Is there any contradiction between characterizing your political campaign as a grassroots movement and only talking about top-down policy? I’m, of course, speaking about Barack Obama. Grassroots to me translates into an expression of the power of the people, which seems at odds with the power of government to push policy down on the people. I did get the feeling that spontaneous chants of “Yes we can!” were started by Obama organizers, not the masses of people who each donated $1 to the Obama campaign. And what about the notion of consensus? If we each take turns installing a president who mandates policy to the political minority, I’m not sure there’s anything populist really going on.