The Messenger and the Message

Liz Truss: Speech to Conservative Party Conference 2014
Conservatives I only put this video up because I needed a picture of Liz and I didn't like anything that Google served up. Also Dominic references it. Watch it if you like. I didn't.

Skimming the news this morning I come across Is Truss the worst PM in history?* on UnHerd by Dominic Sandbrook. He's disappointed in Liz Truss, the new Prime Minister of the UK. UK politics is nearly completely opaque to me. I know there is Labour and there are Tories but who they are and what they stand for is a complete mystery. Reading about it doesn't help much because the writers are so immersed in it that it is almost impossible to decipher what they are talking about. It's like listening to teenage girls having a private snicker fest. I don't have any idea what they are talking about, much less why it would be upset anyone.

But then I came across this paragraph, and it pretty much cuts across national boundaries:

For although academics and activists often prefer to talk about the abstractions of ideology or the nuts and bolts of policy, performance really, really matters in politics. To some extent, in fact, performance is politics. Even in a parliamentary system, you need a messenger who embodies the message, a leader who can charm and explain. Watch Thatcher talking to Robin Day in 1984, or Jim Callaghan being interviewed by Thames TV’s This Week in 1978, and it’s like entering a different world. Whatever their ideological differences, Thatcher and Callaghan are seasoned, accomplished performers, at the top of their respective games. They think about the questions. They talk in complete sentences, even complete paragraphs. They give long, considered, serious answers. They seem like impressive, well-informed, formidable people. Then watch Truss again, and try not to weep.

I wonder if Trump's speeches offended so many people, not for what he said but for the way he said it.

*I got the story from Feedly.