If the people believe there’s an imaginary river out there, you don’t tell them there’s no river there. You build an imaginary bridge over the imaginary river.
Nikita Khrushchev to Richard Nixon
quoted by Rick Perlstein in
The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan
The next time the man on the white horse comes in, he may not be so benign. He could be a real racial hater or a divider of people.
Jim Squires, one-time spokesperson for Ross Perot.
Squires made the comment after the 1992 U.S. election, which showed that millions of Americans were ready to go crazy for a thin-skinned, TV-adept billionaire who promised to shake things up in Washington, D.C.
Quoted in The Red and the Blue: The 1990s and the Birth of Political Tribalism,
by Steve Kornacki (p. 209)
The great thing about being a pundit is you get to have it both ways. As the Republican National Convention geared up a few days ago, the media were grousing that the show would be a “hyper-scripted” and pre-packaged ritual that would offer nothing in the way of spontaneity.
Then Clint Eastwood had his Howard Beale moment with the vacant chair. And the media got all grumpy, complaining just because his unscripted kook-out was “bizarre,” “weird” and “rambling and off-color.”
It was, of course, all of those things. That’s what happens when you throw away the script. Savour it. Thanks to Clint, that kind of political improv probably won’t ever be seen again.
Rannygazoo 