I'll be brief because:
a - nowadays politics aren't worth spending too much time discussing, unfortunately
b - there's already too much literature on the subject.
The bottom line is: politics is like branding. If you don't give a crap about your electors/consumers, they take you out of their lives.
When decisions are made at the C-suite level/government level, with little if no empathy towards the base (electors/consumers), your message becomes irrelevant to your audience.
If you want to stay relevant in politics and in branding, you must identify what your constituents/consumers need and want, in order to offer them something they can believe in, relate to, buy into. If you make decisions based on what yourself think is good for the masses, the masses merely take you out of their lives.
Electors/consumers are not stupid, even though many politicians and top executives think they are. Real leaders show empathy, understand their audience's pain points, and respond to these pain points with an answer that meets these expectations.
Do political and business leaders understand the growing demand for change? Can they meet those demands without inflicting irreversible damage on their politics and their economies?
