But he didn't deceive voters by telling us that we're the greatest thing since sliced bread. And he didn't win. One of things I realized during the campaign is that truth-tellers don't win. It's an archetype. You have to be something of a demagogue to really win.
Reticence is the opposite of flattery in many ways.
Well, there are two different opposites of flattery, there's reticence and there's what the Greeks called parhesia, which is candor. Or straight talk. But straight talk only takes you so far. Bill was a straight talker who was a little more Calvinistic. One of the biggest contrasts I saw during the campaign was that McCain constantly flattered us reporters, almost shamelessly, while Bradley avoided us like we were carriers of Ebola.