Don’t Blame the Wizard: Understanding Power in Modern Democracy
Pull back the curtain, and you’ll find the real power has been in your hands all along.
This is a long form post in two parts. The first is about storytelling and why it’s important in local politics, and everything. The second part is about how the story in the movie The Wizard of Oz can help reset our thinking about politics and political leaders.
Part One: The Wizards of Storytelling
In my life and work I’ve gotten to know some great writers. From Allen Able to Clive Cussler, one thing they have in common is an outsized interest in The Wizard of Oz.
Why would writers be so interested in The Wizard of Oz?
With stories we can live a thousand lifetimes. "The essence of a classic” it has been said, “is that it arises from such profound depths in human experience that it speaks to us, who live centuries later in vastly different cultures as the voice of our own experience; it helps us to understand ourselves better and enriches us by releasing echoes within ourselves which we may not have known were there."
Allen Able has written thousands of articles, many you’ve probably read on topics from NHL hockey to Whitehouse politics. And many Arcadia TV episodes. He writes fast and he writes a lot. But he can also cut stories down to their essence just as quickly. The Wizard of Oz, he once told me, is a story about a little girl who learns there’s no place like home. That’s a two hour movie, a landmark of modern cinema, satisfyingly reduced to ten words.
My friend Clive Cussler has written dozens of New York Times Best Selling novels with hundreds of millions of copies in print. Yet he was always talking about the Wizard of Oz and once re-edited an entire book before sending it to the publisher to add in a long action scene with a complicated scenario and evil characters just so he could end it with his action hero main character Dirk Pitt saying triumphantly, “Ding Dong, the witch is dead.”
In his forward to the second edition of The Hobbit, J.R. Tolkien called out the use of allegory in storytelling and made a pointedly plain note that neither The Hobbit nor Lord of The Rings were allegory. So don’t go looking for deeper meaning and don’t ask about the war he seemed to be saying. In spite of his protest, millions of readers over generations have been perceiving metaphors and allegories in his stories… intentional or not. It’s like Bob Dylan said in his most recent book, it’s what the listener hears in the song that decides what it’s about, not the writer’s intention. Of course this is true. Especially in our modern cancel culture. If it wasn’t no one would ever be misunderstood.
In the world of story, The Wizard of Oz can be seen as a structure, a template, as much as it is a movie. Someone leaves their normal world, goes on a quest that changes them, their relationship with others, and the world around them, and then returns to their natural world to share what they’ve learned. This is also known in storytelling circles as The Hero’s Journey. It’s an ancient template for storytelling first formalized by Joseph Campbell in his book Hero With a Thousand Faces after he undertook an exhaustive investigation of thousands of years of stories and myths from around the world.
In fact, some believe that this is the only form of a story and all real stories fit this pattern – someone goes on a journey. It makes sense. Imagine an ancient tribe of our ancestors. Always together, huddled by the fire we may talk of many things. But it’s not a story. Now, if one of those ancestors leaves, goes on an adventure, maybe in a boat far from shore, or in pursuit of an animal, or a mate. When they return what do they have? A story! Everyone wants to hear it. It get s repeated. It has a very specific form. It’s a story.
We live in a story world. In story wars. The people with the best stories win. In politics. In business. In love. The people we call leaders are more than anything storytellers. Even in their persona, how they look and act, they paint a picture of the future, telling us a story of how things will be, what parts we have to play, and how, without doubt, it will end happily ever after once we discover the BIG THING we are all searching for.
In European and Avant-Garde cinema writers tried for a while to reject story in the same way twentieth century artists and architects rejected beauty and musicians rejected harmony in music. They got away with it for a minute, but now, stories that don’t follow the shape of a story make people genuinely angry, like discordant music actually hurts the ear and rattles the bones… like the lack of beauty in our city’s design and architecture should! (We’ll get there.)
At some point, clever writers said wait, what about “A stranger comes to the door”. That’s a story structure for sure - that different. It is different. It’s The Hero’s Journey told from the other side of the door. It’s the same story. The stranger who comes to the door is, by definition, the hero who leaves their normal world in the Hero’s Journey.
The Wizard of Oz is possibly the most perfect manifestation of the Hero’s Journey Hollywood has ever produced. Not the only. Run through Star Wars in your mind. In fact, run through every movie you’ve ever enjoyed. It’s just The Wizard of Oz – The Hero’s Journey – jumbled up a bit with different characters and settings.
Human brains are pattern-seeking machines. We look for patterns (and meaning) in everything. Even when it’s not there. The pattern we love maybe more than any other is The Story. Finding or imposing patterns gives meaning to life and guides us to the good life. Pull back the curtain on the stories in your life.
Part Two: If you’re frustrated with your political leaders, it’s because you’ve been looking at them, and yourself, all wrong.
In The Wizard of Oz, we see Dorothy and her companions on a quest to find a powerful figure—the Wizard—whom they believe has all the answers and authority to fix their problems. Much like citizens often view their mayors, premiers, and prime ministers, Dorothy and her friends see the Wizard as the omnipotent ruler who can make everything right. But what they discover by the end is that true leadership and progress don’t come from one almighty figure but through personal responsibility and collaboration. This discovery is at the heart of understanding how our democracy actually works.
Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion all represent different facets of society. Their journey mirrors the different perspectives of citizens in a democracy, each one expecting something different from their leader, each one believing they lack something crucial to solve their problems – believing only the Wizard can know and act.
The Scarecrow believes he needs a brain, much like how some citizens look to government leaders for wisdom and expertise to know and act, whether it be economics, health care, or city planning. The Tin Man longs for a heart, reflecting the desire for empathy and compassion in politics to help the poorest and most vulnerable among us. The Lion seeks courage, representing the need for bold, decisive leadership, law and order. And Dorothy? She just wants to get home— the central issue of her age, of any age… a safe, stable place to call her own, not unlike our desire for security and prosperity that drives so much political discussion today around housing, homelessness and all the things that impact our sense of home and belonging.
Each of these characters, like citizens, assumes that the solution lies outside of themselves, outside their local community, in the hands of a single leader—just as people often assume their mayor or prime minister can fix everything with a wave of the hand. But as the film shows in its climax, the Wizard is not the all-powerful being they thought he was. Behind the curtain, his childlike boasts are more petulant than awesome. At best, he’s a facilitator, someone with a grand voice but limited power, who operates within a system. When the curtain is pulled back, the real magic isn’t in the Wizard’s hands—it’s been in the characters themselves all along. The brain, heart, courage, and the way home were theirs to develop, through collaboration, resilience, and trust in the journey.
This is where the frustration with modern governance comes into play. Too often, we view mayors, premiers, and prime ministers as the wizards of our world, expecting them to conjure solutions to every problem. But like in The Wizard of Oz, their power is often symbolic, constrained by a system of councils, legislatures, and bureaucratic frameworks - the largest in history. True democratic progress doesn’t rest in the hands of one leader, no matter how loud their voice or grand their promises.
The lesson of The Wizard of Oz is that leadership isn’t about magical fixes. It’s about guiding people through a process, about understanding that power in a democracy is distributed, and about realizing that the solutions to our problems often lie within our own communities. It’s about getting rid of feared petty potentates ruling siloed bureaucratic fiefdoms to their own power and advantage like wicked witches. Dorothy’s first encounter with the Witch, her journey, and her final revelation—that there’s no place like home—isn’t about running away from problems but recognizing that the power to improve her situation was always within her, and in the support of her companions.
Our democratic system operates the same way. The real work of governance doesn’t happen behind the curtain of political leadership but in the everyday efforts of citizens—the discussions, the community engagement, and the courage to work together for a common good. Leaders can help facilitate that journey, but they aren’t omnipotent wizards. It’s time we stop imagining them that way and start seeing ourselves, the citizens, as the true source of progress and our own imagination and ideas as those red slippers.
