We REALLY need a sarcasm smilie.
JC, you are forgetting the major factor, we are talking about politicians, they don't care if you respect them, just so long as you vote for them.
As for the rest of your post. majority will never understand the thing shared by the Troops at Valley forge, Soviet dissidents, and Muslim fanatics. They don't have "opinions", they had principles, beliefs, and they all shared one ultimate truth, We can be beaten, tortured, humiliated, our possessions seized, our relatives tortured and killed our country devastated by warfare, but in the final analysis a man of principle can never be defeated. He can be killed, but he can never be bent to the will of others unless he allows it.
The soft minded will never understand that.