Politics & Power Quote by Robert Scheer

Scheer’s move here is a quiet flex disguised as reportage: he positions print journalism as the last place where power has to think out loud. The key phrase is “without the cameras.” In Scheer’s framing, television doesn’t just document politics; it anesthetizes it. Cameras invite performance, the rehearsed grin, the safe anecdote. Take them away and a politician is left with something far less controllable: sustained questioning, follow-ups, and the need to connect claims to facts.

The subtext is also a critique of how Reagan-era politics mastered image management. Reagan, the former actor, became the emblem of a media age where charisma could outrun complexity. Scheer isn’t saying Reagan was necessarily ignorant; he’s implying that the public’s access to a leader’s “mind” is often mediated into a product. “Test the quality” sounds almost clinical, as if the reporter is running stress tests on intellect and preparation, not collecting colorful quotes.

There’s a second, sharper implication: proximity is a kind of leverage. Scheer signals that he had enough access “before” and “when” Reagan ran to compare the man across contexts, and to detect when the message hardened into campaign packaging. It’s also a defense of the print reporter’s craft at a moment when political journalism was pivoting toward spectacle. The line argues that democratic accountability depends less on being in the room than on removing the stage.