A Runes exclusive: The playbook for the GOP's fall campaign

As the fall campaign lurches to a start, the Republican playbook for the 2012 election has been leaked exclusively to us here at Runes by special courier.  The author, identified only as "Nick," is reportedly in seclusion and was unavailable for comment. 

Here are some excerpts from Nick's playbook, which is now available at select bookstores and online:

“Occasionally words must serve to veil the facts. But let this happen in such a way that no one becomes aware of it; or, if it should be noticed, excuses must be at hand to be produced immediately.”  [Note: The Romney/Ryan campaign has replaced the author's  "occasionally" with "invariably," but otherwise the original text remains intact.  Here's a recent example, courtesy of Paul Ryan.]

The Republican road map for success continues with detailed observations and suggestions like the following:

“If you only notice human proceedings, you may observe that all who attain great power and riches, make use of either force or fraud; and what they have acquired either by deceit or violence, in order to conceal the disgraceful methods of attainment, they endeavor to sanctify with the false title of honest gains...[N]or do any ever escape from servitude but the bold and faithless, or from poverty, but the rapacious and fraudulent. God and nature have thrown all human fortunes into the midst of mankind; and they are thus attainable rather by rapine than by industry, by wicked actions rather than by good. Hence it is that men feed upon each other, and those who cannot defend themselves must be worried.” 

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"For this reason a [leader] ought to take care that he never lets anything slip from his lips that is not replete with the above-named five qualities, that he may appear to him who sees and hears him altogether merciful, faithful, humane, upright, and religious. There is nothing more necessary to appear to have than this last quality, inasmuch as men judge generally more by the eye than by the hand, because it belongs to everybody to see you, to few to come in touch with you. Every one sees what you appear to be, few really know what you are, and those few dare not oppose themselves to the opinion of the many, who have the majesty of the state to defend them; and in the actions of all men, and especially of [leaders], which it is not prudent to challenge, one judges by the result.” 

  ____________________________________

“Therefore it is unnecessary for a [leader] to have all the good qualities I have enumerated, but it is very necessary to appear to have them. And I shall dare to say this also, that to have them and always to observe them is injurious, and that to appear to have them is useful; to appear merciful, faithful, humane, religious, upright, and to be so, but with a mind so framed that should you require not to be so, you may be able and know how to change to the opposite.” 

  ____________________________________

"For the great majority of mankind are satisfied with appearances as though they were realities. and are often more influenced by things that seem than by those that are."

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"The [leader] never lacks legitimate reason to break his promise."

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UPDATE (9/3/12): Author identified

And the author?  Further investigation by Runes reveals that these passages are from The Prince and other works by Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527).  Machiavelli's wise counsel is neatly summarized in his most infamous expression: "The end justifies the means."
 

In the interest of being evenhanded, Macchiavelli offers some slightly less cynical counsel, also from The Prince, for Barack Obama in the event that he's re-elected:

“It ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new. This coolness arises partly from fear of the opponents, who have the laws on their side, and partly from the incredulity of men, who do not readily believe in new things until they have had a long experience of them.”

It's easy to predict that Nick's influence on this election cycle has only begun to blossom.

The new dynastic politics

Following allegations of fraud during the last two national elections, deeper questions have been raised about whether the U.S. can still pretend to be a functioning "democracy." Some conservatives have long insisted that the U.S. is a "republic, not a democracy." Now there are reasons to question whether the U.S. can even claim to be a "republic."

If Hillary Clinton is elected president next year and serves two full terms, someone named Clinton or Bush will have held national office (as POTUS or VPOTUS) for 37 consecutive years. Conveniently enough, Chelsea Clinton will turn 35 and become eligible in 2015, two years before her mother would leave office.

This isn't unprecedented in U.S. history. Twice before, two members of the same family have assumed the presidency: John Adams (father) and John Quincy Adams (son), Teddy Roosevelt and (fifth cousin) Franklin Roosevelt.

Politics in the U.S. has been dominated by a de facto landed and propertied aristocracy that has been in place since its founding, though membership in that group has tended to be fluid and not necessarily fixed by ancestry. But the two competing dynasties of the last fifteen years are caught in an electoral dynamic that's unique in U.S. history.

After eight years of contrived "scandals" involving Bill Clinton, Dubya became the nostalgic choice of a significant percentage of voters who yearned for qualities that his father, at least in their fantasies, represented: the integrity, stability and moral righteousness of the Reagan/Bush years. Dubya's appeal was undoubtedly enhanced by his fraudulent claim that he was a "compassionate conservative," implying that he would supply a needed corrective to the harsh economic and social policies of the 80's.

After the devastating rejection of the elder Bush in the 1992 election, it's hard to imagine that anyone would be "nostalgic" enough to vote for a proven mediocrity from the same family—the first president in U.S. history who has ever been convicted of a crime. Dubya's appeal based on his ancestry was more subliminal than overt, but it may have had an effect by keeping him close enough in the vote count that he could steal the election in Florida.

After six and a half disastrous years, are we now witnessing the opposite dynamic—a kind of "Clinton nostalgia" that could help to propel Hillary into the White House? After all, she seems to offer the best of the Clinton legacy without the personal, ah, foibles that Bill brought to the office.

To many voters, at least by contrast with the Bush debacle, the Clinton era was a time of peace, prosperity, optimism and stability. The U.S. had emerged from the Cold War triumphant, at least in the popular imagination, and unchallenged. For all his obvious personal failings, Clinton was perceived as brilliant, competent and in control of his administration. As an added bonus, he speaks in complete and coherent sentences, a quality that radically distinguishes him from both his predecessor and successor. Hillary may be a less compelling speaker and presence, but she shares most of Bill's strengths and few of his vulnerabilities. A few political weaknesses are unique to her, primarily the high negatives that come from years of vicious personal attacks by the "vast right-wing conspiracy" that she has accurately described.

So are voters, after a catastrophic attempt to return to the perceived golden years of the Reagan/Bush administration, yearning to somehow replicate the 90's? Clearly we could, and did, do a lot worse.

The Bush brand has become so devalued, of course, that no one with that name is ever likely to get elected again. If daughter Jenna Bush thinks she can promote a political career by simply rebranding herself with her new husband's last name, I suspect she's sadly mistaken. And she, like her sister, also shares her father's reputation as a party animal.

If Seymour Hirsh is correct about the Bush/Cheney plan to launch a limited war against Iran, Republicans could be faced with an electoral fiasco in 2008 that could rival 1964. The end of the Bush dynasty could be the beginning of another.

NOTES:

George Bush has as strong a claim to membership in the hereditary U.S. elite as any president. The Bush family has been described as "the most successful political dynasty in American history" [a claim which, if true, suggests that dynasties haven't served us very well]. In fact, Dubya is a distant relative of Queen Elizabeth II. By contrast, Bill Clinton's background seems downright lumpen. Hillary's father worked as a coal miner in Pennsylvania before he moved to Illinois and began a successful career in the textile supply industry. The Clintons' claims to membership in the national aristocracy are founded on their educations (Yale and Wellesley) and political success rather than an accident of birth.

Now isn't the time to attempt an analysis of whether the U.S. can best be described as a democracy, republic, oligarchy, plutocracy or kleptocracy.

PHOTO: Samuel Prescott Bush, patriarch of the family and great-grandfather of George W. Bush. (Wikimedia)

Geaghan: "By a certain vile persuasion..."

"The power of discourse stands in the same relation to the soul's organization as the pharmacopoeia does to the physiology of bodies. For just as different drugs draw off different humors from the body, and some put an end to disease and others to life, so too of discourses: some give pain, others delight, others terrify, others rouse the hearers to courage, and yet others by a certain vile persuasion drug and trick the soul."
—Gorgias (c. 490-385 B.C.E.), Encomium of Helen

Socrates ranted against Gorgias (1) and the sophists nearly 2,500 years ago, but their dark art has reached new levels of refinement in contemporary U.S. politics. A case in point is John McCain's disingenuous insistence that congressional Democrats demonstrate the courage of their antiwar convictions by voting to cut off funding for the war in Iraq. The right-wing echo chamber has taken up the chorus for the past few weeks. A recent example is Charles Krauthammer, who has built his entire career as a columnist on being unerringly wrong. He resumed McCain's litany in today's Washington Post: "Of course, the Democrats believe the war cannot be won. But if that's the case, they should order a withdrawal by cutting off funds."

Recent history—as in the 2004 election—shows that it would be a grave mistake to underestimate the Democrats' ability to self-destruct. But the R's have attempted to set such an obvious trap that the D's will likely emerge unscathed. After all, they'll be damned either way. If they cut funding for the war effort, they'll be accused of abandoning the 155,000 troops who'll be in Iraq after the current escalation is complete. If they don't cut funding, they'll be accused of hypocrisy by McCain, Krauthammer and the rest of the unrehabilitated Republican right. (Ah, but that's redundant.) My guess is that the D's would rather be attacked for hypocrisy than betrayal.

The irony of this situation shouldn't be lost on anyone. The Bush administration didn't develop any coherent plans for the occupation of Iraq, failed to competently manage the administration of the country and refused to furnish adequate force levels or equipment to provide security for U.S. troops or the Iraqi people. Now the same gang of incompetents have the audacity to suggest that their political opponents are failing to support the troops.

The notion of sophistry will be useful to keep in mind as we approach another presidential election, and of course the practice is hardly unknown among Democrats. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy offers an especially helpful definition:

"The aims of the young politicians whom [the sophists] trained were to persuade the multitude of whatever they wished them to believe. The search for truth was not top priority. Consequently the sophists undertook to provide a stock of arguments on any subject, or to prove any position. They boasted of their ability to make the worse appear the better reason, to prove that black is white. Some, like Gorgias, asserted that it was not necessary to have any knowledge of a subject to give satisfactory replies as regards it. Thus, Gorgias ostentatiously answered any question on any subject instantly and without consideration. To attain these ends mere quibbling, and the scoring of verbal points were employed. In this way, the sophists tried to entangle, entrap, and confuse their opponents, and even, if this were not possible, to beat them down by mere violence and noise. They sought also to dazzle by means of strange or flowery metaphors, by unusual figures of speech, by epigrams and paradoxes, and in general by being clever and smart, rather than earnest and truthful." (2)

NOTES

(1) As for Gorgias, we have to wonder whether his rhetorical skills helped him delay his final crossing of the river Acheron. According to the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, he lived to the age of 108 (483-375 B.C.E.); Wikipedia states that he was a mere 105 (490-385 B.C.E.) at the time of his death.

(2) Wikipedia defines sophistry as "rhetoric that is designed to appeal to the listener on grounds other than the strict logical cogency of the statements being made... The essential claim of sophistry is that the actual logical validity of an argument is irrelevant (if not non-existent); it is only the ruling of the audience which ultimately determines whether a conclusion is considered 'true' or not. By appealing to the prejudices and emotions of the judges, one can garner favorable treatment for one's side of the argument and cause a factually false position to be ruled true."

PAINTING: The Death of Socrates (1784-85), by Jacques-Louis David.