Daily Inspiration Quote by David Axelrod

Axelrod punctures the fantasy that consultants are political sorcerers, cloaked in mystery and omnipotence, yanking levers while everyone else applauds. The Wizard of Oz reference is doing heavy cultural work: it evokes showmanship, smoke machines, and a carefully managed illusion of expertise. In politics, that illusion is currency. Consultants are often sold (and attacked) as unelected puppet-masters, the hidden brain behind the candidate. Axelrod rejects the costume.

The intent is partly reputational hygiene. A veteran of high-stakes campaigns, he’s aware that “all-knowing, all-seeing” reads as arrogance, and arrogance reads as illegitimacy: who elected you? By framing the myth as a “theory,” he’s not just denying it, he’s suggesting it’s a lazy narrative others cling to because it simplifies power into a single villain or genius. That’s the subtext: modern political outcomes are messy, contingent, and team-made, not authored by one consultant with a master plan.

“Backbencher” sharpens the point. It’s a parliamentary insult with class and hierarchy baked in: the important people up front, the nobodies in the back. Axelrod’s line signals a collaborative ethic, but also a strategic one. If you want buy-in from staff, candidates, and institutions, you can’t cast them as extras in your own wizard story.

Contextually, it’s a pushback against the pundit-industrial tendency to mythologize campaign operatives, especially in the Obama era when Axelrod was treated as a brand. He’s reminding us that the real magic, if any, is coordination, not clairvoyance.