Follower or Leader?

If you were a politician who - as a member of a political party - relied upon opinion polling and focus groups to set the policy direction for you then would you be considered a leader or a follower? Serious question.

And how could you be a leader if you follow the direction of the people whose opinions are contained in any particular poll?

You might think you are being *responsive* but all you are doing is encouraging the folks who work hard to influence public opinion - to keep on doing more of it. All you are doing is signalling to our broken, dysfunctional and scheming media that it is OK to keep feeding our people lies and untruths. Because apparently you will develop policy and govern the nation based on the people feeding those lies and untruths back to you via opinion polls.

If you were a member of a political party with real leaders then you would be trying to influence public opinion by presenting facts and knowledge and truth and science. And you would be speaking directly to the people about why some potentially unpopular policy is necessary. You would be trying to educate and inform. You would be a real leader.

But you won't. You seem to have given up on that - it seems as though many of you check your thinking organ in at the cloakroom when you turn up for work each day.