I don't think that this new and it arguably predates democracy. Being able to keep the attention of the masses influencing policy has generally been called 'leadership' - even if they are frankly idiots who lead them straight off cliffs. It is another one of those annoyingly conflated words like 'empathy' assuming that understanding people and caring about them are the same - leadership has connotations of actually being effective and getting others to follow.
True. Follow-the-leader is easy and democracy isn't. Especially when idiots are all too willing to jump off cliffs instead of acting with the responsibility that democracy places upon us.
Perhaps there exists forms of democracy which steer us away from the obvious precipice.
