I saw in the papers the other day that the Congress has sacked the public relations firm it had hired as part of its electoral efforts. Just a day before, a national daily had quoted the chief of the PR agency as saying: "This is the coming of age of PR in India. Like Margaret Thatcher was the creation of (ad agency) Saatchi & Saatchi, we look forward to the day when a similar exercise can be undertaken in India."
As if we didn't have enough troubles already.
Yes, sure, Mrs Thatcher was the first modern politician to prove the power of media manipulation through backroom PR work. In the mid-'70s, the night before Conservative Party MPs were supposed to elect their leader, Mrs Thatcher appeared, under the tutelage of TV producer Gordon Reece, on Granada TV's World in Action in her home, with her family, oozing down-to-earth wisdom and leadership qualities. Next day, belying all forecasts, she defeated Edward Heath by 11 votes. Twenty MPs had swung over to her side overnight, entirely because of World in Action.
When she became PM in 1979, she was trained carefully by Reece and Saatchi to modify her voice, hair, clothes, posture, body language to send the messages that the public wished to receive. It worked for more than a decade. Ironically, though, the pinnacle of the good work she started those days was achieved by the Labour Party's Tony Blair last year. As Britain went to the polls, there were unconfirmed rumours that Blair was actually an android developed by the spin doctors who created New Labour.
Of course, politics has always been about the manipulation of public opinion. Even Lincoln, when he stood for president, carefully hushed the fact that he was, at that time, one of the highest-paid lawyers in the United States, and a railway company lobbyist. He went to the people as an uncorrupted backwoodsman. But the idea of using dark-suited consultants who board your bandwagon on a short-term assignment basis would possibly have shocked him.
Let's make one point clear: I find no logical reason why the Congress—or for that matter, any political party—shouldn't hire a PR firm. It's almost de rigueur today in most western democracies and, anyway, you're just taking some outside help for doing something that you'd be doing anyway. No, there's no logical reason. Just a twinge of unease. Forget the ideologies and all that crap, politics is fundamentally about your belief in your right to rule. Every successful politician, from Disraeli to Mayawati, carries this belief. When a politician starts losing that faith, he fades out. When you need help from people who are ready to, for a specified fee and period, believe in your right to rule, it looks suspiciously like your own conviction is getting a bit shaky.
So I would attribute the Congress' decision to part ways with the PR agency to Sonia Gandhi's agreeing to campaign for the party. Rightly or wrongly, the party feels more confident. But the trigger would have been the agency chief's open boasting about doing for the Congress what Saatchi did for Thatcher. Even the Congress, in its current state of confusion and disorientation, couldn't take that. Apparently, there's some self-respect still to be found deep inside the grand old party's belly.
Elsewhere in the world, PR outfits have often been spectacularly effective in political matters, but all the time maintaining a very low profile (I think that goes by definition). Some days before George Bush declared war on Iraq, a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl, Nayirah, appeared before the Congressional Human Rights Caucus and said that she saw Iraqi soldiers in Kuwait entering hospitals, taking newborn babies out of incubators and leaving them on the floor to die.Telecast live by CNN, Nayirah's testimony had a stunning impact, enraging millions of Americans. Bush cited her story repeatedly, and in the Congressional debate on whether the US should send troops to Kuwait, senator after senator mentioned Nayirah's account to bolster their pro-war argument. The Senate approved US action against Saddam by just five votes: Desert Storm was thus entirely triggered by the incubator atrocity.
Which never happened, according to an Amnesty International investigation. Nayirah was a member of the Kuwaiti royal family, and her testimony was orchestrated by PR firm Hill & Knowlton as part of a $10.5 million PR campaign by Kuwait's rulers to "emotionally motivate people" for military action.
Did Hill & Knowlton believe that the US should liberate Kuwait from Saddam? Not really. They were paid to make other people believe that the US should liberate Kuwait from Saddam. They could have as well been recruited by Iraq to convince the American people that Kuwaitis had welcomed the Iraqi army by turning cartwheels on balustrades. This hired-gun approach leaves me uneasy when the lives and fates of large numbers of people are at stake.
The other problem with all this is that governance and polity get reduced to: content subservient to form, doctrine to delivery modes. Problem definition, options matrix, alternate scenarios, Microsoft PowerPoint presentations, go for it baby, executive summary. It all becomes an interesting problem to be solved, distanced from the grime and sweat of the real issues in India. Give me any day our traditional political illusionists, raving and ranting on dusty roadsides, eyes glazed over with fanatical belief in the right to rule.
Here's an excerpt from a TV interview quoted by Michael J. O'Neill in his book The Roar of the Crowd. Roger Ailes, head of Ailes Communications, spin doctors for George Bush's 1988 presidential campaign, is analysing his success.
Ailes: "Let's face it, there are three things that the media are interested in: pictures, mistakes, and attacks. You try to avoid as many mistakes as you can. You try to give them as many pictures as you can. And if you need coverage, you attack, and you will get coverage."
Interviewer: "So you're saying the notion of the candidate saying, 'I want to run for president because I want to do something for the country,' is crazy."
Ailes: "Suicide."
Hey, we're better than them!
