Thomas Friedman Quotes
You win the presidency by connecting with the American people's gut insecurities and aspirations. You win with a concept.
Friedman, Thomas L., and Michael Mandelbaum. That Used to Be Us: How America Fell Behind in the World It Invented and How We Can Come Back. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011.
This is a wonderful historical picture of FDR on his campaign train. Note that the President liked to listen to ideas of many people. Unlike most Presidents he did not have any particular political programs that he advocated in his campaigning. He had no immediate answers to the Great Depression that he had inherited from the Hoover administration. But unlike Hoover, and most Presidents, he was willing to try ideas for which there was no advance evidence of success. If that did not help, he would try something else. He sought ideas from anyone and everyone. His enemies called him a weak leader who had no ideology—no principles but just trying unproven solutions to solve the nation’s critical problems. But it worked and he was elected 4 times—the only President who had served even 3 terms.
Canes-Wrone developed Conditional Pandering Theory. The very popular Presidents do not have to engage in pandering. The unpopular presidents will not be helped much so they have little to gain by using this technique which is personally distasteful to almost all politicians. It is the middle of the road Presidents who tend to make the biggest use of policy pandering.
_0_PostageStamp_47x47.jpg "Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Navy Adm. Mike Mullen gives an interview to John Dickerson during the CBS news program Face the Nation in Washington, D.C., July 5, 2009. During the interview, Mullen discussed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, North Korea's recent missile tests and his recent visit to Russia. (DoD photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Chad J. McNeeley, U.S. Navy/Released)"){kind=small}
Thomas Loren Friedman is an American political commentator and author. He is a three-time Pulitzer Prize winner who is a weekly columnist for The New York Times. He has written extensively on foreign affairs, global trade, the Middle East, globalization, and environmental issues.
