I work for him despite his faults and he lets me work for him despite my deficiencies.
We see more and more of our Presidents and know less and less about what they do.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote suggests that while we may have greater visibility of our leaders, we are becoming increasingly uninformed about their actions and responsibilities.
Bill Moyers' quote highlights a concerning trend in contemporary politics where the increased media coverage of Presidents has not translated into a deeper understanding among the public about their roles, decisions, and governance. It reflects on the distance between the visibility of political figures and the complexity of their work, implying a disconnect that may lead to public disillusionment and apathy towards political processes.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a political debate, one might quote Moyers to express concerns about transparency in government.
More from Bill Moyers
All quotes βThis is the first time in my 32 years in public broadcasting that PBS has ordered up programs for ideological instead of journalistic reasons.
Capitalism is out of control, thanks in no small part to Citizens United, the Supreme Court decision which said that a corporation is a person, even though it doesn't eat, drink, make love, sing, raise children or take care of aging parents. You can't have a people's democracy as long as corporations are considered people.
I'll believe corporations are people when Texas executes one
Democracy may not prove in the long run to be as efficient as other forms of government, but it has one saving grace: it allows us to know and say that it isn't.
When I learn something new - and it happens every day - I feel a little more at home in this universe, a little more comfortable in the nest.
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A political convention is after all not a meeting of a corporation's board of directors; it is a fiesta, a carnival, a pig-rooting, horse-snorting, band-playing, voice-screaming medieval get-together of greed, practical lust, compromised idealism, career-advancement, meeting, feud, vendetta, conciliation, of rabble-rousers, fist fights (as it used to be), embraces, drunks (again as it used to be) and collective rivers of animal sweat.
Tonight, with a new Iraqi government in place, and following consultations with allies abroad and Congress at home, I can announce that America will lead a broad coalition to roll back this terrorist threat.
By creating an urgent crisis that can only be solved by those fluent in a language too complex for ordinary people to understand, the Wall Street crowd has turned the vast majority of Americans into non-participants in their own political future.
Our brand of democracy is hard. But I can promise that a year from now, when I no longer hold this office, I'll be right there with you as a citizen - inspired by those voices of fairness and vision, of grit and good humor and kindness that have helped America travel so far.
All the reputedly powerful reactionaries are merely paper tigers. The reason is that they are divorced from the people. Look! Was not Hitler a paper tiger? Was Hitler not overthrown? U.S. imperialism has not yet been overthrown and it has the atomic bomb. I believe it also will be overthrown. It, too, is a paper tiger.