How do Al Gore and George W. Bush flatter us?
Gore has been trying to mine the same stuff as Clinton. You know, he’s an aerobic listener. He’ll answer all the audience questions ’til the cows come home, and that’s flattering to the voter. “It’s more important that I listen to you than it is for me to sleep.” And he also talks a lot about the “wisdom of the American people” after listing to Clinton do it for eight years. And even the “dressing down” stuff. “I can come before you in my natural dress.” But they both do it. It’s a structural thing in American politics now; we have to praise the public. Bush does it in his embrace of this kind of “regular guy” ethos that flatters the public. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, by embracing the public tastes, that’s flattering. Though his dad tried to do it and I’m not sure how much anyone bought it. I mean, all of the stuff they do is strategic in a way. I write in the book that “flattery is strategic praise” and all of the things Bush and Gore do have the purpose of an inc
