Analysis: Some Texas officials would love to redirect your attention

A surprising number of political reputations would collapse without the benefit of our short attention spans and vulnerability to distraction.

President Donald Trump has shaped his understanding of our traits into performance art. He’s a master of changing subjects, replacing the crisis of the moment with something that yanks attention away and benefiting from our collective tendency to forget about what happened a year ago, or a week ago, or yesterday.

He didn’t invent this; he’s just phenomenally good at it. And ambitious politicians lower on the food chain have been taking notes — which brings us to the Texas governor’s 2019 inauguration, and the current legal tornado hitting the Texas attorney general’s office.