Yes, and that is what politics is, influencing audiences, making explicit, and giving a particular form to the underlying sentiments. When a politician articulates a public sentiment in a forceful way, he moves it on in a given direction. That is politics.
Chis "Policy is not made in public."
That seems weird to me. Policy is public. What would a private policy be? Politicians develop policies in a dialogue with the public. They 'fly kites', use the bully pulpit. A politician who did not engage in such a dialogue would be no politician at all, but just a technocrat, who would (like Hillary Clinton over health reform) quickly discover that they had failed to create a constituency for the changes they proposed.
Chris: 'Is it a secret that politicians lie a lot?'
Not a secret, a misunderstanding. It is belief that gets stronger when politicians lose their connection with their social base. It is a kind of fantasy that the alienated public is drawn to, when they discover that their political leaders have become disengaged.
In Britain, many people came to the view that Tony Blair was a liar. He was over some of the detail - but that was precisely the point at which he failed as a politician. On the big picture, Blair's views were patently evident to anyone who cared to listen. Those who felt they had been betrayed by Blair were so angry because the course of events showed them that their own belief that humanitarian intervention was force for good was proved to be false. His view was consistent, theirs changed.