"The characteristic of problems, leaders, and enemies that makes them political is precisely that controversy over their meanings is not resolved. Whether poverty originates in the inadequacies of its victims or in the pathologies of social institutions, whether a leader's actions are beneficial or damaging to the polity, whether a foreign, racial, religious, or ethnic group is an enemy or a desirable ally, typify the questions that persist indefinitely and remain controversial as historical issues just as they were controversial in their time...The incentive to reduce ambiguity to certainty, multivalent people to egos with fixed ideologies, and the observer's predilections to the essence of rationality pervades everyday discourse and social science practice."

"Everyday reporting of the political spectacle systematically reinforces the assumption that leaders are critical to the course of governmental action. News accounts highlight the talk and actions of leaders and of aspirants to leadership. They focus upon the election and appointment of high officials and upon policy differences and agreements. Interest groups and governmental agencies feed this kind of news to the media, reinforcing the premise that leadership is central to value allocation and well-being. Only rarely do the media, officials, or interest groups point to historical change in institutions or in material conditions as the explanation of controversial developments...They thrive upon heroes, villains, contests for votes, legislative and judicial victories and defeats, and especially upon the evocation of leaders with whom people can identify or whom they can blame for their discontents."

"Direct political action through voting and lobbying can help bring modest and temporary changes, but are more effective as psychological balm for those who engage in them than as agencies of lasting and significant change, because the very focus upon politics in a narrow sense takes the existing institutional framework for granted and so reinforces it."