PROPAGANDA AND POLITICAL LEADERSHIP
The great political problem in our modern democracy is how to induce
our leaders to lead. The dogma that the voice of the people is the
voice of God tends to make elected persons the will-less servants of
their constituents. This is undoubtedly part cause of the political
sterility of which certain American critics constantly complain.
No serious sociologist any longer believes that the voice of the people
expresses any divine or specially wise and lofty idea. The voice of
the people expresses the mind of the people, and that mind is made up
for it by the group leaders in whom it believes and by those persons
who understand the manipulation of public opinion. It is composed
of inherited prejudices and symbols and clichés and verbal formulas
supplied to them by the leaders.
Fortunately, the sincere and gifted politician is able, by the
instrument of propaganda, to mold and form the will of the people.
Disraeli cynically expressed the dilemma, when he said: “I _must_
follow the people. Am I not their leader?” He might have added: “I
_must_ lead the people. Am I not their servant?”
Unfortunately, the methods of our contemporary politicians, in dealing
with the public, are as archaic and ineffective as the advertising
methods of business in 1900 would be to-day. While politics was the
first important department of American life to use propaganda on a
large scale, it has been the slowest in modifying its propaganda
methods to meet the changed conditions of the public mind. American
business first learned from politics the methods of appealing to the
broad public. But it continually improved those methods in the course
of its competitive struggle, while politics clung to the old formulas.
The political apathy of the average voter, of which we hear so much,
is undoubtedly due to the fact that the politician does not know how
to meet the conditions of the public mind. He cannot dramatize himself
and his platform in terms which have real meaning to the public. Acting
on the fallacy that the leader must slavishly follow, he deprives his
campaign of all dramatic interest. An automaton cannot arouse the
public interest. A leader, a fighter, a dictator, can. But, given our
present political conditions under which every office seeker must cater
to the vote of the masses, the only means by which the born leader can
lead is the expert use of propaganda.
Whether in the problem of getting elected to office or in the problem
of interpreting and popularizing new issues, or in the problem of
making the day-to-day administration of public affairs a vital part of
the community life, the use of propaganda, carefully adjusted to the
mentality of the masses, is an essential adjunct of political life.
The successful business man to-day apes the politician. He has adopted
the glitter and the ballyhoo of the campaign. He has set up all the
side shows. He has annual dinners that are a compendium of speeches,
flags, bombast, stateliness, pseudo-democracy slightly tinged with
paternalism. On occasion he doles out honors to employees, much as the
republic of classic times rewarded its worthy citizens.
But these are merely the side shows, the drums, of big business, by
which it builds up an image of public service, and of honorary service.
This is but one of the methods by which business stimulates loyal
enthusiasms on the part of directors, the workers, the stockholders and
the consumer public. It is one of the methods by which big business
performs its function of making and selling products to the public. The
real work and campaign of business consists of intensive study of the
public, the manufacture of products based on this study, and exhaustive
use of every means of reaching the public.
Political campaigns to-day are all side shows, all honors, all bombast,
glitter, and speeches. These are for the most part unrelated to the
main business of studying the public scientifically, of supplying the
public with party, candidate, platform, and performance, and selling
the public these ideas and products.
Politics was the first big business in America. Therefore there is a
good deal of irony in the fact that business has learned everything
that politics has had to teach, but that politics has failed to learn
very much from business methods of mass distribution of ideas and
products.
Emily Newell Blair has recounted in the _Independent_ a typical
instance of the waste of effort and money in a political campaign, a
week’s speaking tour in which she herself took part. She estimates that
on a five-day trip covering nearly a thousand miles she and the United
States Senator with whom she was making political speeches addressed
no more than 1,105 persons whose votes might conceivably have been
changed as a result of their efforts. The cost of this appeal to these
voters she estimates (calculating the value of the time spent on a very
moderate basis) as $15.27 for each vote which might have been changed
as a result of the campaign.
This, she says, was a “drive for votes, just as an Ivory Soap
advertising campaign is a drive for sales.” But, she asks, “what would
a company executive say to a sales manager who sent a high-priced
speaker to describe his product to less than 1,200 people at a cost of
$15.27 for each possible buyer?” She finds it “amazing that the very
men who make their millions out of cleverly devised drives for soap
and bonds and cars will turn around and give large contributions to
be expended for vote-getting in an utterly inefficient and antiquated
fashion.”
It is, indeed, incomprehensible that politicians do not make use of
the elaborate business methods that industry has built up. Because a
politician knows political strategy, can develop campaign issues, can
devise strong planks for platforms and envisage broad policies, it does
not follow that he can be given the responsibility of selling ideas to
a public as large as that of the United States.
The politician understands the public. He knows what the public wants
and what the public will accept. But the politician is not necessarily
a general sales manager, a public relations counsel, or a man who knows
how to secure mass distribution of ideas.
Obviously, an occasional political leader may be capable of combining
every feature of leadership, just as in business there are certain
brilliant industrial leaders who are financiers, factory directors,
engineers, sales managers and public relations counsel all rolled into
one.
Big business is conducted on the principle that it must prepare its
policies carefully, and that in selling an idea to the large buying
public of America, it must proceed according to broad plans. The
political strategist must do likewise. The entire campaign should be
worked out according to broad basic plans. Platforms, planks, pledges,
budgets, activities, personalities, must be as carefully studied,
apportioned and used as they are when big business desires to get what
it wants from the public.
The first step in a political campaign is to determine on the
objectives, and to express them exceedingly well in the current
form—that is, as a platform. In devising the platform the leader should
be sure that it is an honest platform. Campaign pledges and promises
should not be lightly considered by the public, and they ought to carry
something of the guarantee principle and money-back policy that an
honorable business institution carries with the sale of its goods. The
public has lost faith in campaign promotion work. It does not say that
politicians are dishonorable, but it does say that campaign pledges are
written on the sand. Here then is one fact of public opinion of which
the party that wishes to be successful might well take cognizance.
To aid in the preparation of the platform there should be made as
nearly scientific an analysis as possible of the public and of the
needs of the public. A survey of public desires and demands would
come to the aid of the political strategist whose business it is to
make a proposed plan of the activities of the parties and its elected
officials during the coming terms of office.
A big business that wants to sell a product to the public surveys and
analyzes its market before it takes a single step either to make or
to sell the product. If one section of the community is absolutely
sold to the idea of this product, no money is wasted in re-selling
it to it. If, on the other hand, another section of the public is
irrevocably committed to another product, no money is wasted on a
lost cause. Very often the analysis is the cause of basic changes and
improvements in the product itself, as well as an index of how it is
to be presented. So carefully is this analysis of markets and sales
made that when a company makes out its sales budget for the year, it
subdivides the circulations of the various magazines and newspapers it
uses in advertising and calculates with a fair degree of accuracy how
many times a section of that population is subjected to the appeal of
the company. It knows approximately to what extent a national campaign
duplicates and repeats the emphasis of a local campaign of selling.
As in the business field, the expenses of the political campaign should
be budgeted. A large business to-day knows exactly how much money it
is going to spend on propaganda during the next year or years. It
knows that a certain percentage of its gross receipts will be given
over to advertising—newspaper, magazine, outdoor and poster; a certain
percentage to circularization and sales promotion—such as house organs
and dealer aids; and a certain percentage must go to the supervising
salesmen who travel around the country to infuse extra stimulus in the
local sales campaign.
A political campaign should be similarly budgeted. The first question
which should be decided is the amount of money that should be raised
for the campaign. This decision can be reached by a careful analysis
of campaign costs. There is enough precedent in business procedure to
enable experts to work this out accurately. Then the second question of
importance is the manner in which money should be raised.
It is obvious that politics would gain much in prestige if the
money-raising campaign were conducted candidly and publicly, like the
campaigns for the war funds. Charity drives might be made excellent
models for political funds drives. The elimination of the little black
bag element in politics would raise the entire prestige of politics in
America, and the public interest would be infinitely greater if the
actual participation occurred earlier and more constructively in the
campaign.
Again, as in the business field, there should be a clear decision as
to how the money is to be spent. This should be done according to the
most careful and exact budgeting, wherein every step in the campaign is
given its proportionate importance, and the funds allotted accordingly.
Advertising in newspapers and periodicals, posters and street banners,
the exploitation of personalities in motion pictures, in speeches and
lectures and meetings, spectacular events and all forms of propaganda
should be considered proportionately according to the budget, and
should always be coördinated with the whole plan. Certain expenditures
may be warranted if they represent a small proportion of the budget and
may be totally unwarranted if they make up a large proportion of the
budget.
In the same way the emotions by which the public is appealed to may be
made part of the broad plan of the campaign. Unrelated emotions become
maudlin and sentimental too easily, are often costly, and too often
waste effort because the idea is not part of the conscious and coherent
whole.
Big business has realized that it must use as many of the basic
emotions as possible. The politician, however, has used the emotions
aroused by words almost exclusively.
To appeal to the emotions of the public in a political campaign is
sound—in fact it is an indispensable part of the campaign. But the
emotional content must—
(a) coincide in every way with the broad basic plans of the campaign
and all its minor details;
(b) be adapted to the many groups of the public at which it is to be
aimed; and
(c) conform to the media of the distribution of ideas.
The emotions of oratory have been worn down through long years of
overuse. Parades, mass meetings, and the like are successful when the
public has a frenzied emotional interest in the event. The candidate
who takes babies on his lap, and has his photograph taken, is doing a
wise thing emotionally, if this act epitomizes a definite plank in his
platform. Kissing babies, if it is worth anything, must be used as a
symbol for a baby policy and it must be synchronized with a plank in
the platform. But the haphazard staging of emotional events without
regard to their value as part of the whole campaign, is a waste of
effort, just as it would be a waste of effort for the manufacturer of
hockey skates to advertise a picture of a church surrounded by spring
foliage. It is true that the church appeals to our religious impulses
and that everybody loves the spring, but these impulses do not help to
sell the idea that hockey skates are amusing, helpful, or increase the
general enjoyment of life for the buyer.
Present-day politics places emphasis on personality. An entire party,
a platform, an international policy is sold to the public, or is
not sold, on the basis of the intangible element of personality. A
charming candidate is the alchemist’s secret that can transmute a
prosaic platform into the gold of votes. Helpful as is a candidate who
for some reason has caught the imagination of the country, the party
and its aims are certainly more important than the personality of the
candidate. Not personality, but the ability of the candidate to carry
out the party’s program adequately, and the program itself should
be emphasized in a sound campaign plan. Even Henry Ford, the most
picturesque personality in business in America to-day, has become known
through his product, and not his product through him.
It is essential for the campaign manager to educate the emotions
in terms of groups. The public is not made up merely of Democrats
and Republicans. People to-day are largely uninterested in politics
and their interest in the issues of the campaign must be secured by
coördinating it with their personal interests. The public is made up of
interlocking groups—economic, social, religious, educational, cultural,
racial, collegiate, local, sports, and hundreds of others.
When President Coolidge invited actors for breakfast, he did so because
he realized not only that actors were a group, but that audiences, the
large group of people who like amusements, who like people who amuse
them, and who like people who can be amused, ought to be aligned with
him.
The Shepard-Towner Maternity Bill was passed because the people who
fought to secure its passage realized that mothers made up a group,
that educators made up a group, that physicians made up a group, that
all these groups in turn influence other groups, and that taken all
together these groups were sufficiently strong and numerous to impress
Congress with the fact that the people at large wanted this bill to be
made part of the national law.
The political campaign having defined its broad objects and its
basic plans, having defined the group appeal which it must use, must
carefully allocate to each of the media at hand the work which it can
do with maximum efficiency.
The media through which a political campaign may be brought home to the
public are numerous and fairly well defined. Events and activities must
be created in order to put ideas into circulation, in these channels,
which are as varied as the means of human communication. Every object
which presents pictures or words that the public can see, everything
that presents intelligible sounds, can be utilized in one way or
another.
At present, the political campaigner uses for the greatest part the
radio, the press, the banquet hall, the mass meeting, the lecture
platform, and the stump generally as a means for furthering his ideas.
But this is only a small part of what may be done. Actually there
are infinitely more varied events that can be created to dramatize
the campaign, and to make people talk of it. Exhibitions, contests,
institutes of politics, the coöperation of educational institutions,
the dramatic coöperation of groups which hitherto have not been drawn
into active politics, and many others may be made the vehicle for the
presentation of ideas to the public.
But whatever is done must be synchronized accurately with all other
forms of appeal to the public. News reaches the public through the
printed word—books, magazines, letters, posters, circulars and
banners, newspapers; through pictures—photographs and motion pictures;
through the ear—lectures, speeches, band music, radio, campaign songs.
All these must be employed by the political party if it is to succeed.
One method of appeal is merely one method of appeal and in this age
wherein a thousand movements and ideas are competing for public
attention, one dare not put all one’s eggs into one basket.
It is understood that the methods of propaganda can be effective only
with the voter who makes up his own mind on the basis of his group
prejudices and desires. Where specific allegiances and loyalties exist,
as in the case of boss leadership, these loyalties will operate to
nullify the free will of the voter. In this close relation between the
boss and his constituents lies, of course, the strength of his position
in politics.
It is not necessary for the politician to be the slave of the public’s
group prejudices, if he can learn how to mold the mind of the voters
in conformity with his own ideas of public welfare and public service.
The important thing for the statesman of our age is not so much to
know how to please the public, but to know how to sway the public. In
theory, this education might be done by means of learned pamphlets
explaining the intricacies of public questions. In actual fact, it
can be done only by meeting the conditions of the public mind, by
creating circumstances which set up trains of thought, by dramatizing
personalities, by establishing contact with the group leaders who
control the opinions of their publics.
But campaigning is only an incident in political life. The process of
government is continuous. And the expert use of propaganda is more
useful and fundamental, although less striking, as an aid to democratic
administration, than as an aid to vote getting.
Good government can be sold to a community just as any other commodity
can be sold. I often wonder whether the politicians of the future, who
are responsible for maintaining the prestige and effectiveness of their
party, will not endeavor to train politicians who are at the same time
propagandists. I talked recently with George Olvany. He said that a
certain number of Princeton men were joining Tammany Hall. If I were in
his place I should have taken some of my brightest young men and set
them to work for Broadway theatrical productions or apprenticed them as
assistants to professional propagandists before recruiting them to the
service of the party.
One reason, perhaps, why the politician to-day is slow to take up
methods which are a commonplace in business life is that he has such
ready entry to the media of communication on which his power depends.
The newspaper man looks to him for news. And by his power of giving or
withholding information the politician can often effectively censor
political news. But being dependent, every day of the year and for
year after year, upon certain politicians for news, the newspaper
reporters are obliged to work in harmony with their news sources.
The political leader must be a creator of circumstances, not only a
creature of mechanical processes of stereotyping and rubber stamping.
Let us suppose that he is campaigning on a low-tariff platform. He may
use the modern mechanism of the radio to spread his views, but he will
almost certainly use the psychological method of approach which was old
in Andrew Jackson’s day, and which business has largely discarded. He
will say over the radio: “Vote for me and low tariff, because the high
tariff increases the cost of the things you buy.” He may, it is true,
have the great advantage of being able to speak by radio directly to
fifty million listeners. But he is making an old-fashioned approach. He
is arguing with them. He is assaulting, single-handed, the resistance
of inertia.
If he were a propagandist, on the other hand, although he would still
use the radio, he would use it as one instrument of a well-planned
strategy. Since he is campaigning on the issue of a low tariff, he not
merely would tell people that the high tariff increases the cost of
the things they buy, but would create circumstances which would make
his contention dramatic and self-evident. He would perhaps stage a
low-tariff exhibition simultaneously in twenty cities, with exhibits
illustrating the additional cost due to the tariff in force. He would
see that these exhibitions were ceremoniously inaugurated by prominent
men and women who were interested in a low tariff apart from any
interest in his personal political fortunes. He would have groups,
whose interests were especially affected by the high cost of living,
institute an agitation for lower schedules. He would dramatize the
issue, perhaps by having prominent men boycott woolen clothes, and go
to important functions in cotton suits, until the wool schedule was
reduced. He might get the opinion of social workers as to whether the
high cost of wool endangers the health of the poor in winter.
In whatever ways he dramatized the issue, the attention of the
public would be attracted to the question before he addressed them
personally. Then, when he spoke to his millions of listeners on the
radio, he would not be seeking to force an argument down the throats
of a public thinking of other things and annoyed by another demand on
its attention; on the contrary, he would be answering the spontaneous
questions and expressing the emotional demands of a public already
keyed to a certain pitch of interest in the subject.
The importance of taking the entire world public into consideration
before planning an important event is shown by the wise action of
Thomas Masaryk, then Provisional President, now President of the
Republic of Czecho-Slovakia.
Czecho-Slovakia officially became a free state on Monday, October 28,
1918, instead of Sunday, October 27, 1918, because Professor Masaryk
realized that the people of the world would receive more information
and would be more receptive to the announcement of the republic’s
freedom on a Monday morning than on a Sunday, because the press would
have more space to devote to it on Monday morning.
Discussing the matter with me before he made the announcement,
Professor Masaryk said, “I would be making history for the cables if I
changed the date of Czecho-Slovakia’s birth as a free nation.” Cables
make history and so the date was changed.
This incident illustrates the importance of technique in the new
propaganda.
It will be objected, of course, that propaganda will tend to defeat
itself as its mechanism becomes obvious to the public. My opinion is
that it will not. The only propaganda which will ever tend to weaken
itself as the world becomes more sophisticated and intelligent, is
propaganda that is untrue or unsocial.
Again, the objection is raised that propaganda is utilized to
manufacture our leading political personalities. It is asked whether,
in fact, the leader makes propaganda, or whether propaganda makes the
leader. There is a widespread impression that a good press agent can
puff up a nobody into a great man.
The answer is the same as that made to the old query as to whether
the newspaper makes public opinion or whether public opinion makes the
newspaper. There has to be fertile ground for the leader and the idea
to fall on. But the leader also has to have some vital seed to sow. To
use another figure, a mutual need has to exist before either can become
positively effective. Propaganda is of no use to the politician unless
he has something to say which the public, consciously or unconsciously,
wants to hear.
But even supposing that a certain propaganda is untrue or dishonest,
we cannot on that account reject the methods of propaganda as such.
For propaganda in some form will always be used where leaders need to
appeal to their constituencies.
The criticism is often made that propaganda tends to make the President
of the United States so important that he becomes not the President but
the embodiment of the idea of hero worship, not to say deity worship. I
quite agree that this is so, but how are you going to stop a condition
which very accurately reflects the desires of a certain part of the
public? The American people rightly senses the enormous importance of
the executive’s office. If the public tends to make of the President a
heroic symbol of that power, that is not the fault of propaganda but
lies in the very nature of the office and its relation to the people.
This condition, despite its somewhat irrational puffing up of the man
to fit the office, is perhaps still more sound than a condition in
which the man utilizes no propaganda, or a propaganda not adapted to
its proper end. Note the example of the Prince of Wales. This young
man reaped bales of clippings and little additional glory from his
American visit, merely because he was poorly advised. To the American
public he became a well dressed, charming, sport-loving, dancing,
perhaps frivolous youth. Nothing was done to add dignity and prestige
to this impression until towards the end of his stay he made a trip
in the subway of New York. This sole venture into democracy and the
serious business of living as evidenced in the daily habits of workers,
aroused new interest in the Prince. Had he been properly advised he
would have augmented this somewhat by such serious studies of American
life as were made by another prince, Gustave of Sweden. As a result of
the lack of well directed propaganda, the Prince of Wales became in the
eyes of the American people, not the thing which he constitutionally
is, a symbol of the unity of the British Empire, but part and parcel
of sporting Long Island and dancing beauties of the ballroom. Great
Britain lost an invaluable opportunity to increase the good will and
understanding between the two countries when it failed to understand
the importance of correct public relations counsel for His Royal
Highness.
The public actions of America’s chief executive are, if one chooses to
put it that way, stage-managed. But they are chosen to represent and
dramatize the man in his function as representative of the people. A
political practice which has its roots in the tendency of the popular
leader to follow oftener than he leads is the technique of the trial
balloon which he uses in order to maintain, as he believes, his contact
with the public. The politician, of course, has his ear to the ground.
It might be called the clinical ear. It touches the ground and hears
the disturbances of the political universe.
But he often does not know what the disturbances mean, whether they
are superficial, or fundamental. So he sends up his balloon. He may
send out an anonymous interview through the press. He then waits
for reverberations to come from the public—a public which expresses
itself in mass meetings, or resolutions, or telegrams, or even such
obvious manifestations as editorials in the partisan or nonpartisan
press. On the basis of these repercussions he then publicly adopts his
original tentative policy, or rejects it, or modifies it to conform
to the sum of public opinion which has reached him. This method is
modeled on the peace feelers which were used during the war to sound
out the disposition of the enemy to make peace or to test any one of
a dozen other popular tendencies. It is the method commonly used by a
politician before committing himself to legislation of any kind, and by
a government before committing itself on foreign or domestic policies.
It is a method which has little justification. If a politician is a
real leader he will be able, by the skillful use of propaganda, to lead
the people, instead of following the people by means of the clumsy
instrument of trial and error.
The propagandist’s approach is the exact opposite of that of the
politician just described. The whole basis of successful propaganda is
to have an objective and then to endeavor to arrive at it through an
exact knowledge of the public and modifying circumstances to manipulate
and sway that public.
“The function of a statesman,” says George Bernard Shaw, “is to express
the will of the people in the way of a scientist.”
The political leader of to-day should be a leader as finely versed
in the technique of propaganda as in political economy and civics.
If he remains merely the reflection of the average intelligence of
his community, he might as well go out of politics. If one is dealing
with a democracy in which the herd and the group follow those whom
they recognize as leaders, why should not the young men training for
leadership be trained in its technique as well as in its idealism?
“When the interval between the intellectual classes and the practical
classes is too great,” says the historian Buckle, “the former will
possess no influence, the latter will reap no benefits.”
Propaganda bridges this interval in our modern complex civilization.
Only through the wise use of propaganda will our government, considered
as the continuous administrative organ of the people, be able to
maintain that intimate relationship with the public which is necessary
in a democracy.
As David Lawrence pointed out in a recent speech, there is need for an
intelligent interpretative bureau for our government in Washington.
There is, it is true, a Division of Current Information in the
Department of State, which at first was headed by a trained newspaper
man. But later this position began to be filled by men from the
diplomatic service, men who had very little knowledge of the public.
While some of these diplomats have done very well, Mr. Lawrence
asserted that in the long run the country would be benefited if the
functions of this office were in the hands of a different type of
person.
There should, I believe, be an Assistant Secretary of State who is
familiar with the problem of dispensing information to the press—some
one upon whom the Secretary of State can call for consultation and who
has sufficient authority to persuade the Secretary of State to make
public that which, for insufficient reason, is suppressed.
The function of the propagandist is much broader in scope than that
of a mere dispenser of information to the press. The United States
Government should create a Secretary of Public Relations as member
of the President’s Cabinet. The function of this official should be
correctly to interpret America’s aims and ideals throughout the world,
and to keep the citizens of this country in touch with governmental
activities and the reasons which prompt them. He would, in short,
interpret the people to the government and the government to the people.
Such an official would be neither a propagandist nor a press agent,
in the ordinary understanding of those terms. He would be, rather, a
trained technician who would be helpful in analyzing public thought
and public trends, in order to keep the government informed about
the public, and the people informed about the government. America’s
relations with South America and with Europe would be greatly improved
under such circumstances. Ours must be a leadership democracy
administered by the intelligent minority who know how to regiment and
guide the masses.
Is this government by propaganda? Call it, if you prefer, government
by education. But education, in the academic sense of the word, is
not sufficient. It must be enlightened expert propaganda through the
creation of circumstances, through the high-spotting of significant
events, and the dramatization of important issues. The statesman of the
future will thus be enabled to focus the public mind on crucial points
of policy, and regiment a vast, heterogeneous mass of voters to clear
understanding and intelligent action.