Since the time of Richard Nixon, there has been a strange lack of will in the media to identify the real cause for Americans' anger at politicians who fall, publicly and spectacularly.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I really feel that political will is born out of popular will.
Every two years the American politics industry fills the airwaves with the most virulent, scurrilous, wall-to-wall character assassination of nearly every political practitioner in the country - and then declares itself puzzled that America has lost trust in its politicians.
Nixon represents that dark, venal and incurably violent side of the American character almost every other country in the world has learned to fear and despise.
Too many talented and supremely calculating politicians, including Nixon and Clinton, have destroyed their careers, or come close, by acting in ways that were obviously against their own interests.
Political ignorance helps explain Americans' perpetual disappointment with politicians generally, and presidents especially, to whom voters unrealistically attribute abilities to control events.
The reason that last-ditch political maneuvering has become business as usual in Washington is that the actors involved are drunk on blame and are convinced that the voting public is, too. They count on outrage, thereby spreading numbness. They cherish the prospect of partisan fury, thereby inspiring nonpartisan disgust.
Social issues have been used to distract Americans from their own self interests since Nixon's southern strategy, and now people are paying the price.
The media is really failing the American people.
Modern Americans - shaped by raucous politics and a rapacious media - like to think of themselves as experts in confronting mistakes.
Nixon had this remarkably effective, deeply intense will to power. Reagan and I have a will to ideas.