Is what you see what you get?


Looking at the strategy of the eavesdropping scandal
Lee Harris asks the right question.

Most recently, the leading lights of the Democratic Party, including Al Gore, John Kerry, and Hillary Clinton, have attempted to use the issue of "domestic surveillance" or "spying" as a vehicle to achieve their goal of arousing populist ire against Bush. But the question is, Will it do the trick? Will this become a rallying cry capable of turning popular sentiment against the President?

Note, please, that I am not addressing the question of whether such surveillance or spying is right or wrong. To use the language of marketing, I am only concerned with whether the Democrats can "sell" this particular product to its target audience, namely, the American people. Will they buy it in sufficient quantities to create a generalized firestorm of protest against the President?

It's an excellent question, and much more important in this context than the "right or wrong." If this latest flap has shown anything, it's that Presidents going back to Jimmy Carter regularly interpreted the FSIA in ways that would expand Presidential power at the expense of liberty. But Mr. Harris continues.

But before we try to answer this question, let us consider the role of marketing in politics.

Political parties in democratic societies often confront the same two problems that businesses confront in a free market. First they must find a product that has the potential of mass appeal, and second they must figure out a way of successfully marketing this product to the general public. Sometimes a company like McDonald's will begin with a product that has an established track record of success, namely, the humble hamburger -- but through an ingenious method of marketing, the company will seize the imagination of the general public and persuade it to buy their hamburger instead of the hamburgers offered by their less market-savvy competitors. Yet, at the same time, it should be obvious that no amount of market savvy could save a company that tried to convince the American public to eat dog-burgers, not even if there were billboards everywhere depicting adorable cats scrawling the words "EAT DOGS FOR A MORE PURR-FECT WORLD."

Of course, political parties are not trying to market consumer products; they are trying to market consumable ideas: that is, ideas that may be gulped down in a single bite. For example, American politics was revolutionized by Andrew Jackson and his astute marketing agents in the aftermath of the election of 1828. Jackson had gotten more votes than his rivals, but not enough to win the election outright, forcing the decision to be made by the House of Representatives. Henry Clay, who genuinely feared Jackson as a Napoleon in the making -- (Jackson intensely admired Napoleon, it should be noted) -- decided that it was in the best interest of the country that the utterly un-Napoleonic John Quincy Adams should be the next President. Clay therefore persuaded his followers in the House to vote for Adams against Jackson. Adams later appointed Clay as his Secretary of State, which, at the time, was the traditional route of advancement to the Office of the Presidency, and it is hard to imagine a better choice for the Secretary of State than Clay.

This, however, was not how Jackson saw the matter, and soon there arose a rallying cry, one of those instantly consumable ideas that was brilliantly marketed by Jackson and his coterie: Clay and Adams had made a "corrupt bargain." Clay had offered Adams the Presidency, in return for his appointment as Secretary of State, and, by this bargain, the American people had been deprived of the leader they really wanted, namely, Andrew Jackson himself.

So perception has long since been more important than reality. That has implications in this day of the world wide web..

— NeoWayland

Posted: Thu - February 2, 2006 at 04:46 AM  Tag


 ◊  ◊   ◊  ◊ 

Random selections from NeoWayland's library


Pagan Vigil "Because LIBERTY demands more than just black or white"
© 2005 - 2009 All Rights Reserved