Politics & Power Quote by Peter Jennings

“Connection” is the most revealing word Peter Jennings chooses here: not ideology, not policy, not even truth. A career broadcaster who spent decades translating power for living rooms, Jennings is really describing politics as a relay between performer and audience, with the press positioned as both stagehand and critic. The list of names is the tell. Franklin Roosevelt’s fireside chats, JFK’s television charisma, Reagan’s actorly ease, even Teddy Roosevelt’s barnstorming energy: each mastered the dominant medium and mood of his era. Jennings isn’t praising their platforms so much as their delivery systems.

The subtext is a warning disguised as nostalgia. By invoking presidents across party lines, he treats “connection” as a civic requirement rather than a partisan trick. That framing flatters a democratic ideal - leaders should meet people where they are - while quietly conceding a harder reality: if you can’t project intimacy at scale, you’re politically dead. In a media-saturated culture, competence can be invisible without charisma.

Context matters: Jennings came of age when television news still claimed authority and when “the nation” could be addressed in something like a shared broadcast space. His examples are architects of that shared space. The implied contrast is with politicians who speak in consultant-tested fragments, or who treat communication as damage control, not relationship-building. Jennings is arguing for a kind of public trust that feels personal - and hinting that when that bond fails, cynicism rushes in to fill the silence.