Perception Management.

The public needs to understand it, and start recognizing it for what it is - empty rhetoric that often has no ‘reality’ behind its use. This was an early (and sadly effective) method of Newt Gingrich in his ascension to power. The idea, simply put, was to consistently use derogatory and demonizing terms to tag the opposition or their ideas/positions. Didn’t matter how ridiculous the terms were on their face value - just that they terms were used consistently and with vehemence. The point was that over time the public would come to perceive the imagery being created as reality. Reality didn’t matter. In lesser talented hands, the rhetoric is often laughable and absurd. Most people don’t really buy into the rhetoric of Rush or Coulter in a literal sense - the hyperbole is recognized. However the less clumsy, and those given more of a serious public platform (think Sunday am talk shows), have often been successful in perception management.

The Bush administration has taken this to a whole other level. Long before 911 and the blatant use of ‘fear’ and ‘security’ to sell nearly all of their policies and legislative efforts (think “energy security” among other early attempts at linking the GOP privatize and corporate welfare agenda as “security measures”) - the Bush administration had taken perception management to new heights. Read Joshua Green’s “The Other War Room” (link: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/... ) which describes the use of Madison Avenue style methods of repackaging with words unpopular policies, and market testing to find the words that would “sell” the public on programs and policies - even when the policies (not popular) hadn’t changed. It is a great blue print for what we have seen foisted upon the public for years.

Why is this important for the public to understand? Because this type of public manipulation will reemerge, unless the public becomes savvy and calls to task those that try such cynical manipulations. Nixon wasn’t out of office for 6 years before the GOP came storming back with Reagan. I am pretty sure that it will be exceptionally difficult for a republican to win the next presidential campaign. However, I am concerned that an unaware public will write these awful years off to a couple of bad apples - rather than the detrimental policies of the GOP, and the cynical public manipulation used to sell such policies. This has been disastrous for our country and seriously threatens our political system.

Why talk about this now? Because huge swaths of the public are now cynical - particularly regarding bush and the republicans who try to push his policies. Now there would be more receptivity to understanding how we got to this point - and how to avoid it in the future. The level to which the contemporary GOP has taken the practice of Perception Management - and basing policies and actions, not on reality, not on studious debate of policies, but on their wanton lust for power and $ for their cronies, and then use PM to “sell” the public.

Netroots has grown in its ability to push conversations into the mainstream. This is one that is vitally important to scratch the public psyche, such that the term and what it means becomes part of the publics ‘conventional wisdom’.

Lets brainstorm some examples, lets start the conversation moving - and perhaps, just perhaps, we can grow the current public cynicism beyond disgust with the war - into disgust with the avarice and ongoing deceitfulness of the contemporary republican party.

Example 1) One very obvious example - a very telling public misstatement came in the early aftermath of 911 in a press conference held by then Sec of Homeland Security Tom Ridge. The press conference was to ‘inform the public of how to keep safe in the case of a terrorist attack’. Ridge slips up and states that the methods (duct taping plastic on all windows and doorways) had been tested on... focus groups. (er.. what was that again, Tom?) So what was the point of the press conference? Did the nation’s safety experts really believe that duct tape and plastic would keep the public safe? Or was it part of creating the “fear” reality in the public’s mind, that such an attack was likely? Why were the ‘safety tips’ focus-grouped/market tested? It only makes sense when thinking about the ‘Perception Management’ rules of governing a nation.