Selling Politics by Laurence Rees

Author:Laurence Rees
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781448140978
Publisher: Random House

Notes

1. Meissner, Hans Otto: Magda Goebbels – The First Lady of the Third Reich

2. Quoted in Diamond, Edwin, and Stephen Bates: The Spot – The Rise of Political Advertising on Television

Chapter Five

Getting on the News

JOSEF GOEBBELS FACED many problems, but he never had to face the biggest difficulty that today’s democratic propagandists confront: they do not have total control over the media. Television news and current affairs programmes often insist on doing what propagandists consider an unpardonable sin – setting their own agenda. So how can the propagandist try to retain control?

In the ranks of today’s democratic propagandists there is one man who more than any other has succeeded in influencing the national news channels of the world’s biggest television democracy. He is the man who was Ronald Reagan’s closest communications adviser during the early White House years, a man who operated with the deliberately understated title of Deputy Chief Of Staff. He is a man who perfectly encapsulates the modern philosophy of television-based propaganda. He is a man who has always been perfectly honest and open about the fact that he is not an adviser on the ‘issues’; a man from whom all aspiring propagandists can learn. His name is Michael Deaver.

After a decade rich in incident, Deaver now operates out of a smart suite of offices on K Street in Washington’s Georgetown. I first met him over lunch in a bistro on nearby M Street – a lunch during which Deaver, honest about the fact that he is a ‘reformed alcoholic’, was careful to drink only iced water. When I questioned him about an anecdote that I had heard attributed to him he was equally honest in his reply. ‘I may have said it. Because of the drink there’s things I can’t remember saying now.’ But do not be deceived. This is a man who is as sharp about the principles of television propaganda as ever.

Michael Deaver was raised in a lower middle-class home in California. After majoring in political science at college he joined the Republican party. Eventually in 1966, at the age of twenty-eight, through his association with William Clark who became the Governor’s Chief of Staff, he met the man on whom he was to have such an influence – the then Governor of California, Ronald Reagan. Deaver started by organizing Reagan’s press appearances, and soon a special relationship developed which was to profit them both.

Though Deaver started work for Reagan in 1966 it was not until ten years later, in 1976, that both of them were involved in a national campaign when Reagan stood for the Republican nomination for President, losing narrowly to Gerald Ford. By the time that campaign was over Deaver had developed firm opinions about the future of Reagan’s propaganda. ‘I understood that the evening news was where 80 per cent of the American public was getting all of its information about its candidates,’ says Deaver, ‘and it was making up its mind about what they said and how they moved and how they reacted from television – not from newspapers or from debates or political literature.

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