October 18, 2025

Take our politicians: they’re a bunch of yo-yos. The presidency is now a cross between a popularity contest and a high school debate, with an encyclopedia of clichés as the first prize.

Saul Bellow (1915–2005), Canadian-American writer, Quoted in 1980, in The Cynic’s Lexicon, Jonathon Green, ed. (London: 1986), p.20

How cliché-ridden is your discourse? To what extent do you hunger for popularity?

This is an example of the mistaken view that it is the politicians who lower the tone, who make election campaigns popularity contests, with cliché-ridden debates, etc. In fact, it is common denominator of the audience to which the politician is forced to descend if she is to win election.