The Ancient Art Of Fooling Voters

[Valin]

WSJ:

To win in Rome: Court key backers, remember voters' names, pander to special interests. A sexual smear against an opponent also helps.

PETER STOTHARD

3/8/12

 

If a big brother is aiming for the highest electoral office in the land, a little brother may often like to be useful. A Robert Kennedy can be a help, a Roger Clinton a headache. Billy Carter brings beer, but Jeb Bush brings Florida. Two thousand years ago, Quintus Tullius Cicero gave his elder brother, Marcus, an unusually frank guide to winning votes—and, on the principle that democracy's brutal essentials have changed little over the centuries, Princeton University Press has now brought out "How to Win an Election," a new Latin-and-English edition of Quintus's guide for the season of Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum.

 

In 64 B.C., the Cicero brothers were both political outsiders. Marcus would eventually become one of the most celebrated Romans of them all. But just as no Catholic had become president before John Kennedy, the Ciceros' campaign had to surmount the obstacle that no one from their family had yet served as consul, one of the two men who, for a year, directed Rome's superpower republic.

 

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Quintus's election book is frank about the gullibility of the masses and firm in its requirement that they be deceived in their own best interests. Rome was a "cesspool of humanity," and its would-be leaders could be excused of behavior to match. An assumed personality need not be maintained for long. But Marcus, his brother advised, must make himself seem to be a man of the people while reassuring the wealthy that the "new man" knows his place. There has been much modern argument about how democratic Rome really was. "How to Win an Election" shows that a campaigner's concerns have remained just as constant as the debate about whether any democracy is ever democratic enough.

 

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For those who are interested History of Ancient Rome lectures

Well worth the time.