Politics & Power Quote by Sydney Pollack

Pollack is diagnosing politics the way a director diagnoses a bad script: the problem isn’t just dishonesty, it’s casting. His line lands because it frames “political heroes” less as leaders than as products engineered to meet an audience’s emotional demand. We don’t simply want competence; we want transcendence, a figure who can stand in for our own longing to feel “greater than mortal.” That’s not lofty, it’s dangerous. Once you accept the job is to supply a quasi-religious uplift, the incentives tilt toward spectacle.

The subtext is a critique of performance culture bleeding into governance. “Illusions” isn’t only about lies; it’s about the whole apparatus of image management that treats citizens like viewers. “Sound bites” shrink complex decisions into quotable dialogue. “Focus groups” outsource conviction to market research, turning ideology into a test screening. Pollack’s choice of words matters: these are tools of entertainment and advertising, and he’s implying that modern politics has adopted the logic of both.

Contextually, Pollack came of age professionally during the rise of television politics and the late-20th-century campaign-industrial complex, when message discipline started to look like studio control and authenticity became something you “produce.” Coming from a filmmaker, the observation carries an extra sting: he’s not moralizing from outside the machine. He’s pointing out that when we demand myth, we’ll get a well-lit myth - and then act surprised when it can’t govern.