"How do you communiicate with 38 million people?"

Maureen Dowd of the New York Times has a nice quotation from California Governor Jerry Brown that expresses the essence of modern political communication:

"Noting that he followed actors into the Statehouse twice, Brown observes:
“A lot of this is theater. How do you communicate to 38 million people? You’re
not sitting down talking to them. So it’s gesture, symbol, the narrative, the
drama. Who’s the protagonist? Who’s the antagonist?”"

This 72 year old veteran of California politics has summed it up: Gesture, symbol, narrative, drama, protagonist, antagonist. A simple strategy for mass communication.