Quote:
Originally posted by mml
We look back at leaders of the past and say "Where is our Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln?" Hell, most people did not know FDR was in a wheelchair!
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Most people
do know that because it's so often brought up as one of his peccadillos (sp. ?); as if that is something we should have torn apart in the past as a character flaw!
In my opinion, the reason people look and wonder where all the great leaders have gone is due to the tendency to romanticize the past--not because people have changed so much (either in terms of the leaders' character or the way the public deals with flaws).
I think we can look through various candidates and see how they were carefully picked apart by the other side, the media, and the public. What may have changed, however, is the proliferation of information. So while we had mass media last century, only the major cities or a metropolis was exposed to it; it also wasn't as infused into our culture as much as currently.