The Proof Is in the PR

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The Proof Is in the PR

Not long after the 1968 presidential election, a young writer named Joe McGinniss published a book that changed America's perception of what it takes to elect a president. The Selling of the President told the story of how Richard Nixon's 1968 election campaign packaged and sold the candidate like any other commercial product sold on TV.

The selling of the president? The title alone was shocking, especially as it begged comparison to Theodore H. White's more idealized account of the 1960 presidential race, the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Making of the President.

Fast-forward 35 years, and the idea of selling presidential candidates like toothpaste and toilet paper no longer shocks us. What that says about us, I'd rather not think about.

But what about war? Surely, Americans demand a serious and substantive debate before sending their sons and daughters off to war. We can't be "sold" on war by some crass, manufactured public relations campaign.

Or can we? Before the first Iraq war, the Kuwaiti government hired the public relations firm Hill & Knowlton to sell the idea of war with Iraq to Americans. One of the most effective PR efforts the Kuwaitis purchased with their $10.7 million was the story of "Nayirah," who claimed to be a pediatric nurse who saw Iraqi soldiers steal incubators from her hospital, leaving the 15 babies who had been in them "on the cold floor to die."

The story could never be substantiated, but the proof of good PR is in its effectiveness, not its truthfulness. Soon, President Bush (the first) was taking every opportunity to express his indignation over the 312 premature babies that Iraqi soldiers had scattered on the floor "like firewood" and left to die. America's passions were inflamed. The Kuwaitis got their money's worth.

And then there was Iraq II. Everyone now knows how we got ourselves into the current Iraq quagmire. The second Bush administration spun its homemade PR about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, his connection to al-Qaeda, and his involvement in 9/11. None of it was true, but off to war we went nonetheless.

It's one thing to be misled. It's quite another to know you've been misled and yet do absolutely nothing about it. The so-called Downing Street memo should have been the last straw, the event that inflamed America's passions once again, resulting this time not in war, but in an investigation on the scale of Watergate and Iran/Contra. Not to mention the Clinton/Lewinsky extravaganza.

But no such demand for accountability is likely.

Why? The reasons are no doubt complex, but I believe PR has much to do with it.

There is no explicit PR campaign this time, no Hill & Knowlton pulling the strings behind the scenes. The PR I mean is multi-sourced — some of it subtle, some of it shrill.

I'm talking about the well-intentioned PR we are exposed to from childhood — the incontrovertible belief in the genuine goodness of America, as taught by parents, teachers, and religious leaders, reinforced by mainstream news and entertainment outlets, and celebrated in many of our national holidays. Americans are proud of their country, and justifiably so. All the more reason it is so difficult to admit that America is responsible for an unjust and brutal war in Iraq.

I'm also talking about the PR of intimidation, the daily drumbeat of venom-spewing demagogues like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Ann Coulter. Either you're with them or your with the terrorists. Simple as that. They and other pundits like them have a following of millions, an army whipped almost to a frenzy, ready to attack anyone who dares question America on the subject of Iraq or anything else.

When the long national nightmare of Watergate finally ended, some people were discouraged that such a thing could happen in America. But others were encouraged by Watergate, and rightly so, because it proved that the system works, that America is truly a land of laws and not men. America survived and was stronger because of it.

The war in Iraq is another test of America's character and strength. But this time, it seems, they are no match for the PR.