Politics & Power Quote by Frank Luntz

Clinton didn’t just win an election, Luntz argues; he rewired the country’s emotional vocabulary. Coming from a Republican message strategist, that’s not a compliment so much as a field report from the losing side: Clinton made empathy sound like leadership, and once that happened, every politician had to learn the dialect or risk sounding extinct.

The little throat-clear of “with all due respect” is doing heavy work. It’s a bipartisan courtesy that also functions as a warning label: I’m about to say the quiet part. Luntz’s real target isn’t Republicans as people, but Republican rhetoric as product. If you can’t translate your agenda into felt experience, you’ll be outcompeted by someone who can. In Luntz’s world, “language” isn’t culture; it’s leverage.

Calling Clinton “the best communicator of the last 50 years” is hyperbole with a point: communication here isn’t oratory, it’s attunement. “He felt your pain” evokes that famous, slightly cheesy line, and that’s precisely why it matters. It condensed a governing posture into a meme before memes were a thing: I see you, I’m on your side, your life is the policy.

The subtext is both admiring and anxious. If politics becomes a contest over who can narrate your hurt most convincingly, then ideology gets routed through affect. Luntz isn’t lamenting that shift; he’s identifying the rule change that still shapes campaigns: empathy isn’t garnish anymore, it’s the delivery system.