Politics & Power Quote by George Will

Politics is a performance art with a ballot box at the end of it, and George Will is pointing at the script. The line flips a comforting civics fantasy: that politicians speak to convey convictions about policy. Will argues they mostly speak to locate you, size you up, and decide which version of themselves will play best in the room.

The intent is diagnostic, not merely cynical. He’s telling readers to treat political language as audience research made audible. Word choice, tone, and even the topics selected are less a window into a candidate’s inner life than a map of the coalition they’re courting. When a politician says "freedom" instead of "rights", "tax relief" instead of "revenue", "family values" instead of "religion", you’re learning how they think you want to be flattered, soothed, or activated.

The subtext is that sincerity is structurally disincentivized. In mass democracy, persuasion requires simplification; in polarized media ecosystems, it requires signaling. The politician becomes a curator of reassurance, deploying phrases that let supporters hear themselves reflected back. That’s why speeches are packed with applause lines, “folksy” asides, and moral narratives that align with identity rather than evidence.

Context matters: Will comes out of a late-20th-century American pundit tradition that watched campaigns become television products, polling-driven operations, and later, micro-targeted brands. His sentence still lands because it’s not just about politicians being slippery; it’s about voters being the unseen co-authors. The audience shapes the message, then mistakes the echo for truth.