We have insisted that we need leadership and so have reverted to the divine monarchy in which, whatever else he may be, the leader is presented in public as a symbol. Like his clothes, his words are chosen for him. Language is treated as performance, not communication. That he has not read the books his speeches quote or initiated the thoughts his speeches think is neither here nor there. Either we wish discussion and doubt or rhetoric and reassurance.
—John Ralston Saul, Canadian essayist, novelist, and critic, The Doubter's Companion, 1994