From the Bible to Machiavelli: Politics Up Close and Personal
I grew up immersed in the Bible. Looking back, I see how it influenced my early understanding of politics, leadership, and government. The Old Testament recounts the story of the people of Israel, mostly about their leaders and what happened to the corporate entity—the state. The fortunes of the people ebbed and flowed depending on whether their leaders obeyed or disobeyed the commands of Yahweh.
In the New Testament, Jesus has little to say about the state, except that it should be respected, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s.” Whenever there is a conflict between the personal requirements of the gospel and the laws of the state, however, the gospel is obeyed. The religious influences I brought to politics programmed me always to ask, “Is this the right thing to do?”
A second influence on my thinking, which, for lack of a better description can be called the Democratic Ideal, was the revolutionary idea that no one has a right to rule. Leadership is conferred by the consent of equals. Decisions are arrived at through open discussion and debate. Votes are not coerced, bought, or traded.
This is basic high school civics, the embedded message in the stories we tell ourselves of how we created American democracy and became an example to the world.
In college I was introduced to the democratic philosophers: John Milton who believed that truth would always be recognized and chosen if the debate was free and open; John Stuart Mill who argued persuasively that the expression of every idea should be permitted; and Henry David Thoreau who made the case for civil disobedience when political leaders make wrong decisions.
Within this philosophical tradition, as it is within the religious tradition I grew up in, there is a right and a wrong. Right prevails, because in the “free marketplace of ideas” truth is stronger than falsehood.
John Stuart Mill acknowledges freely in On Liberty that it is idle sentiment to think that truth has more power than error when the dungeon and the stake are on the side of error. Sufficient application of legal or social penalties will generally succeed in stopping the propagation of unwelcome ideas, even when they are true. Rather, the power of a true idea lies in the fact that it will continually be resurrected until a more favorable time arrives and it becomes generally accepted. He argues strongly that good decisions will generally be reached only when all ideas can be discussed freely.
In due course I was introduced to a very different political philosophy; a philosophy summed up succinctly by the Chinese revolutionary and dictator Mao Tse-tung in two statements: “Ideals are important, but reality is even more important”; and, “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”
The “reality” that many have described is that people in general are not rational. With Freud we discovered our subconscious. With Dostoevsky we began to understand the irresistibility of the irrational act. Marx demonstrated that our economic roles determine who we are and what we think. Skinner put us in a box and taught us that with the proper stimuli we can be trained to do anything. In the light of what we have learned from these and others, it is hard to argue that reason prevails over custom, emotions, feelings, beliefs, prejudices, tradition, and self-interest.
We can be frightened, manipulated, and coerced. We can be easily led into making wrong decisions. Not only is the debate not rational, there is no reason to think that our decisions will be right. Because the people cannot be trusted to decide what is good, a strong leader, not democracy, is the better system. Because people can be manipulated, they should be manipulated.
Machiavelli, the medieval philosopher/politician, in The Prince laid out the strategy: “The experience of our times shows those princes [who] have done great things . . . have been able by astuteness to confuse men’s brains. . . . Men are so simple and so ready to obey present necessities, that one who deceives will always find those who allow themselves to be deceived.”
That advice from five hundred years ago has been embraced by today’s political campaign managers. They have no interest in securing the informed consent of the citizens for a particular policy. Their only interest is securing the citizen’s vote. To that end, everything is fair.
The voter exists to be entertained, manipulated, fooled, tricked and cajoled. Prejudices should be stoked. Hot buttons pushed. Actions are based on perceptions, and those perceptions can be controlled. The belief that politics is a mixture of control and manipulation has been with us a long time, but over the last half century the methods have been refined with government-sponsored propaganda, commercial advertising, and sophisticated neuroscience and motivational research.
One year I kept two books in my desk on the floor of the House of Representatives: Robert’s Rules of Order and the Little Red Book containing the sayings of Chairman Mao. I found both useful. One sets out the rules for a group to follow when it wants to make democratic decisions in an orderly manner. The other describes how one acts when there are no rules. It seemed to me that while, on the surface, the daily legislative process followed a version of Robert’s Rules, the political process of rounding up the necessary votes followed the Little Red Book.
Politics is what we are with all of our warts. Because it is not just a game that we can walk away from and because it has real effects for real people in a real world, it has the potential of bringing out the worst in all of us.
Perhaps our most human trait is the desire to have our cake and eat it too. Few of us see the contradictions in our own actions. We want services but not taxes. We want our representatives to think for themselves, but we want them to make decisions without delay and without controversy. We want our politicians to stand up to pressure and do what is right; we also want them to listen to us and do what we want.
Politics is not rocket science. It’s a deal. I vote for you because you are going to do what I want. Or, to put it more genteelly, I vote for you because we agree on the issues. It gets more complicated when one remembers that everything is in play, everyone is playing, and multiple transactions are going down all the time. The stakes are high. Power is up for grabs: power to make policy, power to spend money, power to set the rules for society, power to give economic advantage in the market. There are only a few rules for grabbing power. The rules for holding power are made by those who have power.
Understanding the political game requires a sympathetic appreciation of ordinary human reaction to being taken by the devil to the top of the mountain and tempted by the prospect of enjoying all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them. There is a price, however: the devil has to have his due. In politics, one finds there are many devils—and friends—who want their due.
Douglas Kane is the author of "Our Politics: Reflections on Political Life" published in 2019 by Southern Illinois University Press
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