In 1539, Henry VIII, seeking an alliance with the Protestant Schmalkaldic League, sent envoys to the Duke of Cleves to negotiate the marriage of his daughter Anne. Holbein was also sent - to paint her likeness, which on his return he presented to Henry. We don’t know what Henry thought of the portrait (or even whether it influenced his decision, one way or the other) but he concluded the marriage treaty, and on New Year's Day 1540 rushed down to the coast to greet his new bride. He was staggered to find what he rudely described as 'a Flanders mare'. Desperately he sought a way out. But, as it would be too insulting to the Germans if he reneged on the deal, Henry reluctantly agreed to stick by it and marry Anne of Cleves. 'My Lord,' he said plaintively to spin doctor-in-chief Cromwell (now Earl of Essex) on his wedding day, 'if it were not to satisfy the world and my realm, I would not do that I must do this day for none earthly thing.' The marriage was never consummated. This little episode in the Tudor soap opera is illustrative of an oft-repeated pitfall that lies in wait for even the most skilled spin doctor. Holbein's portrait (a copy hangs in the Louvre) was, it seems, a perfectly fair likeness; the problem was not that Anne was plain, but that she was dull and shy. Cromwell had not deceived Henry into the marriage; indeed it was the latter who ignored his envoy's frank warning that Anne spent practically all her time sewing, was not well educated, and could neither sing nor play an instrument. The truth is that Henry had forced the pace, ignored advice and blamed everybody but himself when things went wrong (shades of Perot). At 3pm on Saturday 10 June, 1540, only six months after the nuptials, Henry's Captain of the Guard went to the Council Chamber and arrested Cromwell on a series of trumped up charges put by his enemies into the ear of that most suggestible of monarchs. Then this man -who had founded the world's first modern constitutional monarchy and organized the world’s first sovereign national state, was brutally stripped of his badge of office, taken to a waiting boat and then down the Thames to the Tower. There he suffered the traditional fate of those who terminally irritated Henry. Decapitation.
Henry soon came to regret the permanent separation of Cromwell's head from the rest of him. Mankind may have seen the back of a very bad man, but the king had lost a genius. Someone who, as his biographer Professor Scarisbrick wrote later, was perhaps the most faithful and accomplished servant any English sovereign has enjoyed - a royal minister who "cut a deeper mark on the history of England than have many of her monarchs".
Modern spin doctors may well shiver in sympathy on hearing the fate of their erstwhile colleague. Holbein, incidentally, survived the furor only to die of the plague in 1553. Dr. Johnson once observed that 'when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.' The same goes for the spin doctor planning an election. How then can the spin meisters, the background briefers, the advance men, the debate coaches and the rest of their ilk survive in the inhospitable, overheated and dangerous jungle known as politics? And how can a politician tell whether they have hired the right adviser? Machiavelli, as always, goes to the heart of the matter. 'But as for how a prince can assess his minister, here is an infallible guide: when you see a minister thinking more of himself than of you, and seeking his own profit in everything he does, such a one will never be a good minister, you will never be able to trust him.' Mutual confidence in each other and trust between politician and spin doctor are indeed the foundation for success. And Machiavelli rightly stresses loyalty and competence as the key characteristics of an adviser. But what constitutes competence in this context? What makes an effective aide? How can someone become the compleat spin doctor?
“Quiet calm deliberation disentangles every knot.” Sir William Schwenk Gilbert (placed by Harold Macmillan on the door to the private office in No. Ten) “The commonest error in politics is sticking to the carcasses of dead policies”. Robert Gascogne-Cecil (Third Marquess of Salisbury) “There are two qualities which in my opinion are the most important than any public servant can enjoy. One of these is supposed to be in born, though I doubt it; the other is acquired. They come before talent; they are better than zeal; they make genius useful; they fertilize eloquence. They are as rare as they are essential, they are constantly spoken off, but never defined. We know them by the vague titles of common sense and knowledge of the world”. Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman
Spin doctors are the world’s third oldest profession after prostitutes and spies. They started off in Ancient Rome as the squalid channels for passing on gossip and smear to their powerful bosses, ending up as invaluable aides. The witty classicist, Peter Jones, reminds us that the Roman delator (‘informer’) was not “some little squirt from central casting, but a man on the up with an eye on power.” The model delator, as the historian Tacitus describes him, was one Hispo, who: ‘poor, obscure, impatient, creeping to the emperor’s cruel nature by his secret accusations, spelled danger to anyone of eminence, and won power from the emperor, but hatred from everyone else. He was the model which allowed imitators to exchange poverty for wealth, to inspire dread in place of contempt, and destroy fellow citizens — and eventually themselves’. His ambition was to ‘gain priesthoods, consulships, offices’ and make a fortune in the process, because a successful prosecution for high treason (maiestas) — the usual charge against political opponents — brought financial rewards in the form of a share of the victim’s property. The refined Vibius Crispus (c. AD 10–92), witty, eloquent, charming, gained fabulous riches through his delations, becoming thereby a close friend of the emperor Domitian and consul three times. The satirist Juvenal took one line about him, mocking his ‘pleasant old age’ on the ground that he reached it by maintaining a cowardly silence on all the evils of Domitian’s reign. The historian Tacitus took another, depicting him as one of those who helped clamp down on that freedom of speech which senators had once enjoyed under the republic. Tacitus says that his ‘money, power and cleverness ranked him not among the good, but among the notorious’.
We have moved on since then, but the role of a buffer (what intelligence people call a ‘cut-out’) is still a very necessary function. The powerful cannot get too close to the media because they cannot trust them. They cannot trust their colleagues either. So the spin doctor often slips into the gap. They can be trusted to operate at the very least from self-interest. If the Emperor falls, so do they. But loyalty is not enough. Neither are learned skills. Not even experience. All these must be combined with personal qualities to give them indispensable instincts, what we call judgement.
Thus personal qualities of the spin doctor are paramount. Skills can be taught, knowledge can be acquired and experience gained, but the character of the briefer is easily the most important indicator of worth. They need to be calm and unflappable in a crisis, because their lives will consist of one crisis after another. As Baruch Spinoza put it "Do not weep, do not wax indignant. Understand.”
They need a cool and even temperament because politics is a blood sport where the media regularly form a mob to stab their victims with their pitchforks and burn their mutilated bodies with their flaming torches. The memoirs of George Stephanopolous will provide the reader with a perfect example of exactly what can happen to the mental health of an oversensitive, highly strung individual entirely unsuited to the savagery of this line of work.[i]
They need to be ruthless in pursuing a successful idea, repeatedly punching the opposition’s bruise is a vital part of winning, because in politics if you are not attacking, you are defending. And you never want to be defending. They need to be quick-thinking and decisive because time and tide have a nasty habit of not waiting. They need to be permanently on the lookout for the inevitable bear traps, as it is a fundamental law of spin doctoring that all political actions have unintended consequences[ii] (and a fair proportion have unexpected consequences, which are even more dangerous).[iii]
“Washington is always the last to get the news.” Gary Hart
“One must be a fox in order to recognize traps, and a lion to frighten off wolves.” Machiavelli
In politics, arrogance, egotism, feelings of both self-entitlement and self-regard, misogyny & other forms of alpha male nonsense; and delusions of grandeur are common forms of self-sabotage: and they are astonishingly prevalent at the top. When Oliver Wendell Holmes Jnr said FDR had a first rate temperament but a second rate intellect, he thought this was a damning criticism. It wasn’t. It was simply a good illustration of why people like Holmes were unfit to rule. They need to be optimistic,[iv] to carry them through the darkest hours before the dawn. But this optimism should not stray into self-delusion. The greatest danger to the formation of good policy is wishful thinking, blinding us to ever present reality of failure. Hope is not a strategy when things are going wrong in the bunker. Focus, discipline, pertinacity, creativity, objectivity: those are what’s needed to dig yourself out of the pit. They need to be tolerant and even-tempered to resist the rude provocations of a minority of repetitious, demanding, hysterical, shallow and incompetent journalists -all of whom have 20/20 hindsight and who are invariably fully paid up members of the Monday morning quarterback club. “The single hardest thing for a practising politician to understand is that most people, most of the time, don’t give politics a first thought all day long.” Tony Blair “Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.” H. L. Mencken
They need a sense of proportion - life in the bunker encourages hysteria and overreaction. It is all too easy to become like the frog in the old Chinese tale who sits at the bottom of the well and thinks that the whole world resembles that little circle of sky it can see at the top. Barbra Streisand once foolishly tried to censor an aerial photograph of her home by sending out intimidating lawyer’s letters. Predictably, defiant internet users posted the snap as far and as wide as they could: so it ended up reaching millions of people who would never have seen it if Streisand had simply done nothing. This phenomenon is now called ‘the Streisand effect.’[v] They need the strength to resist the desire to please their boss at all costs. They need charm and courtesy - often the only weapons left to assuage a hungry shark. They need to keep their feet firmly on the ground, for reporters do not seek them out, or maître d's smile at them, or lobbyists schmooze with them, simply to gaze into their sparkling blue eyes. They need skins with the thickness of rhinoceros hide, as they will inevitably be the target of the hostile, [vi]the envious and of those seeking someone to blame.
They need to be well organized in their work habits (hence the spin doctors’ motto: “good process creates good outcomes”); as well as utterly reliable, what is called in the trade ‘a safe pair of hands’ -that elusive mélange of shrewdness, truthfulness, common sense, attention to detail, loyalty, modesty and a sense of proportion.[vii] They need to listen to their ‘daimonion of Socrates’, the inner voice that warns us when we are being unfair, or dishonest, or proud. They need to sublimate their ego in order to be good listeners, for knowing when to ask, rather than to tell, is a key requirement of the job. They need to sublimate it even further, staying in the shadows where they belong - for the greatest crime any spin doctor can commit is deliberately to step into their client's limelight. This is a rule increasingly abrogated with disastrous results. Increased use of outside consultants like James Carville who have obvious commercial reasons for self-publicity; an extraordinary growth of the ‘celebrity culture’ (what a delicious oxymoron); allied with the media's desire to describe the process of government rather than its policies (which bore them) has made stars of some spin doctors. The more aware the public are of their work and the more the media deconstruct their objectives the less effective image making becomes. In Anglo-Saxon countries this phenomenon has led to an almost complete breakdown of trust between government and the (by now permanently skeptical) governed. A breakdown reflected in the rapidly declining turnout percentage in election after election. No-one with any pretensions to sophistication now believes that anything a famous politician (or any other celebrity)[viii] does is spontaneous or without some ulterior self-serving motive. Ambitious staffers like George Stephanopoulos and Alastair Campbell -keen to increase their post government book advances, lecture fees, television contracts and consultancy day rates;[ix] or like Peter Mandelson, that Fouché de nos jours, desirous of becoming politicians themselves- created a myth of spin doctoring magic. In doing so they tore aside the wizard’s curtain and fatally undermined the power of their profession. As Blair’s spin doctor explained after New Labour’s failure to prevent their reputation for being ‘all spin, no reality’ from destroying their credibility: “Spin is like the magician’s trick, once you see how it’s done, it doesn’t work anymore.” They also need to be determined, single-minded and disciplined in the way they identify and push the key point they wish to communicate. And most of all they need the resilience of a boxer, the judgement of Solomon, the stamina of a marathon runner, the constitution of an ox and the digestion of a goat.[x]
“If you can't tell them the truth, don't tell 'em anything. Lyn Nofziger
"Don't do something, just stand there! Ronald Reagan
“It is always a fatal error to assume that your political opponents are evil or stupid; and it is even more foolish to think that you understand their motives and belief system better than they themselves do.” Allister Heath
In terms of job skills, the compleat spin doctor needs above all to understand. To understand the inner workings of government. To understand the facts and figures that underlie policy. To understand the news-gathering process - both organizationally and in the human sense of the problems, anxieties, ambitions and moral failings of its practitioners. They also need a first class memory to be able to retrieve these facts, statistics, arguments, lines to take etc., etc. [xi] Experience teaches the other skills needed, especially those that one’s education has not provided (i.e. pretty much all of them). Knowing when to respond. Knowing that two wrongs don't make a right e.g. ‘we were wrong, but others are just as bad.' Knowing when to say 'I don't know'. Knowing when to apologize. Knowing when a problem is transitory and when it is of long-term significance. Knowing when to complain and knowing when to leave well alone, especially complaints about the media. As the outstanding intellect of British post war politics J. Enoch Powell (see above) once observed: “the politician who complains about the press is like the ship's captain who complains about the sea”. Knowing when to keep secrets without ever appearing secretive. Knowing when to say nothing. Knowing that lying always ends in tears. Knowing that 'group think' is a bad way to govern.[xii] Knowing that 'rope-line' interviews are nearly always a bad idea. Knowing that strategy is more important than money (if in doubt you could always go and ask Governors Checchi and Whitman; or Senator Huffington; or Presidents Hearst, Rockefeller and Bloomberg)[xiii]. Experience will also teach them how to avoid at least some of the bear-traps. Freezing out journalists or denying access because of personal dislike. Answering hypothetical questions. Having paranoid delusions of media conspiracies. Speculating, or even worse, taking action without knowledge of all the facts. Pretending to know more than one does in order to sustain credibility as someone ‘in the know.’ Attempting to create, rather than simply communicating policy. Failing to return phone calls or reply to e mails - for every vacuum in nature is filled, if not by the spin doctor then by the media. As the Weekly Standard writer Stephen Hayes once put it “Journalists pride themselves on knowing everything (or thinking we do), and too often reporters fill gaps in their own knowledge with speculation about the actions or motives of the people they cover.” Using the lawyer’s friend: 'and anyway' arguments; as in 'We didn't do it, and anyway, even if we did, it wasn't serious.'
One of the trickiest areas that the spin doctor will have to deal with is the concept of 'plausible deniability'. From time to time the spin doctor will be told something that he knows his principal does not know, and he must decide whether to tell him or not. The information is often such that just knowing it could lead to trouble. For example, a large donation is given by a businessman who is currently lobbying the government to change legislation that threatens his business. This business is important to the economy of a state where votes are badly needed come election time and therefore a meeting to discuss the matter between the businessman and the principal is both legitimate (because it threatens jobs) and easily capable of being misconstrued. If the principal has not been told of the donation then he can subsequently deny -'plausibly'- that he acted corruptly. If he is told and that fact later comes out, he is at best left under a cloud of suspicion that could affect his chances of re-election, and at worst open to criminal charges. 'Plausible deniability' (which was invented by the intelligence community) is disliked by most spin doctors understandably perhaps as it throws all the responsibility on their own shoulders. Many feel that the principal should be told everything. However, some principals give their aides no alternative, making it quite clear that they don't wish to be told anything that may compromise them. Only experience is useful in guiding the spin doctor around this particular minefield.
Experience teaches the spin doctor to confound the knavish tricks and subtle wiles of the vulpine journalist.[xiv] To challenge the false premise. 'Some people claim...' always turns out to be 'My editor claims...' To recognize that 'X has a reputation for...' often means simply that the reporter has decided unilaterally that X has such a reputation. To unmask the false friend with their ploys of synthetic sympathy e.g. 'I just want to tell your side of the story'. Or, 'unless I get something from you they'll put someone on the story who doesn't have my liking/admiration for you.' To ignore the ‘citing dubious sources’ ploy where the reporter quotes from blogs or less scrupulous competitors (‘I’m not saying I believe them, but now it’s out there.....) and then tries to get you to deny the story. To turn a deaf ear to their appeals for sympathy, as in 'I hate to press you but I'll get fired if I don't return with a story'. To resist the Bob Woodward ploy -which consists of phoning his victims and announcing: “this is what people are saying about you. Is there anything you want to tell me?” To reject the spurious supporter e.g. 'I don't think you did anything wrong, but the others back at the office do.' To spot the black lie e.g. 'I've already got two sources for this and all I want from you is your confirmation.'
To counter the ‘no story’ story e.g. an NGO makes spurious and unfounded allegations against the principal. In this the journalist picks it up and calls some official body like the Serious Fraud Office, to ask whether they will investigate. SFO says, "We will look into it" which brings the headline "SFO probe into X over Y allegations". This is followed up with a page two lead for two to three days. The SFO subsequently says there is no case to answer. The latter naturally makes no headlines. Result: the principal's reputation is unfairly tarnished with little or no prospect of redress. And there never was a story in the first place.[xv]
“Oh what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive.” Sir Walter Scott
“Don’t put anything in an e-mail that you don’t want everybody to see.” Bill Maher
Experience teaches one that when dealing with the media there are rules, and that these rules are broken at one's peril. Nothing is ever truly off the record and that includes when under the famous ‘Chatham House Rule’ i.e. "When a meeting, or part thereof, is held under the Chatham House Rule, participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s), nor that of any other participant, may be revealed". Journalists don’t have friends. They just have sources. If you don't know, say that you don't know. If you do know but can't say, tell them why. Lying (unless it is in order to confuse the enemy in time of war; or to save lives in a crisis) is an abuse of trust, corrosive of credibility and usually unnecessary. The alternative, silence, is golden. If pressed, one can always fall back on some variation of ‘no comment’ e.g. “I’m not going to provide a running commentary.” The public have a right to know, but it's not the spin doctor's role to decide what they should and should not know, that’s left to the boss. When the press represents the public, they cannot be the image-maker's enemy (although when they are parti pris, or merely self-interested, they may be one's opponent). Never repeatedly leak to the same reporter; the others will become enemies. Never have a second martini with any reporter. Never say or write anything that would embarrass you if it appeared on the front page of the Washington Post or the Daily Telegraph -or that you couldn't tell your mother without blushing. [1] No end - however worthy - can justify law-breaking. What is morally indefensible is invariably politically inept. Always respond. If necessary get your retaliation in first. But do not whine about your treatment. [xvi] Treat everyone with courtesy, respect and efficiency -as you yourself would like to be treated.
They also need to be aware of every weakness in their own arguments - the better to predict the opposition's moves against them. As the great John Stuart Mill once put it: ‘“He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that.”[xvii] Any adviser is invariably wrong to view their opponents as inherently wicked or unintelligent; and even worse to underestimate them. They need to have intellectual curiosity, not only about the history of communications, but also current techniques at home and abroad. More importantly, they need to understand the history that directs the culture, politics and policies of their day.
They need to be careful about their own media exposure. As the spin doctors themselves become celebrities (usually to increase their career earning potential post the campaign) they run the risk of undermining their client's credibility. The reason is simple. As the voter learns more and more about the mechanics of news management, the more they assume everything they hear, see or read from politicians is just spin. They need a knowledge of psychology, neuroscience and the science of persuasion, because voters make political decisions, even on those issues like the economy that should encourage a more objective, cost-benefit analysis, based primarily on emotion rather than reason. Understanding how messages are processed (through the two systems we operate, the ‘disposition’ and the ‘surveillance’) is vital in the process of their creation. They especially need some basic understanding of the extrinsic/intrinsic divide. People towards the intrinsic end have high levels of self-acceptance, strong bonds of intimacy and a powerful desire to help others. People at the other end are drawn to external signifiers, such as fame, financial success and attractiveness. They seek praise and rewards from others. Research across 70 countries suggests that intrinsic values are strongly associated with an understanding of others, tolerance, appreciation, cooperation and empathy, while those with strong extrinsic values tend to have lower empathy, a stronger attraction towards power, hierarchy and inequality, greater prejudice towards outsiders, and less concern for global justice and the natural world. These clusters exist in opposition to each other: as one set of values strengthens, the other weakens. Extrinsics tend to report higher levels of stress, anxiety, anger, envy, dissatisfaction and depression than those at the intrinsic end. Societies in which extrinsic goals are widely adopted are more unequal and uncooperative than those with deep intrinsic values. In one experiment, people with strong extrinsic values who were given a resource to share soon exhausted it (unlike a group with strong intrinsic values), as they all sought to take more than their due. As extrinsic values are strongly associated with conservative politics, it's in the interests of conservative parties and conservative media to cultivate these values. There are three basic methods. The first is to generate a sense of threat. Experiments reported in the journal ‘Motivation and Emotion’ suggest that when people feel threatened or insecure, they gravitate towards extrinsic goals. Perceived dangers – such as the threat of crime, terrorism, deficits, inflation or immigration – trigger a short-term survival response, in which you protect your own interests and forget other people's. Second is the creation of new frames, structures of thought through which we perceive the world. For example, if tax is repeatedly cast as a burden, and less tax is described as relief, people come to see taxation as a bad thing that must be remedied (hence ‘tax relief’ instead of ‘tax cut’). The third method is to invoke the values ratchet. If, for example, your country has a public health system that ensures that everyone who needs treatment receives it, without payment, it helps instil the belief that it is normal to care for strangers, and abnormal and wrong to neglect them. If you live in a country where people are left to die, this embeds the idea that you have no responsibility towards the poor and weak. They also need to develop psychological skills to understand the nature of politicians - their fear of being seen as puppets, their vanity, their self-doubt and their peach bruised skins. Above all they need to understand the motives of those who oppose them. But the one thing that makes or breaks a spin doctor in the eyes of the media is not an aspect of character, nor an intellectual quality, nor even an aspect of experience - but access. Without access the briefer is a ghostly figure redundantly haunting the media center, sans credibility, sans power, sans influence, sans teeth, sans everything. There is nothing the average reporter has developed better than a keen eye for the realities of access. It is essential for them to know precisely the relationship between briefer and boss before they can venture to believe the briefer reflects the boss's views. “The media, let’s be honest about it, it’s a lot like junior-high school. It’s a ‘who’s in, who’s out.’” Sean Spicer
The media therefore monitor an spin doctor's perks carefully: the West Wing[xviii] or Downing Street corner office; the 'portal to portal' chauffeured limousines; 'A' list invitations; Secret Service pins; mess privileges (or even the more exalted 'tray on desk' status); POTUS direct phone lines installed by the Army Signal Corps; travel on Marine One; access to MEMCONs at State or Langley; COMINT status; NOFOR and FTPO briefing access; a burn bag in your office; SCI laptops; and proximity to the Oval Office. Nowadays observers even study the White House social media feeds for the archive of official photos taken of the president and his senior staff, to discern the frequency that an aide is featured in proximity to the president in order to deduce a level of influence. The White House Press corps are also experts at spotting rigged access: the staged photograph at Camp David; the annual invitation to the presidential yacht and the bureaucratic promotion - all infallible signs that a briefer's status falls into the category of the: 'he-doesn't-have-real-access-but-we're-sure-going-to-try-and-fake-the-media-out-to-make-it-look-like-he-does' -type. There are two sorts of president. Those who leave image making to a trusted expert; and those who act as their own Press Secretary - respectively the Early model or the Ziegler. Every day at 09.30 Steve Early used to visit FDR in his bedroom. The morning papers would be strewn over the quilt and the two men would discuss the contents. When, later that morning, reporters would ask Early his views, they knew they were getting the president's views. Similarly, Truman was exceptionally close to Charlie Ross, his high school friend. Jim Hagerty (like Campbell with Blair) daily climbed into Eisenhower's psyche and explored it thoroughly. Pierre Salinger, however, was kept at a distance by Kennedy, who acted like a Jacobean monarch dispensing bounty to his favorites in the press - journalists corrupted and suborned by the proximity of Camelot's splendours. Power has an aphrodisiacal scent that also attracts the male of the species. Yet Salinger was an experienced and innovative operator of great style and panache. Bill Moyers was exceptionally close to his boss, being more like a son to LBJ than a mere Press Secretary, but when Nixon assumed office a new model was created. The new President was obsessively concerned with image-making. John Ehrlichman estimated that Nixon spent 40% of his time as President thinking about, discussing and proposing PR ideas. What he was determined to avoid was a Hagerty-like figure running an authoritative press operation. When first planning his administration Nixon had ignored the obvious choice of Herb Klein and eccentrically offered the post of Press Secretary to Mike Wallace, who had predictably declined; then to Tom Brokaw, who (being a ‘crazed liberal’) also refused.[1] Then- given he knew that he was to be his own Press Secretary, he considered doing without the function altogether. Finally he approached a protégé of Haldeman, a 29-year-old marketing and advertising executive called Ronald Ziegler. The original plan was to have him work as a 'press aide' on a low level salary, but Klein persuaded Haldeman that to do so would mean a complete absence of respect for the newcomer from a press corps who took salary levels and status symbols as evidence of authority. Finally Haldeman agreed to upgrade Ziegler to 'press secretary'. Ziegler's age and occupation were an important factor in Nixon's choice. His youthful awe of the presidency and his political inexperience at national level meant that when he was kept out of the information loop he made no protest. Ziegler was used ruthlessly by Nixon. Ordered to freeze out reporters, he obeyed. Ordered to deny what a more senior and more trusted adviser would have known was the truth, he denied it. When Nixon said: “The fact of the matter is that we are far too open. If we treat the press with a little more contempt, we'll probably get better treatment”, Ziegler had neither the experience to know that contempt towards the press is itself contemptible, nor the humility to take advice from Klein and others who knew Nixon was not only wrong but self-defeating. Despite what he professed at his last press briefing, Ziegler had no ties of loyalty or camaraderie with the White House press corps; he shared none of their values; and he evinced no genuine sympathy or respect for them or their rôle. In the war against the media that Nixon waged between 1968 and 1974, Ziegler was a willing foot-soldier. Never questioning the causes of the war, nor its rightness, nor its outcome. He simply repeated what he was told - the spin doctor's equivalent of name, rank and serial number. Clinton, supposedly a student of government, but in reality a provincial amateur with a special talent for retail electioneering, made exactly the same error in 1993. After first appointing George Stephanopoulos as Director of Communications, to whom the experienced White House press corps took an instant and understandable dislike, he then appointed Margaret 'Dee' Myers as Press Secretary (but only with the rank of Deputy Assistant). Myers was a 31-year-old political apparatchik and veteran of several losing races, but with no experience of marketing, advertising, journalism or even public relations outside of her relatively junior role in the election campaign itself (the same role Ziegler had played in the 1968 campaign). The White House press corps reacted badly to the Myers appointment, both to her obvious hostility towards them and for the fact that in choosing someone so obviously lightweight Clinton was deliberately snubbing them. The fact that her attitude was in fact merely a faithful reflection of the President and First Lady's hatred of the media (graphically revealed in Arthur Schlesinger's journals) was not considered a mitigating factor. To compound the felony Clinton kept Myers out of all the really important meetings, automatically reducing her status in the eyes of the White House press corps. When he tried to demote her even further (to travelling Press Secretary), her humiliation became public. Her credibility was in tatters. Enraged by the new White House press staff's evident disdain for the media's problems; their strategy of 'end-running' i.e. going over the heads of the Washington media; and by the endless petty slights (e.g. the closing of the Upper Press Office) and logistical incompetence, the press corps took the inevitable revenge. Then the president was puzzled by why he enjoyed such disastrous media coverage. The difference between an amateur and a professional politician is not that the latter does not make mistakes, but that when they do they know immediately what they have done. It should be written in letters of fire above the door of the White House's West Wing - 'never invest in failure, never pursue a mistake' (along perhaps with Disraeli's characteristically cynical 'we come here for fame'). Eventually the White House woke up to what was happening and Myers was replaced by the experienced Mike McCurry, someone the press corps could respect.
“Colorless green ideas sleep furiously”. Noam Chomsky
“You know, in politics, one should never say never.” Napoléon III
“Giving a speech is like sex. You’re supposed to be exhausted when you’re done.” Vernon Jordan
“Lucidity. Simplicity. Euphony.” W. Somerset Maugham
“Misnaming things adds to the misfortunes of the world.” Albert Camus
It is also the spin doctor's duty to avoid the meaningless pieties of ‘woke’ and resist the drift towards the euphemisms of Newspeak.[1] Death in hospital is not, as one Philadelphia official put it, 'negative patient care outcome'. People do not, as American Airlines put it, use 'wooden interdental stimulators', but toothpicks. Hospitals now use ‘thermal therapy units’, which we used to call ice packs. Poor Americans are not, as one bureaucrat put it, 'fiscal underachievers.' History is not spelled with an “x”—as in ‘hxstory’ (as students at Western Washington University, wherever that is, claim, because apparently the actual word is too patriarchal (“his” + “story”).[1] And the security guy they put on the Wal Mart door to check whether you’ve been shoplifting should not be called an ‘exit greeter.’ This has strayed into politics. Politically correct liberals speak of ‘estate taxes’; ‘collateral damage’; ‘blastocysts’ and ‘undocumented immigrants’ while Conservatives say ‘the death tax’; ‘civilian casualties’; ‘human embryos’ and ‘illegal aliens.’ Spin doctors should be enemies of the self-censorship, but they must avoid language that, by causing unnecessary offense, sabotages their message by allowing opponents to grab on to what is an irrelevant detail. For example, if one uses expressions like ‘man up’ or ‘girly’ or ‘old woman’ don’t be surprised if that the fifty per cent of the electorate who are capable of parturition are up in arms. Language is a weapon. It needs skill to direct its use. It has a sharp edge. It has been tempered to resist fracture, but without care and attention it grows rusty and weak. English may be a foreign colonial language to Americans [xix](one still hears tourists from Oatmeal, Nebraska plaintively asking waiters in the Piazza Navona if they speak 'American'),[xx] but there's no call to butcher it as savagely as the average native born American does (immigrants have more respect). The right word is important in politics and government (the two are not the same, despite what outsiders like the media think).
At midday, on December 7, 1941, Franklin Roosevelt went to the Capitol to address a joint session of Congress, entering that chamber no longer as the partisan architect of a controversial New Deal, but as a wartime commander-in-chief of a powerful, aggrieved, and galvanized nation. Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn announced his entry simply: "The president of the United States." That brief introduction was met by a wildly enthusiastic standing ovation, followed by a six-and-a-half-minute address that formally put the nation in a posture of war. "Yesterday, December 7, 1941 -- a date which will live in infamy -- the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan," he began. "His voice was sonorous, the cadence and pitch, perfect," Craig Shirley noted in ‘December 1941’. The president's original manuscript of his address reveals the sheer power of words. He initially wrote December 7, 1941 would live in ‘history,' but he later crossed out that word, inserted a proof-reader's caret, and scribbled ‘infamy.' As Mark Twain once said, “The different between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter -- 'tis the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.”
Most political campaigns are in truth a messy, trial and error, seat-of-the-pants operation. Everyone jockeys for position and the candidate's ear. Everyone maneuvers to take the credit and avoid the blame. Everyone thinks they are in charge or, if not, then working for the one in charge. The candidate's oldest friends fear the influence of the consultants. The consultants have to keep one eye firmly focused on their career. Decisions are made (or more usually not made) by unwieldy committees. People with no experience of advertising reject ads on a personal whim. People with no experience of market research (and who think that the plural of anecdote is data) reject polls that clash with what someone told them at the golf club. Deluded staffers make daily predictions, all based on Kahneman’s ‘illusion of validity’.[1] There is rarely enough time or money to do a proper job, even if there is anyone about capable of defining what that is. The media constantly ascribe genius to obvious mistakes; read into events a purpose that does not exist; and exaggerate the influence of publicity seeking individuals in the campaign team.[1] Compared even with a third rate commercial communications operation, political marketing is often something akin to amateur night. [1]Fear of the unexpected and the unknown results in increasing levels of control freakery, which ends up doing more harm than good.[1] The public meanwhile is habitually disengaged, concentrating quite properly on their daily life. Due to an educational system that seems determined not to educate the people in what’s really important, their level of understanding of the detail is generally low. As, for example, when comedian Jimmy Kimmel broadcast a report showing how Americans claimed passionately that they preferred ‘The Affordable Care Act’ over the evil ‘Obamacare’ – not realizing they are the same thing.
Moreover, campaigns themselves rarely make any significant difference to the result.[xxi] In most elections the winning candidate's percentage is pretty much the same as their poll figures on the official Labor Day start of the campaign. Only twice (1960 and 1980) since WW2 has a presidential candidate come from behind on Labor Day to win the election. Compared to the performance of the economy, even the influence of seemingly significant campaign events such as debates, or powerful political marketing techniques such as advertising, is negligible. For example, in 2012 there was a lot of noise in the media about how Romney was closing the gap – even, winning. Panic was supposed to rife in the Obama camp But the race ended exactly as it began, with the President a few points ahead. In fact, Obama was ahead by about the same margin every single day of the election (most reputable polls had him between 1% and 4% ahead).
It had all started with the first presidential debate. The polls revealed that Romney had ‘outperformed’ Obama. A swing duly followed – Gallup even showed Romney 6 points ahead. Republican soi disant ‘pundits’ stoked up the excitement and almost all observers were taking it seriously. But by polling day the froth was all gone. The reason why became obvious when YouGov, for CBS News, interviewed around 35,000 people before and after the debate. This showed that 7% of previous Romney voters, and 8% of previous Obama voters, moved either to the other candidate, or to an undecided/not vote. In other words, the net change was virtually zero. But there was a twist: in the second poll only 80% of the original sample allowed themselves to be re-interviewed, and the group of poll-refuseniks was differentially slanted to Obama voters: 22% of Obama supporters v 18% of Romney supporters, hence the apparent ‘swing’. The explanation was that no real change had taken place; but Obama voters, demotivated by perceptions of a poor Obama performance, were less likely to make the effort to respond to a pollster. “Beware of the immediate post-debate polls” YouGov pollster Stephan Shakespeare wrote when outlining his ‘Theory of Froth’: “the people who are most likely to ‘change’ are those least likely to actually vote: those who, when confronted by a pollster, don’t really care but also don’t want to admit it; and they are most likely to be nudged one way or another by whatever recent news they noticed. In the case of the Obama v Romney debate, where there was no great difference between them, so we saw that random and equal effect of 7% ‘switching’ one way and 8% ‘switching’ another. Does anyone believe that those dull, guarded, scripted TV confrontations made so many people rethink their Presidential choice?” Most of the academics who spend years poring over the data agree: there are only the smallest changes in real voting intentions within campaigns. That doesn’t mean the spin doctors can’t make a difference; every genuine half-percent can matter to the result of a genuinely close race; but elections are really won and lost long before the official campaign ever starts.[xxii]
For most of the time (even during elections) few outside the beltway are paying much attention.[xxiii] In his book on the 2010 United Kingdom election campaign, “Smell the Coffee”, Lord Ashcroft published the results of polling he had commissioned to track the impact of Conservative Party campaign communications activity. For two months in the run-up to polling day, voters were asked: “Has there been anything in the news about what the Conservative Party has been saying or doing that has caught your eye this week, whether on TV or radio or in the papers?” Most of the time the proportion who answered ‘nothing’ hovered around 90 per cent. Seldom momentous, occasionally significant and only sometimes germane to the final result, political campaigns take place primarily because candidates cannot afford to admit a predestined result. And because hope springs eternal.
“How do we reach people who wouldn’t automatically be receptive to what we have to report? That’s the mistake among critics of press coverage these days, particularly from the left. They’re not adequately thinking through, How do we reach people who have a different view?” Marty Baron
The Fifth Estate is here to stay, but the balance of power is changing. In 2010 there were 536,000 PR & advertising people working in the US, but editorial staffs are contracting by the year. According to a 2012 census carried out by the American Society of News Editors, there were about 2,600 fewer full-time professional editorial jobs at American newspapers, a 6.4% decline from 2011 which marks the first time the figure has fallen below 40,000 since the census began in 1978. [xxiv]
Is the media still powerful? Yes. Influential? Certainly. But what of the future? The media is now sailing in uncharted waters. In 2008 the internet, emerged for the first time as a leading source for campaign news, surpassing all other media except television as an outlet for national and international news. When Pulitzer prizes start going to newly formed web entities such as Huffington Post and ProPublica, we can deduce the direction of travel. Many may claim to, but in truth nobody has any real idea what the future of a new electronically based journalism will be, any more than they can know the effect on journalistic practice of new technologies such as ‘drone journalism.’ One thing is obvious however. Based on what has happened already, for the spin doctors it should be (I declare an interest) a very healthy and prosperous one. Inshallah.
[i] It’s worth remembering that if Clinton’s first choice for media strategist, David Axelrod, had not turned him down (Axelrod’s daughter suffered from chronic epilepsy and needed constant care) nobody would now remember Stephanopoulos’s name, nor how to spell it. [ii] The classic case is of Ugolino di Conti, better known as Pope Gregory IX, who wrote ‘Vox in Rama’ which was the first official church document that condemned the black cat as an incarnation of Satan, and consequently it was the death warrant for the animal. Unfortunately, that meant that instead of killing rats that carried the Black Death, they had already been beaten to death by a superstitious peasantry. [iii] Including the bear traps in what they say. early in the Trump administration, his adviser Kellyanne Conway used the phrase ‘alternative facts.’ The interviewer Chuck Todd immediately replied “Alternative facts are not facts, they’re falsehoods”. And that became the authorized interpretation of the phrase by the mainstream anti-Trump media, despite the fact that it was quite obvious to the disinterested observer that she had meant to say ‘alternative information’ i.e. an alternative version of the truth, another way of seeing things ( as she explained later “two plus two is four. Three plus one is four. Partly cloudy, partly sunny. Glass half full, glass half empty.”) http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/03/kellyanne-conway-trumps-first-lady.html [iv] In 1990 Martin Seligman published his classic book ‘Learned Optimism’. The author’s view is that optimism is a way of thinking and it can be learnt: “The defining characteristic of pessimists is that they tend to believe bad events will last a long time, will undermine everything they do, and are their own fault. The optimists, who are confronted with the same hard knocks, think about misfortune in the opposite way. They tend to believe defeat is a temporary setback, that its causes are confined to this one case. The optimists believe defeat is not their fault: circumstances, bad luck or other people brought it about. Such people are unfazed by defeat. Confronted by a bad situation, they perceive it as a challenge and try harder.” Seligman also presents startling evidence of the electoral attraction of optimism. Scoring the speeches and public statements of presidential candidates to see if they tend towards optimism or pessimism, he found that the more optimistic candidate won nine out of ten times. [v] Streisand sued photographer Kenneth Adelman and Pictopia.com for violation of privacy. The US$50 million lawsuit endeavored to remove an aerial photograph of Streisand's mansion from the publicly available collection of 12,000 California coastline photographs. Adelman photographed the beachfront property to document coastal erosion as part of the California Coastal Records Project, which was intended to influence government policymakers. Before Streisand filed her lawsuit, "Image 3850" had been downloaded from Adelman's website only six times; two of those downloads were by Streisand's attorneys. As a result of the case, more than 420,000 people visited the site over the following month. The lawsuit was dismissed and Streisand was ordered to pay Adelman's legal fees, which amounted to $155,567. Streisand’s qualities of solipsistic arrogance, ineffable self-absorption, and celebrity paranoia, created the problem. [vi] cf. the sustained and inexplicable attacks by the Russians (incredibly even by Putin personally) on Biden’s Press Secretary, Jen Psaki [vii] Amongst other things, that sense of proportion means never comparing any situation to the Holocaust. It is never true, accurate, useful or illuminating. And it is always offensive and morally wrong. [viii] Who are always complaining in interviews that their lives and made a misery of by paparazzi, when any spin doctor knows that this is a lie. If you want to disappear it’s relatively easy, even for someone with a global reputation. David Bowie for this reason often used to carry a Greek newspaper. When people spotted him they would always make the assumption that it couldn’t be Bowie, just some Greek guy who looked like him.Jann Wenner tells a typical story to illustrate this: “A photographer we worked with received a tip that Angelina Jolie was at a resort on the coast of Africa on a secret trip with then-married Brad Pitt. The tipster further specified a time and place where they walked every day and suggested we could ‘secretly’ do a photo ambush. We got the photo, we got the proof, we had the worldwide scoop, the debut of Brangelina. The tipster was Angelina.” [ix] This is also increasingly true of politicians. In 1974 only 3% of defeated or retiring US politicians became lobbyists. Now 50% of senators and 42% of congressmen and women do so. [x] Cf. this list of qualities from an experienced election staffer: https://www.conservativehome.com/thecolumnists/2019/11/nick-hargrave.html?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Saturday%202nd%20November%202019&utm_content=Saturday%202nd%20November%202019+CID_78e9dc1fe3ead7066538fcb762c747ec&utm_source=Daily%20Email&utm_term=Nick%20Hargrave%20Ten%20pieces%20of%20advice%20for%20political%20staffers%20during%20this%20coming%20election [xi] They also need to remember people, for which the invaluable Farley File concept was invented: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farley_file [xii] See this brilliant analysis for examples of group think and other crimes: https://dominiccummings.wordpress.com/2014/10/30/the-hollow-men-ii-some-reflections-on-westminster-and-whitehall-dysfunction/ [xiii] Or even President Scott Walker http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/sep/22/scott-walkers-withdrawal-from-white-house-race-shows-money-isnt-everything?CMP=ema_565a [xiv] Rarely commented upon (as it ain’t ‘woke’ ) is the difference of female journalists as opposed to the male approach. To disarm the subjects she interrogated, Janet Malcolm adopted what she called a “Japanese technique”, deferentially giggling like a geisha flattering a businessman in a bar. On the other hand, Joan Didion, genuinely shy but also shrewd, customarily asked desultory questions as an excuse for being allowed to hang around and watch events unfold, but she took no notice of what was said to her. The interview format, she claimed, is not to be trusted, and “anyway people always lie.” [xv] More recently the tabloids have expanded on this technique by smearing innocent men with the ‘pedophile’ tag, then withdrawing their unjustified accusations reluctantly when the authorities decide to take no further action, by which time the man’s life is irretrievably ruined. [xvi] Here’s an example of what happens when you react the wrong way: http://nypost.com/2016/10/06/de-blasios-tantrum-shows-just-how-thin-skinned-he-is/?utm_source=maropost&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nypdaily&utm_content=20161007 [xvii] It is spin doctoring’s dirty little secret that the rightness of practically any policy can be elucidated by simply finding out what Mill said about it e.g. his 1859 essay ‘A Few Words on Non-Intervention’ on whether a pre-emptive attack on a supposed enemy is permissible or not. [xviii] See this example of the media using real estate to confirm Valerie Jarrett’s proximity to power: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/us/politics/seats-of-power.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Frealestate&action=click&contentCollection=realestate®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=5&pgtype=sectionfront [xix] While American are conscious of their ‘foreignness’ whilst abroad, the English are not. To them, wherever they are, home or abroad, everyone else is the foreigner, but not them. When they are abroad (including in the rest of Great Britain) they are invariably puzzled and indignant to be referred to as ‘foreigners’ by the inhabitants. [xx] And of course, Sarah Palin http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/sep/07/sarah-palin-says-immigrants-to-the-us-should-speak-americanSimilarly, some African-Americans (apparently ‘European-Americans’ are non-existent in the US) seem to believe that there is a language called ‘African.’ The African Union states that the working languages of the Union shall be Arabic, English, French and Portuguese and “if possible, African languages.”There are thought to be over 2000 indigenous African languages in use across the continent, which explains the ‘if possible.’ [xxi] The spin doctors’ favorite election model right now is one created by Emory political scientist Alan Abramowitz called “Time for a Change.” Abramowitz argues that the fundamentals in a presidential election are simple: the incumbent president’s approval rating in late June or early July, the rate of real GDP growth in the second quarter, and how many terms the party has been in the White House. [xxii] http://www.conservativehome.com/thecolumnists/2014/12/lewis-baston-six-months-out-what-does-the-past-tell-us-about-how-much-change-to-expect-before-polling-day. html?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Friday+12th+December+2014&utm_content=Friday+12th+December+2014+CID_d39dd5110ea62f1ba3c9a5964b17e8b5&utm_source=Daily%20Email&utm_term=Lewis%20Baston%20Six%20months%20out%20what%20does%20the%20past%20tell%20us%20about%20how%20much%20change%20to%20expect%20before%20polling%20day [xxiii] Here’s a classic example: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/dave-brat-was-mostly-ignored-by-political-reporters/2014/06/11/178cdbd4-f1b1-11e3-9ebc-2ee6f81ed217_story.htmlAnd that fiasco led to this one: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/06/business/media/the-republican-horse-race-is-over-and-journalism-lost.html?emc=edit_th_20160509&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=51183598 [xxiv] In 2008, weekday newspapers had a circulation of 48,597,000. By 2018, that dropped to just 28,554,137, a 41% decline. By 2025 it had dropped to 24.3 million.