There’s a catchy line in one of T.S. Eliot’s early poems. Actually, now that I think about it there are many catchy lines in T.S. Eliot’s early poems. Many more in fact than in his later ones.
He wrote in Prufrock “there will be time/Time to prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet.” It’s the latter part that stays so solidly in mind that of preparing “a face to meet the faces that you meet.” There in ten short and plain words is the essence of all political campaigning. Political parties, and their leaders particularly, are the masters of this craft of preparing their faces. Today we call it image making, or more stolidly communications strategy, or media relations.
