It’s not a good idea, of course, to try to build a house over a shifting sand dune – it’ll crash as the sands underneath the house move away.
Hence, as a metaphor, if people talk about someone making, say, a plan on shifting sand – they mean to say that plan won’t work because it doesn’t have a solid foundation.
In our example, politicians are advised to embrace public opinion, though it is always changing.
To embrace the shifting sands of democracy is to put your arms around them like you’re thus holding a loved one.
But how do you embrace them if they are shifting sands?
Well, it’s a good question.
It is a good question, I mean, for real politicians to grapple and come to grips with. We must be quite satisfied with having learned the expression itself.
Here are media examples of shifting sand or sands:
1. The Washington Times item, Unlocking the Keystone pipeline illustrates some of those nasty facts that cause the political blockage from an administration that is bent on fostering an unrealistic energy policy.
“While Mr. Obama says he’s all in for boosting oil and gas production, a report by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service contradicts him. The record of fossil-fuel production during his tenure reveals that nearly every recent increase in oil and natural-gas production was on state-owned and private property, not federal land. U.S. oil production has increased by 1.1 million barrels per day between fiscal 2007 and 2017 on state and private land, but has fallen by 7 percent on federal land. For natural gas, production since 2007 has grown by 4 trillion cubic feet – up 40 percent on state and private land, but down by 33 percent on federal land.
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