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Rapid Review

THE REVIEW OF COMMUNICATION
1 (2001): 191-193
© 2001 National Communication Association

The New Prince

Herbert W. Simons

Dick Morris. The New Prince. Los Angeles: Renaissance Books, 1999. 256 pages. $22.95 (cloth); $15.95 (paper).

The study of persuasion currently confronts an anomaly: the technology of persuasion has become frightfully good; the theory of persuasion lags far behind. Experts at the technology are paid millions to advise politicians, advertise products, improve corporate images, but if asked to produce a theory corresponding to that which guides their human engineering, most could not. And the practitioners tend with good reason to be skeptical of theories developed by academic social scientists.

Skepticism about the utility of social-scientific theories is not confined to practitioners; it is shared by many social psychologists. Called into question has been theory’s capacity to account for variations in language, culture, and history, or to transcend the rhetorically contingent by way of covering laws, akin to those in the physical sciences. Kenneth Gergen, for one, urged social psychologists to acknowledge that they were no more than contemporary historians of passing cultural fancies.

This is not to say that rhetorical theory and criticism have succeeded where social scientific theory and behavioral research have failed. Indeed, the well conducted psychological experiment provides far greater controls over errors of observation and inference than does rhetorical criticism. Sensitive as rhetorical critics are to textual and contextual factors, they are often insensitive to the influence of their own preconceptions. Moreover, rhetorical criticism provides no reliable means for self-monitoring, or for correction by the scholarly community. Rhetorical theorists and critics also do better with single messages—preferably verbal—than with campaigns of persuasion, and their theory finds little place for forms of influence other than persuasion, such as coercion and material inducements.

Little wonder, therefore, that professional persuaders tend to look elsewhere for guidance. Beginning with the Eisenhower campaign in 1952, political candidates turned to advertising gurus for advice. It was easy enough to dismiss the pop psychology and seat-of-the-pants counsel of the early spinmeisters, but their technology has improved considerably over the years, so that, today, in the capable hands of consultants like Dick Morris, it warrants genuine, if grudging, respect.

Although he does not label himself as such, Dick Morris is a cyberneticist, much in debt to the science of error control. “Theory” for him consists of little more than rules-of-thumb and experience-based hunches, and these are readily adjusted to circumstances or cast aside as evidence dictates. Morris market-tests everything: themes, slogans, ads, even whole speeches. Just as candidates need to learn from the voters what it will take to get them elected, so elected leaders need market-testing to determine what is do-able politically and how best to win public support for their proposals. Lest critics dismiss this as pandering, or as followership rather than leadership, Morris is quick to point out that democratic leaders need mandates. Focus groups and tracking polls are not a substitute for leadership, but, used properly, they enable leadership.  

Morris has authored three books in rapid succession. Behind the Oval Office (New York: Random House, 1997) focuses on his role as behind-the-scenes advisor to President Clinton from 1994 to 1996. It includes an instructive if self-serving account of how Morris engineered the undoing of the Republicans after their landslide Congressional victory in 1994.

Vote.Com (Los Angeles: Renaissance Books, 2000) is a case for direct democracy via Internet referendums. It includes as well a tribute to the public’s refusal to abandon Clinton in the face of unremitting personal attacks on the President by the media and by Beltway politicians. Always the spinner, Morris includes himself among the vox populi: “What we discovered about ourselves was that we want to hold power in our own hands.”

The New Prince, written in the spirit of Machiavelli’s classic work, is a “how-to” for presidents and for those aspiring to high office. Morris begins on a note of high optimism. Issues reign these days, he says. Voters want their elected officials on a tighter leash than in decades past, and so they insist on concrete proposals. Money counts for less than good ideas, and positive messages are valued more than attacks. In general, adjectives used to characterize political figures (“I’m honest, he’s dishonest”) count for less than verbs (actions pledged or taken).

These gross generalizations are hedged and qualified, if not flatly contradicted, in subsequent chapters, as when Morris acknowledges the need for money—lots of it—to get out the message, and concedes the value of negative advertising in some circumstances—for example, in castigating an opponent for having taken the low road in a campaign.

It is tempting to dismiss books like Morris’s as unscholarly and untrustworthy, but I think that would be a mistake. Better to mine them for their nuggets of gold while stripping away the hype and exaggeration. Murray Edelman’s The Symbolic Uses of Politics (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1967) remains the best corrective I know of to those who celebrate the system excessively and, by implication, those like Morris who help manage it. Charles Lewis’s The Buying of the President (New York: Avon, 1996) is utterly convincing on the role that money plays in the corruption of the electoral system.

The hype and exaggeration aside, Morris deserves special credit in my view for undoing the forces of Newt Gingrich and Company following their landslide in 1994. Steal the Republicans’ thunder, he advised Clinton, while ruling from the rhetorical middle ground. Disarm your opponents by agreeing with their more attractive positions, all the while drawing a line in the sand on issues dearest to your Democratic constituency. Don’t be afraid to lead, but find out from the citizenry first what it will take stylistically and not just substantively to win their support. Above all, triangulate. Zigzag on issues in sailing the ship of state, being ever mindful of the final destination.

These are among the rules-of-thumb of a wise and resourceful political advisor. Machiavelli would have been proud.