Politics & Power Quote by Daniel Smith

Daniel Smith is doing two things at once: auditioning for the role of reformer while inoculating himself against the predictable backlash. “Fresh idea and spirit” is an old politician’s trick of sounding like rupture without specifying policy. The phrase lets discontented voters project their own hopes onto him, and it frames “Danielson” less as a man than as a vessel - a brand promising renewal.

The second sentence is the sharper instrument. By singling out the “conservative Christian press,” Smith isn’t merely complaining about coverage; he’s naming an enemy constituency and suggesting their hostility is proof of his usefulness. “Quite mean to us” is deliberately schoolyard-simple language: it invites sympathizers to read the conflict as unfair persecution rather than substantive critique. The subtext is: if the gatekeepers of doctrinal respectability dislike me, I must be doing something right.

Then comes the rhetorical jujitsu: praising the mainstream “secular” press while putting that word in quotes. Those quotation marks function like raised eyebrows. He wants the legitimacy of favorable coverage without conceding the premise that the press is genuinely secular or neutral. It’s a wink to religious readers: I know who they are, I know their biases, but I can still work them.

Placed in the late 18th/early 19th-century political world, this reads like a snapshot of emerging media ecosystems and factional identity. Smith is mapping a coalition across cultural lines, turning press treatment into a proxy for moral and political positioning, and using grievance - carefully calibrated - as a campaign accelerant.