The politics of listening
From the man likely to be the next Canadian PM (emphasis his):
The thing that politics most strongly resembles is being on soccer teams and hockey teams when I was a child. It's not a lonely writer in his den thinking thoughts. You're mostly listening all day long to people, trying to take the measure of their personalities — their strengths, their weaknesses. It's much closer to being a journalist. You sit with other politicians: what does this person really want? You hear what she's saying. But what does she really want? That's a political moment. You're in a town hall with two hundred and fifty people, and you're trying to get a sense of the room, of what makes these people tick. It's a very different skill from being a writer. Isaiah himself was fascinated by the question: what is it that a great politician knows? What is that form of knowledge? Last night, Zsuzsanna and I were watching the Detroit Red Wings goalie, and he knows something: what is it that he knows? What is it that a great politician knows? The great ones have a skill that is just jaw-dropping, and I'm trying to learn that.
