I don’t remember the context, but I recently remarked that appearance —perception — is more important than reality, especially where government is concerned.
From The American Spectator:
“The ‘Tea Party downgrade’ claim is the sort of desperately superficial explanation one would expect from pols who consider the appearance of solving problems to be more crucial than the reality of solving them. Blaming the Tea Party for America’s lower credit rating is like “blaming firemen for fires,” as Senator Rand Paul puts it. “
It’s always been about perception. In the wake of the Waco Branch Davidian fiasco, the priority for D.C. was “restoring the faith of the American people in federal law enforcement.” Not finding out who was responsible for the mishandling of what should have been a simple service of a search warrant, not ensuring that it can’t happen again. Nope, gotta restore faith in the feds. We can leave the same ham-handed idiots in charge, we just need to change the perceptions. It’s not a matter of bad policy or bad management, it’s just a Public Relations matter.
Post 9-11, it was all about making people believe that it was once again safe to fly — restoring that 9-10 confidence that our government was protecting us.
It’s always been about perception.
If Obama can make people believe that the Tea Party is responsible for the credit downgrade (instead of his own failed policies), that’s as good as them actually being responsible, for purposes of electioneering. It’s all about perceptions.