Dick Brennan dismisses the possibility of voters making faulty decisions in troubled times and attributes the midterm election results to Barack Obama’s failure to pander to them. A more careful examination may suggest that Obama’s problem wasn’t a failure of policy choices as much as a failure of leadership. A leader is someone who can inspire his followers to do what needs to be done even when it goes against their emotions or immediate needs.
Brennan quotes the half-sarcastic old saying “the customer is always right” without a trace of irony and expands it to “the voters are always right – and they always have the last word.”
Although democracy may be the best political system anyone’s come up with, the voters, like the customer, are not infrequently wrong. And it’s not the voters who have the final say, it’s history. The country would be better off if our Emmy-winning political reporters would keep this in mind.
Harvey Wachtel
Kew Gardens
