Leading the swarm: What sets politicians apart from the birds and fish

Politicians try to be the leader fish, controlling the direction of the narrative and pulling the country along-except that they try to knock other aspiring leaders off their course as they go

Have you seen those wildlife video clips of large schools of fish, or swarms of birds? They curl and unfurl through the seas and skies in incredibly complex, fluid patterns, like swirls of smoke. It’s dead cool, and it makes your brain pain.

Hundreds or millions of individuals race in the same direction together, then suddenly one of them turns seemingly on a dime, and suddenly the whole lot is racing in the opposite direction, rinse, and repeat. How are the seas not thick with concussed herring, how is the earth not carpeted with the twitching bodies of starlings stunned