues and worse -- healthcare issues. Occasionally, a political leader may be capable of combining every feature of leadership, just as in business there are certain brilliant industrial leaders who are financiers, factory directors, engineers, sales managers, and public relations counsel all rolled into one. Good business is conducted on the principle that it must prepare its policies carefully, and that in selling an idea to the large buying public of America, it must proceed according to broad, well-laid plans. The exceptional political strategists must do likewise. The entire campaign should be worked out according to broad, well-laid plans focused on attacking problems – not people. Platforms, planks, pledges, budgets, activities, personalities, must be carefully studied, apportioned and used as they are when a customer-obsessed business desires to give the public what it wants and needs from its leader.

Presidential campaign 2012 has left so many dumbfounded and jaw-dropped, as we watch our country fall into the hands of an inexperienced turned ineffective leader whose every effort -- save for the overspending – has been immobilized by dirty politics beyond usual OR a right-wing extremist (he who is but a heartbeat away from POTUS should his party win) whose integrated system of thought defines only abstract principles by which a man must think and act if he is beholden only to himself and to no one else – not women, not children, not blacks, not Jews, not anyone who does not buy into the far right, group-think and mind-less control that this Tea Party espouses. Not much of a choice – in this, the land of the “free.”

Where do you see that agenda setting is evident in this 2012 presidential campaign?

There is more propaganda than ever before due to the proliferation of mass communication in a digital age. In your opinion, has it fed the hunger pangs of “we the sheeple” or solved the problems of “we the people”?

Thoughts?