Politics & Power Quote by Bob Schieffer

Nostalgia is doing stealthy work here, but it’s not just misty-eyed longing for civics-class innocence. Schieffer is diagnosing a shift in American politics from neighborhood pastime to monetized industry, and he frames it with the deceptively casual metaphor of sport: once informal, participatory, even a little messy; now optimized, coached, and run by specialists who treat voters like an audience instead of teammates.

The line “amateur sport” flatters the past without fully romanticizing it. Amateurism implies imperfection, but also ownership: politics as something citizens did, not something done to them. The pivot - “somewhere along the way” - is a journalist’s shrug that doubles as an indictment. He doesn’t name villains, because he doesn’t need to. The sentence lands its punch with “handed over,” a verb that assigns blame broadly and quietly. This wasn’t simply “taken”; it was surrendered, often willingly, in exchange for convenience, expertise, or the illusion that politics is best left to those who know the playbook.

“Professionals” is the loaded word: consultants, pollsters, fundraisers, strategists, media handlers. It also implies a business model. Things “people used to do for free” evokes volunteering, party organizing, local campaigning, civic association - labor replaced by cash, relationships replaced by targeting, persuasion replaced by messaging discipline.

As a long-time political journalist, Schieffer is speaking from the era when campaigns became permanent, television hardened into a gatekeeper, and money professionalized every rung of participation. The subtext is a warning: when politics becomes a career track, citizenship becomes a subscription service, and democracy starts to feel like something you watch rather than something you do.