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Joseph Drew
Selling Public
Policy
Rhetoric, Heresthetic, Ethics
and Evidence
Selling Public Policy
Joseph Drew
Selling Public Policy

Rhetoric, Heresthetic, Ethics and Evidence
Joseph Drew
The University of Newcastle
Newcastle, NSW, Australia
ISBN 978-981-99-0380-1 ISBN 978-981-99-0381-8 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-0381-8
© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether
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of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and
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The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication
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The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book
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the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any
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claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721,
Singapore
Contents
1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1 Motivation for the Book (and Who It Is For) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2 The Public Policy Product Lifecycle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.3 Outline of the Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.4 What This Book Is . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1.5 What This Book Is Not . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2 Public Policy Success: What Constitutes a Successful Sale? . . . . . . . . 13
2.1 What Is Public Policy Success? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
2.2 Lessons from the Literature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
2.2.1 A View of Policy Success for the Public Policy
Salesperson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
2.3 New Approaches for the Public Policy Salesperson . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
2.3.1 The Distributions of Costs and Benefits Over Time . . . . 20
2.3.2 Kairos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
2.3.3 Framing Contests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
2.4 A Guide to Using Policy Success to Clinch the Sale . . . . . . . . . . . 23
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
3 Rhetoric: Not Just What Is Said, but Also Who Says It and How . . . 29
3.1 What Is Rhetoric? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
3.2.1 Lessons from the Classics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
3.2.2 Lessons from Public Policy Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
3.3.1 Words with Unexamined Power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
3.3.2 Empirical Rhetoric . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
3.3.3 New Mediums for Tailored Messaging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
3.4 A Guide for Using Rhetoric to Clinch the Sale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
v
vi Contents
Appendix 1—The Rhetorical Tropes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

Appendix 2—The Practical Syllogism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
4 Heresthetic: The Craft of Political Manipulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
4.1 What Is Heresthetic? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
4.3.1 Cost . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
4.3.2 Salami Tactics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
4.3.3 Media Agenda Setting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
4.4 A Guide to Using Heresthetic to Clinch the Sale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
Appendix—Heresthetic Tools and Choice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
5 Blame Avoidance and Weapons of Mass-Expertisation . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
5.1 What Is Blame? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
5.3.1 The Rise of the Independent Expert . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
5.3.2 Weapons of Mass-Expertisation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
5.3.3 Blame Games as an Unintended Good . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
5.4 A Guide to Using Blame to Clinch the Sale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
Appendix—Blaming ‘Chance’ or ‘Nature’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
6 Evidence: Extraordinary Claims Require Careful
Presentation of Evidence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
6.1 What Is Evidence? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
6.2.1 Simple Statistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
6.2.2 Multiple Regression Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
6.2.3 Ratio Analysis (and Performance Monitoring) . . . . . . . . 86
6.2.4 Business Case Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
6.2.5 Surveys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
6.2.6 In-Depth Interviews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
6.3.1 Difficulty Relating Complex Empirical Techniques . . . . 91
6.3.2 Correspondence and Data May Become Public . . . . . . . . 92
6.3.3 Empirical Claims May Be Tested . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
6.4 A Guide to Using Evidence to Clinch the Sale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
Appendix—Academics and Evidence in the Media and Courtroom . . . . 96
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
Contents vii
7 Ethics: Right and Wrong Can Be Contestable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101

7.1 What Are Ethics? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
7.2.1 Natural Law and Virtue Ethic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
7.2.2 Utilitarianism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
7.2.3 Egoism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
7.3 ‘New’ Approaches for the Public Policy Salesperson . . . . . . . . . . 109
7.3.1 Principle of Double Effect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
7.3.2 Creating Human Value . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
7.4 A Guide to Using Ethics to Clinch the Sale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
Appendix 1—The Role of Government and Rulers in the Natural
Law Tradition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
8 Case Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
9 Selling Public Policy in Practice: Fiscal and Monetary
Stimulus Success? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
9.1 The Sales Environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
9.1.1 Policy Success? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
9.1.2 Rhetoric . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
9.1.3 Evidence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
9.1.4 Blame Games . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
9.1.5 Ethics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
9.1.6 Heresthetic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
9.2 How COVID-19 Fiscal and Monetary Stimulus Might
Have Been Sold Better . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
10 Selling Public Policy in Practice: Failure in Ukraine? . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
10.1 The Sales Environment: Ukraine and the Donbas . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
10.1.1 Policy Success . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
10.1.2 Rhetoric . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
10.1.3 Heresthetic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
10.1.4 Blame Games . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
10.1.5 Evidence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
10.1.6 Ethics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
10.2 How the Special Military Operation Might Have Been Sold Better 151
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
11 One More Lesson and the Future of Selling Public Policy . . . . . . . . . 155
11.1 The Power of Planning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
11.2 The Future of Selling Public Policy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
11.3 A Final Exhortation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
Chapter 1
Introduction
Abstract We have all witnessed good public policy fail because of a bad sales pitch,
and bad public policy succeed against all expectations. This suggests that there may
indeed be an art to selling public policy. Yet the art is largely compartmentalized (in
the domains of political science, economics, sociology, ethics and the classics) and
is thus difficult for the student of public policy to access—let alone synthesize—into
a single toolkit to guide decision-making in the sales process. It is to this gap in the
literature that we turn our attention—a gap which when filled should result in more
public policy sales being clinched. Clearly a body of work of this type will have
benefits for politicians, their staffers and public servants tasked with selling public
policy. However, the benefits extend well beyond the self-interest of individuals;
because better sales pitches will result in more good policy being sold and more
stable public policy (revolving door public policy unnerves markets and makes it
very difficult for one to undertake long term planning so there could be a case that
successfully selling bad public policy is better than much of the status quo). I outline
a case for change and discuss some of the benefits which will accrue to various actors
as proficiency develops in Selling Public Policy.
Keywords Selling public policy · Policy success · Public policy
1.1 Motivation for the Book (and Who It Is For)
I am going to start this book with a confession. As will probably become clear I
commenced this project back in 2017. At the time I was working with two colleagues
who wished to expand their scholarly experience to the broader public policy domain.
However, they both subsequently left the university sector and I struggled to motivate
myself to finish the book. As subsequent events have testified (such as the abysmal
policy selling in relation to the COVID-19 response) it was a mistake to not finish this
project. I have come to repent of my earlier delay and have thus returned to re-write
some sections of the seven completed chapters as well as construct and finish the
very important Part II (whereby students get to see how to apply the theory that they
have learned to real world problems).
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 1
J. Drew, Selling Public Policy,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-0381-8_1
2 1 Introduction
Accordingly, some of the material that follows—especially the examples I employ

will be a little dated. However, their relevance is unquestionable as is the importance
of teaching others to sell public policy.
Many readers will recall fondly the 1980’s British sitcom Yes Minister (and its
sequel Yes Prime Minister) in which Jim Hacker, MP for Birmingham-East, attempts
to formulate and enact good public policy, despite the obstacles put in front of him by
his Permanent Secretary Sir Humphrey Appleby and various political “colleagues”.
(Those of you who do not recall the series fondly may not have be born when it was
first televised (my young students have informed me that similar series are The Thick
of It and Utopia)). In one memorable and witty exchange Sir Humphrey proudly
asserts:
Almost all government policy is wrong but frightfully well carried out
If only this were true (the frightfully well carried out bit at least)! In recent decades
there has been a plethora of bad sales pitches for putatively good public policy (think
of the various Middle East peace deals, the pitch for a carbon trading scheme in
Australia and elsewhere, the ‘remain’ pitch in the Brexit debate, the unsuccessful
sales spiel for the Trans-Pacific Trade Partnership, or the revolving door of COVID-
19 rules). There have also been a number of notable examples of (arguably) bad
public policy meeting with the consent of key stakeholders against all expectations
(the Iran nuclear deal immediately comes to mind). My mission is to identify the
ingredients of a successful public policy sale—irrespective of the merits of a public
policy position—and put together a toolkit for students of public policy which I
define quite broadly (see below).
When I first pitched this idea to my publisher I was met with one review that
asserted that the theme and title of the book was “too cynical”. In reply I might, once
again quote Sir Humphrey:
‘A cynic is what an idealist calls a realist’
Or simply shrug my shoulders and say “so what? Whether it is cynical or not is
largely beside the point—what matters is whether it is needed”. Those of us who
live in revolving-door public policy environs are well aware of a desperate need
for our political elites to stop and think about the art of selling public policy (just
stopping and thinking would be a good starting point). Moreover, the fact that you
are reading this book right now, probably suggests that you also perceive a need for
things to be done better than they currently are.
So who does need a toolkit on selling public policy?
The obvious answer is that our politicians need to become more proficient at selling
public policy so that they can keep their jobs. So do their political staffers (for much
the same reason). It also wouldn’t be a stretch to say that public servants also need
to understand how to successfully sell public policy: firstly because there may be
times when they are called upon, at least morally, to do so for the sake of the nation;
secondly, because they will often be manipulated by those charged with selling public
policy (and forewarned is forearmed). In addition, lobbyists have a keen interest in
1.2 The Public Policy Product Lifecycle 3
selling public policy, sometimes directly to the public, but mostly indirectly through
politicians. Yet clinching the deal in public policy sales is also important for the
wider economy and the lives of persons. Many developed economies have been in
a state of policy paralysis for the last few decades (for instance Australia is still to
come up with a stable renewables energy policy) and this inaction tends to frighten
economic markets. Worse still, we are increasingly seeing the rolling out of important
public policy being followed by backflips by the same administration on the same
public policy at a later date (for example, ‘Pastygate’1 in the United Kingdom—
which might seem trivial, but not if one is a baker or a Cornish pastry devote). When
there is uncertainty in public policy individuals find it difficult to plan their lives.
So I contend that better public policy selling may result in more stable public policy
which is a good thing for the economy and a good thing for citizens. Ideally good
public policy will be sold well and we will all feel better for it—but even poor public
policy sold well might be more desirable for the increased certainty that it brings
to markets and people’s lives. In this sense then, everyone has a vested interest in
improving the current state of play and everyone has good reason to become a student
of public policy.
1.2 The Public Policy Product Lifecycle
The mission of a public policy salesperson is to sell a “suitable” product to their target
market and keep the product sold for the duration of the implied returns2 period. As
my readers will discover, this definition has allowed me plenty of wriggle room, which
I perceive to be critical in view of the relativism that pervades the sales lifecycle. For
instance, I refer to a “suitable” product to emphasize that the product need not be fit-
for-purpose according to the end-users’ needs, but rather simply deemed suitable by
the policy salesperson or their masters. Similarly, I note that the “suitable” product is
sold to a target market—not the public at large. Political pragmatism implies that the
salesperson need not sell the product to everyone, only to the stakeholders that are
critical to the policy being implemented, or have a critical voice in political decision-
making (including whether or not to vote for the salesperson or the salesperson’s
employer). For instance, President Donald Trump probably didn’t care that only 5%
of Democrats approved of him after his first year in Office because they didn’t vote
for him anyhow—instead he would likely have been more interested in the fact that
he was “more popular with his own party than Barack Obama or Bill Clinton were at
the same point” (Meers 2018). Indeed, it is likely to be the case that he was not trying
to sell public policy to either the Democrats or the Australian (largely left-wing)
1 Pastygate was the proposal to levy value added tax on pastries such as sausage rolls and Cornish
pasties which were allowed to cool on the shelf (in March 2012)—the Chancellor of the Exchequer
later reversed his position.
2 Here I refer to the retail concept of a returns period—this is the maximum time period for which
a retail store will accept a return of a product for refund due to either change of mind, failure of
product to be fit-for-purpose, or a warranty claim.
4 1 Introduction
media, so he was unlikely to judge his success by the approval that he received from
these sources. It may not be pleasant to think of democracy as a winner takes all
proposition—it gives a warm fuzzy feeling (just like an opioid) to believe that our
leaders rule on behalf of all of their citizens—but it is undoubtedly the case that to
the winner go the spoils and that the losers “must suffer outcomes in which one is
economically or emotionally deeply deprived…truly it is politics, not economics,
that is the dismal science” (Riker 1982, p. 206). Moreover, our working definition
notes the importance of keeping the public policy sold—but only for the period that
the salesperson or their masters needed it to be sold. Sometimes the after-sales returns
period is defined by political or institutional constraints (for instance, the President
of the United States can only hold Office for eight years in total (two terms) under the
twenty-second constitutional amendment), whilst at other times the period is defined
by an implied warranty that the salesperson may have been obliged to extend (or
foolish enough to volunteer) as part of the sales pitch.
The public policy sale occurs over three distinct phases (see Fig. 1.1). First, a sales
campaign is planned, the product need is identified and a product is manufactured,
the marketing campaign is prepared in cognizance of the target market and a price
is determined (which as we will see sometimes comes at the expense of those who
have little political power, and at other times comes at the cost of a convenient
scapegoat). Second, the schmooze is executed and the target market is invited to
buy the product. The final phase is after-sales care—this is where the salesperson
may make adjustments to the product in an attempt to avoid a return of the product
over the implied returns period. Each phase requires different skills and different
tools and can result in different judgements regarding the success of the salesperson.
Moreover, I argue that it is only at the very end of the lifecycle that the judgements
of key stakeholders can be combined to render an overall assessment of the policy’s
success and that even then the judgement would seem to be very much in the eye of
the beholder (notwithstanding the fact that an entire field of scholarship, the media,
and many observers spend considerable time pronouncing their judgements as if an
objective measure could indeed exist).
I also argue that it is important to remain mindful of the fact that there are different
types of public policies that are manufactured by salespersons for very different
purposes. For instance, some products have obsolescence designed into them. Exam-
ples of this kind of policy are the grand schemes that are announced by an incumbent
government who knows that they will certainly lose an impending election. I don’t
believe for a minute that these sort of products are meant to work or garner political
support for the salesperson—they are designed to burden the next government with
something that will sap its revenue and time or ultimately have it identified with
something that will inevitably end in disaster (did someone say National Disability
Insurance Scheme?). Other products are designed to be viewed fondly as antiques
in due course—to be held up as a seminal moment in the history of a nation, even
1.2 The Public Policy Product Lifecycle 5
Fig. 1.1 The public policy

sales cycle
Product
Development
After Sales
Schmooze
Care
though they might meet with considerable opposition in the interim (perhaps legal-
izing same sex marriage). Yet another type of public policy product is meant to
mature with age—like a fine goat cheese—an example of this might be the Kyoto
Climate Protocol which was always meant to be renegotiated and reinvigorated over
time. Then there are what we might call products of necessity—these aren’t desirable
products and aren’t meant to excite the target market—they are products that are born
because there is a need that absolutely must be met, even if meeting the need may
well end badly (an example of this kind of product is the invasion of Afghanistan
following 9/11—there had to be some sort of response to an attack on the American
homeland even though most players probably realized that it would ultimately end
in a quagmire like the Soviet invasion in the 1970s).
However, this book is not about identifying types of products and establishing
objective determinants of success—I will leave that for the public policy analysts to
do. It is, instead, all about ensuring that public policy salespersons have the tools that
they need to succeed. Accordingly, what I have just discussed will not be a feature of
ensuing chapters, but will be constantly in the background of my various explications,
and appealed to as necessary. However, despite the fact that the aforementioned is
not a focus for this book, it is important for prospective public policy salespersons to
be cognizant of the public policy product lifecycle and the different types of product
out there (hence my brief discussion).
6 1 Introduction
1.3 Outline of the Book
This book is presented in two parts, each of which has an important pedagogical
purpose. Part I is what I refer to as ‘Lessons from The Ivory Tower’–it presents the
key ideas and some of the major theorists3 for what I believe to be the important
ingredients to public policy success. However, it is not a textbook and it is (I hope)
far from a dry academic discourse (there are plenty of those in the scholarly literature
if that is the reader’s preference—I know because I have been guilty of writing some
of them). Instead, it is an introduction to the quite disparate literature—all in one
place and all eminently accessible—sprinkled with some real-life exemplars to add
meaning and to also demonstrate why the lessons are so important.
Since I started in academia I have prided myself on always seeking to give old
ideas a big new twist and I have tried to do so at every opportunity throughout Part I.
For me writing this book, has been an engaging (and very long) adventure, and I hope
my readers will agree that it has resulted in a provocative piece. One of my heroes
(Hirschman) was declared the great dissenter—I hope (or more likely I dream) that I
might one day go down as a great provoker! If this book makes you angry, or curious,
or perplexed, or confused—in short if it moves you out of your current comfortable
intellectual abode – then I will have achieved my goal (this includes any less-than
complimentary book reviews written by academics who enjoy criticizing the work
of others—a common past-time for some it seems).
In Chapter 2 I take on the imposing task of defining what public policy success
looks like. This is no simple matter because success is not only largely in the eyes
of the beholder, but it also depends a lot on when the eyes of the beholder are open.
However, without a firm idea of what success will look like to different stakeholders
at different times it would seem quite impossible for any prospective public policy
salesperson to take deliberate actions to engineer a successful sale. I argue for the
saliency of “who” one asks and “when” one asks the question, with respect to judge-
ments on the success of a public policy sell (I leave the “why” largely to those who
are intrigued with the process of the human mind rather than the outcome of the
human person). Moreover, I note how the importance of “facts” and “impressions”
change throughout the public policy lifecycle and the implications of same for the
salesperson who must therefore give priority to certain tools at certain times. On
the basis of this understanding, I propose a model of policy success that illustrates
both the lens through which judgements are made at the distinct phases of the sale,
and also how facts and impressions influence judgements throughout the lifecycle. I
finish the chapter with a brief enumeration of the important lessons for understanding
public policy success for those wishing to get a fit-for-purpose product sold to their
target market and keep it sold for the duration of its implied returns period.
3 Inevitably in a book of this length—which has the sole purpose of introducing public policy
students to the major strands of literature—I will miss someone who considers themselves to be
a major theorist in their respective field. Should this person still live (most of the giants in the
literature have sadly passed away), then I unreservedly offer my apologies.
1.3 Outline of the Book 7
Chapter 3 looks at the rhetoric of a public policy sell. I start with the father
of rhetoric—Aristotle—and his definition of rhetoric as finding all the available
means of persuasion which might allow the rhetor to come as near to success as the
circumstances allow. This is followed by contributions from more recent scholars,
notably Albert Hirschman, the late great dissenter, and “one of the world’s most
original social scientists” (Adelman 2013, p. vii) who claimed to have developed a
taxonomy of public policy rhetoric—a claim that public policy architects and their
opponents are “impelled” to argue according to just six “theses” (or lines of argument)
when disputing public policy (Adelman 2013, p. 308). I then augment the work
of Hirschman to also cover empirical rhetoric, before briefly considering how new
communication mediums allow rhetors to tailor messages to identifiable stakeholders
with great precision and thus maximize the chance of success. Thereafter I present
my rhetoric heuristic chart followed by a brief discussion of the main lessons for
those wishing to clinch the sale by employing rhetoric.
Heresthetic—the craft of political strategy—is the lesson which I offer to my
readers in Chapter 4 of the book. A term coined by the late William Riker to describe
what he referred to as the art of political manipulation, heresthetic has had a chequered
history in the scholarly literature, not least because of the failure to “prove” the
concept empirically. Yet heresthetic—which is comprised of agenda control, voting
games and dimension control—is used on a regular basis by politicians in the real
world. I believe that spelling out political strategy can help to make the public policy
proponent more conscious of the options available to them to structure the world so
that they can win. I also extend Riker’s literature to make plain the costs (opportunity,
contingency and legacy) associated with heresthetic ploys and the dynamics of heres-
thetic reprisals. I complete my account of this powerful yet largely neglected concept
with an enumeration of the main lessons for budding public policy salespersons.
The topic of the fifth chapter is blame games—a concept as old as humankind
(embodied in the practice of laying one’s iniquities on the head of a scape-goat and
banishing it to the wilderness) and a frequently employed tool of the political class (in
particular). I explain the opportunity costs associated with the classic lightning rod
strategy and use the concept of negativity bias to show why agents willingly forego
possible credit and accolade in order to avoid blame. I then extend the literature
to look at the emergence of two relatively recent trends in blame avoidance: the
“expert brand” and deployment of weapons of mass-expertization. Both of these
innovations offer great promise to the blame avoider (and public policy salesperson)
but they are also prone to backfire if not carried out carefully. Consistent with all
the other chapters, I present a heuristic decision chart for prospective public policy
salespersons before setting out the main ways in which blame games can help to
clinch the sale.
In legal parlance “evidence” is given to mean “any object or information …which
tends to prove or disprove the existence of a fact in issue” (Butterworths 2004,
p. 156). Yet it is clear—or at least it will be for those who read this chapter—
that when it comes to evidence the main aim is often to create an impression of
proof rather than to rigorously establish fact. I provide my readers with an overview
of the concepts (rather than detail) of how each major “proof” works. This will
8 1 Introduction
allow for an appreciation of what questions users of such proof should ask (and
what questions those selling public policy on the basis of evidence should try to
avoid). In addition, I discuss how information costs can be used to the public policy
salesperson’s advantage. I present this information in a convenient heuristic chart and
finish our account with my observations on how evidence might be best employed
to clinch the sale.
Part I concludes with an examination of the “moral dimension” which, as the
Right Honorable Jim Hacker in Yes Minister found, can be both a compass to those
charged with formulating public policy, but also a devastating weapon to use for one’s
own advantage. I commence the chapter with a brief overview of ethical paradigms
in order that they might demonstrate to the reader that “fair” is a very contestable
concept (and moreover a concept that has changed markedly over time). In particular,
I spend some time on the oft-neglected field of the natural law, which seems to me
to be more important than ever in a world marred by both abandonment of reason
and extreme relativism. I then show how ethics—contrary to common belief—is the
bedrock of economics and how, moreover, a strict understanding and application of
what is referred to as the Pareto Optimum state would mean that no public policy
would ever be executed. This is followed by a brief account of how the economist’s
“get out of jail card” works (and I also note how unsatisfactory the remedy is),
before presenting a much more defensible position derived from (of all places) the
theological treatise of St Thomas Aquinas. I chart the decisions which must be made
on the “moral dimension” by public policymakers in my heuristic which follows the
aforementioned explications. The chapter concludes with the main lessons on how
the moral dimension can be used to sell public policy.
Thus end the lessons from the Ivory Tower.
Part II illustrates lessons from the school of hard knocks which our public policy
makers have kindly given to us over recent years. Gone are the neat solutions to
hypothetical cases that one might find in the Ivory Towers. Instead, I throw my
readers into the rough and tumble of no-holds-barred disputatious public policy. Part
II has two main objectives: first, I wish to show how the tools discussed in Part I can
be synthesized to clinch real-life public policy sales; second, I wish to underscore
that no single tool will ever be sufficient to successfully execute the “sale of the
century” (another television show well-known to us senior citizens).
In the first case study I examine the practical challenges of selling extremely
accommodative fiscal and monetary policy. One wouldn’t think that giving away
free money would be a difficult sell, but the experience of the Australian government
begs to differ. In this chapter (9) I examine the sales success of economic inter-
vention policies in response to COVID-19, with particular emphasis on avoiding
buyer’s remorse. The chapter draws on Part I of Selling Public Policy with a view
to showing how students of this work might have been expected to have optimised
outcomes with respect to selling fiscal and monetary response in the years imme-
diately following the pandemic outbreak. Notably, our application of theory to real
world problems uncovers some new lessons regarding the attributes of suitable scape-
goats and also underlines the critical importance of properly acknowledging legacy
costs with respect to election cycles.
1.4 What This Book Is 9
The second case study focuses on Putin’s attempts to sell his ‘special military
operation’ to the world. In this chapter (10) I focus on what might be learned from
examining policy failure. This second case study also draws heavily on Part I of
Selling Public Policy with a view to showing how students of this work might have
made different choices leading up to, and in the aftermath, of hostilities. Once again
new lessons are uncovered—such as the futility of trying to avoid unavoidable words
with unexamined power—and old lessons (such as the importance of salami tactic
heresthetics) are underlined. Notably, the context of the chapter is not meant to be an
endorsement of the war or anyone’s position regarding war—instead war is portrayed
as a sad consequence of human failings and probably the trickiest matter for public
policy salespersons to navigate.
I believe that these case studies of some of the most imposing public policy
challenges of modern history provide strong demonstration of the importance of
competently selling public policy. I trust that my readers will agree.
1.4 What This Book Is
First, and foremost, I have endeavored to provide an entertaining read. When it

comes to learning, the old maxim “no gain, no pain” may often be true, but I do
not feel that it must be true. To achieve this objective I have tried hard to resist
the academic urge to impress with big words and jargon (although I concede that
I have not always been successful), and have attempted to defy years of (probably
well-meaning) academic training that tends to suppress disclosure of opinions and
original thought. Readers will get to know what I think on a range of matters—
and no-doubt some will disagree vehemently with me—and will also be exposed to
original thinking (rather than thinking constrained to academic precedent). I hope
that by largely setting aside the straight-jacket of stodgy academic writing, I can enter
into a meaningful dialogue with you, the reader. Moreover, it is my hope that you find
this dialogue engaging, just as I have found the more relaxed dialogue of some of
my scholarly heroes (Maimonides, Riker, Hirschman, Ronald Coase—all of whom
were never shy to tell the reader exactly what they thought about a matter), both
entertaining and refreshing. I often lament that academia has become bogged down
in recent decades—by the constraints of precedent, also a kind of laziness owing to
cheap computing power which promotes empirical work over rational thought, and
a ‘group-think’ of sorts—and I guess the kind of conversation I have tried to engage
in here, is my small effort to reverse what I perceive to be a worrying trend.
This book is also a toolkit for public policy salespersons. The whole motivation
for this project is to improve the state of public policy selling—so it was important
for me to link the theory to practice at every opportunity. Otherwise stated, this book
is geared towards applied learning. One of the important elements of the book are
the heuristic decision charts, which lead the public policy salesperson through the
steps and decisions which must be made to successfully sell public policy. The other
important way that I have sought to ensure that the lessons might be applied is through
10 1 Introduction
presenting examples and case studies so that the public policy student might learn
through vicarious experience (the rationale Riker 1986 also used for his case-study
like approach). If this book is successful in just two things—making public policy
salespersons recognize their craft, and encouraging salespersons to stop and plan
their sales campaign—then I will leave the project a happy man.
This book is also an overview of the major theorists and ideas relevant to selling
public policy—all located in a single volume and in an accessible manner. For too
long, the art of selling public policy has been compartmentalized in the various
disciplines that make up academia (specifically in political science, economics, ethics
and the arts). I want to show how these different academic approaches can be distilled
for their primary essence (Part I) then synthesized (Part II) to yield a complex yet
desirable bouquet which we all intuitively recognize as public policy success. By
introducing the reader to major ideas and theorists I hope to start you on what might
well be a life-long journey into the world of public policy sales success.
However, more than anything else, this book is a plea and hope for better public
policy sells.
1.5 What This Book Is Not
This is not a textbook—nor is it meant to convey in-depth knowledge of every

discipline relevant to selling public policy. Each chapter has a reference list to guide
further reading should the consumer of this book wish to pursue a particular topic
in further detail. For instance, in the evidence chapter, I explain what statistical
significance is and outline some of the problems with multiple regression, but I don’t
attempt to teach the math and assumptions which underlie econometrics. If the reader
has a desire to torture themselves, then there are plenty of good econometrics books
out there (as well as university courses in the sub-discipline).
Nor is this book merely a series of lessons from the Ivory Tower: of course, I have
to cover the scholarly literature but anyone expecting that the book will have copious
references to academic papers will be sorely disappointed.
I often joke that my wife introduces me to people at parties as “my husband who
gets paid to write papers which get published in other countries, about things that
no-one is interested in and on matters which no-one does anything about”. I hope,
through the pages of this book, to finally prove her wrong!
References
Adelman J (2013) The essential Hirschman. Princeton University Press, Princeton

Beigun S (2018) In U.S. Department of State. Remarks on the appointment of special representative
for North Korea Stephen Beigun. Available at: https://www.state.gov/secretary/remarks/2018/08/
285370.htm. Accessed 14 October 2018
References 11
Butt P (2004) Butterworth’s concise Australian legal dictionary. Butterworths, Chatswood

Haseltine W (2021) What can we learn from Australia’s COVID-19 response? Forbes, 24
March 2021. Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/williamhaseltine/2021/03/24/what-can-
we-learn-from-australias-covid-19-response/?sh=74abe4bc3a01
Lynn J, Jay A (1988) The complete “Yes Prime Minister”. BBC Books, St Ives
Meers Z (2018) A year of turmoil, but Trump’s voters are with him. Australian Broadcasting
Corporation. Available at: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-01-19/donald-trump-remains-pop
ular-with-republicans-after-a-year/9333378. Accessed 14 September 2018
Quinn B (2012) A brief history of the pasty tax. The Guardian, 29 May 2012. Available at: https://
www.theguardian.com/politics/2012/may/29/pasty-tax-brief-history. Accessed 14 September
2018
Riker WH (1982) Liberalism against populism: a confrontation between the theory of democracy
and the theory of social choice. Waveland Press, Illinois
Riker W (1986) The art of political manipulation. Yale University Press, New Haven
Trump D (2017) Associate Press. Trump threatens North Korea with “fire and fury”.
Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/video/us/politics/100000005346140/north-korea-trump-
threat-fire-fury.html. Accessed 14 October 2018
Chapter 2
Public Policy Success: What Constitutes
a Successful Sale?
Abstract The mission of the public policy salesperson is to sell a ‘suitable’ product
to their target market and keep the product sold for the duration of the implied returns
period. I argue that successful achievement of this mission requires the salesperson
to be attuned to how facts and impressions are received at various stages of the
sales life-cycle by different stakeholders who are subject to dynamic cultural and
political contexts. To build a model that can be operationalised by the public policy
salesperson I first review the most important contributions to the scholarly literature
on defining policy success and failure. I then explicate on how cognisance of the
rhetorical concept of kairos, shifting distributions of costs and benefits over time, as
well as framing contests (conducted principally through the media and commissions
of inquiry) can help the public policy salespersons to ensure that a successful sale
stays sold over the implied returns period. I conclude by presenting a model for public
policy success that draws attention to how the public policy sales pitch is processed
by stakeholders to arrive at judgements regarding the success of a given policy at
critical phases in the public policy journey.
Keywords Policy success · Kairos · Framing contests · Selling public policy
2.1 What Is Public Policy Success?
This book is orientated towards public policy success for a particular actor—the
public policy salesperson. As detailed in Chapter 1, the mission of the public policy
salesperson is to sell a ‘suitable’ product to their target market and keep the product
sold for the duration of the implied returns period. A suitable product need not
necessarily be a ‘good’ product (assuming there was indeed an objective measure
by which a product could be evaluated) and I have previously outlined how products
may be designed with different objectives in mind—for instance, some products are
designed for obsolescence, other products are designed for the purpose of eventually
being regarded as antiques, some products are meant to mature with age (like a fine
goats cheese), whilst a different class of product is never intended to be desirable
(and maybe not even be popular for the long-term) but rather is simply born from
necessity. I also noted how political pragmatism differs from warm fuzzy notions
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-0381-8_2
14 2 Public Policy Success: What Constitutes a Successful Sale?
of democratic leadership implying that a product need only be sold to a politically

defined target market. In addition, I noted that the task of the public policy salesperson
extends beyond the sales campaign and schmooze, and includes an after-sales care
period that extends for the length of the implied returns period1 (which is constituted
by external parameters—such as the political term—and also any warranty period
promised by the salesperson).
My efforts are entirely and unashamedly focussed on providing public policy
salespersons with the tools they need to experience success. However, the schol-
arly community, by contrast, has been largely preoccupied with the study of public
policy failures—moreover scholars have generally sought to argue that objective
criteria for failure can be determined. For instance, two of the leading scholars of
public policy failure—Mark Boven and Paul t’Hart (2016, p. 655)—recently made
a claim that ‘few observers w[ould] hesitate to attach the label ‘policy failure’ to
spectacular, unambiguous and highly consequential mishaps…such as the United
States-led invasion of Iraq’. I believe that a claim of this type—based on hindsight
and located in a particular context of time, culture and profession—may not receive
quite the level of assent that these authors might believe that it deserves (and hence
provides support for my view that judgements on public policy success and failure
are subject to a good deal of relativism). Indeed, I would argue that whether or not
persons hesitate or even refuse to attach the label ‘policy failure’ to the invasion of
Iraq is largely contingent on who we ask and when we asked them.
For instance, we might well expect hesitation and perhaps outright hostility
towards Boven and t’Hart’s claim if the ‘who’ was a member of the American
armed services, or the parent of a fallen serviceperson, who often take great pride in
their accomplishment and sacrifice. Moreover, a ‘who’ from the Iraqi Shia Muslim
community—who had been brutally persecuted under President Hussein—might
also disagree with the aforementioned scholars. By way of contrast, if we were to
ask a ‘who’ from the Ba’ath Party or the Sunni minority we might be more likely
to elicit sentiments consistent with the august scholars. Even among the American
public, perceptions of whether the invasion of Iraq was a success, is split along polit-
ical lines—in 2018, 50% of Conservatives, but just 18% of Liberals, viewed the U.S.
involvement in Iraq to be a success (Oliphant 2018).
However, it also seems that success or failure judgements are strongly dependent
on when we ask our question. For instance, President Bush proudly declared on
May 1, 2003 that ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom was carried out with a combination of
precision and speed and boldness the enemy did not expect and the world had not seen
before’ under a banner reading ‘mission accomplished’ (CNN 2003a), but in 2008
admitted that the ‘Iraq war [is] my biggest regret’. Similarly, intelligence officials
who probably applauded the successful invasion of Iraq as a means through which to
hunt for and neutralise Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in
mid-2003, probably saw the invasion in a completely different light by the time of the
1 Here I refer to the retail concept of a returns period—this is the maximum time period for which
a retail store will accept a return of a product for refund due to either change of mind, failure of
product to be fit-for-purpose, or a warranty claim.
2.1 What Is Public Policy Success? 15
Chilcot inquiry (cited in BBC 2016) where it was determined that ‘policy on the Iraq
invasion was made on the basis of flawed intelligence assessments’. Indeed, public
opinion in America has changed significantly over time—when asked whether ‘the
U.S. mostly succeeded in achieving its goals in Iraq’ 56% of Pew Center respondents
agreed in 2011, but this figure had reduced to just 39% by 2018 (Oliphant 2018).
Thus it should be clear that the judgement of scholars in 2016 writing from the
safe confines of their campuses with the benefit of 20–20 hindsight, is likely to be
quite different from those who experienced persecution under President Hussein,
or served in the armed forces, or lost loved ones in the invasion, or supported the
invasion according to flawed intelligence, or hold hawkish political views. Moreover,
the judgements of these persons may well have changed over time, as has the story
of what exactly prompted the invasion, how the invasion and post-war recovery
transpired, and what political and human costs were incurred. Actual facts have
changed over time as have our impressions of the facts—and the changes and relative
importance of these dimensions will have been different for particular stakeholders.
Just as the totality of memories and emotions associated with a failed relationship
fade over time, to be replaced with memories and emotions of selected events (which
invariably paint a more rosy picture of the relationship than was held at the time of
the break-up), so too do our recollections and pathos associated with public policy
events (indeed, how the event was experienced—whether we were the ‘dumper’ or
the ‘dumpee’—determines in part the emotions and memories that we experience in
the first instance). This is the human condition—to avoid being crushed by emotion
and memories, we must prune some from our consciousness, and reconstitute the
remnants over time into a story that often deviates from the recollections of others
witnessing exactly the same events or even ourselves at different moments of time.
There is no reason to believe that this experience will be materially different when
it relates to significant public policy events.
Some might argue that judgements of ‘success’ or ‘failure’ represent a false
dichotomy—that they are inappropriate for weighty and complex public policy events
and that there are many grey areas in between the two dichotomous points (see, for
instance, McConnell 2010). In response, I would point out that it may not be wise,
or even just, to make dichotomous judgements, but note that people do in fact do
so most of the time. We judge whether something was an accident or not, whether
an act was evil or not, whether a person will be hired or not, whether an accused
is guilty of murder or not, whether multiple sacrifices on earth will be rewarded
in an afterlife or not.….many complex and weighty questions in life are met with
dichotomous judgements. Moreover, for the public policy salesperson charged with
planning a sales campaign and schmooze, ringing up the sale, and after-sales care
things really might be that simple—the sale is made, or it is not made; it stays sold
over the implied returns period or it is returned for a refund.
I believe that policy salespersons will experience more success in selling public
policy if they know what a successful sale looks like and understand the key elements
of a sale that need to be considered at discrete temporal periods in the sales journey.
In particular, understanding how facts and impressions weigh on certain stakeholders
at different times will help the public policy salesperson sell the product and keep
it sold. I commence with a brief overview of the literature regarding public policy
failure and success. Thereafter I consider some of the lessons from other fields of
scholarship that might be applied to defining and specifying the ingredients for public
policy success from the perspective of the public policy salesperson. I conclude by
presenting a model for public policy success that draws attention to how the public
policy sales pitch is processed by stakeholders to arrive at judgements regarding the
success of a given policy at critical phases in the public policy journey.
2.2 Lessons from the Literature
An important place to start one’s review of the literature is Boven and t’Hart’s (1996)
seminal work Understanding Policy Fiascos. In this short, engaging and accessible
book, the scholars raised a number of themes and ideas which they later refined in
subsequent journal papers. For instance, the idea that failure can be measured along
two orthogonal dimensions—program (actual outcomes—facts) or politics (impres-
sions, images and symbols) is briefly introduced. Similarly, the idea that judgements
of failure are contingent on stakeholders (different people judge things differently),
dynamics of time (that judgements change over time), cultural and political context
(that judgements are affected by cultural and political bias) are all covered. However,
despite spending some time on these important ideas the authors conclude that they
are ‘reluctant to adopt a fully relativist position’ (Bovens and t’Hart 1996, p. 147),
maintaining that in ‘some cases the physical and symbolic manifestations are so
powerful as to allow for little if any debate about the question “is this really a
fiasco?” (emphasis added). As noted in the introduction, I beg to differ because I
believe that actual human experience tends to be extremely relativistic—there will
always be disagreement regarding whether a public policy was a success depending
on who one asks and when one asks.2 The judgements of individual persons may
not be rational, may result from misconceptions or even errors in fact, but they will
inevitably differ. The authors also took pains to defend their focus on fiascos rather
than successes—claiming that ‘at least as much can be learned from studying failure
than from studying success’ (p. 156), and that they incidentally ‘in fact developed
a framework for studying policy success’ (p. 157). As noted earlier, given that the
current work is orientated towards the successful sale of public policy it is probably
unsurprising to the reader that I disagree with these scholar’s rear-guard defence.
Allan McConnell (2010), also disagreed with Bovens and t’Hart in a number of
fundamental matters with respect to the study of public policy success and failure.
First, and most importantly, he argued persuasively for a reorientation of public
policy analysis towards success rather than failure (and strangely enough I concur).
Failure may be more interesting to study, but it is undoubtedly the boring day-to-
day successes—that never grab the headlines—that society depends on. Moreover,
2Bovens and t’Hart (1996, p. 148) also explicated on the importance of determining ‘who sees
what and why’.
2.2 Lessons from the Literature 17
if all scholars ever did was to study failure it would be hard to see how these crucial
best practices would ever get improved or disseminated. Second, McConnell (2010,
p. 357) proposed that public policy could be assessed according to a third dimension,
namely process (‘get[ting] decisions taken and legislation passed’) although in this
instance I agree with Bovens (2010) that ‘process that led to the adoption of a policy
can also be analysed both from a programmatic and from a political perspective’
thus meaning that it can’t possibly be an orthogonal dimension for analysis. Third,
McConnell (2010, pp. 353–354) abandons the dichotomy of success and failure in
favour of a four-part typology composed of: Resilient success (‘levels of opposition
is more than government bargained for, but is nevertheless outweighed by levels of
support’), conflicted success (‘it achieves its policy making goals in some respects,
but has to backtrack or make significant modifications along the way’), precarious
success (where ‘short-term success cannot be sustained’), and failure—but, once
again, I find myself disagreeing with him. Precarious success will either remain a
success or become a failure—this still amounts to a dichotomous judgement, but
one dependent on the when. Conflicted success, is still success—merely a success
that has been maintained by making some changes during the implied returns period
to the product to keep it sold, and hence looks different depending on when it is
judged—and resilient success seems to simply be a success that has not been judged
by quite as many whos as the government may have hoped for (moreover, as I noted
in Chapter 1, the pragmatic politician may only be interested in selling a product to
their key target market in any case). In sum, the dichotomy of success and failure
survives McConnell’s brave assault, but I note that his innovation does, indirectly,
point to the importance of who makes the judgement and when it is made.
Bovens and t’Hart (2016, p. 656) continued to refine their ideas over succeeding
decades of scholarship culminating in a greater focus on the two dimensions of policy
analysis which they define succinctly in the following terms, which bear repeating:
‘Programmatic evaluation [that] pertains to the world of facts and social balance sheets:
observable costs and benefits, original intentions and eventual outcomes’, and ‘political
evaluation…[that] pertains to the world of impressions: lived experiences, stories, counter-
frames, heroes and villains’.
These two dimensions, the authors argue, give rise to four (it seems this is every
policy analysts’ favourite number) evaluations: success (which results from both a
favourable political and programmatic assessment), tragedy (successful as a program,
but not politically), farce (successful politically but not as a program), and fiasco
(neither politically nor programmatically successful). One can’t help but think that
this schema has gone a little too far in separating out the dimensions, and has lost
sight of the who and the when. For instance, tragedy seems to be the view from
political agents and their supporters who have failed, whilst the farce seems to be the
view from disappointed members of the political opposition and persons intimately
acquainted with the facts. Thus, the ‘who’ seems to be critical to the two ‘inter-
mediate’ evaluations, and the ‘when’ seems to be missing in action entirely. The
difficulties coming up with objective assessments are astutely noted by Bovens and
t’Hart (2016, p. 654) who declare that there is ‘no Archimedean point, no self-evident
yardstick’. They also point out the relativity of judgements regarding the frequency
of public policy failure (which, of course, is proportional to the increasing levels
of meddling that government plays in the lives of its hapless citizens—from regu-
lating the sale of paracetamol (I kid you not) and making possession of a slingshot
unlawful (police and baddies get guns) to deciding on who one can sleep with,3 Big
Brother really is making public policy on you (at increasing frequency in Australia
and abroad—see, for example, Donnison 2015; Lewis 2018). Quite simply, with
more public policy comes more opportunities for failure (and thankfully more jobs
for policy salespersons and policy analysts).
The last piece of scholarship that I will survey is a recent paper by Ugyel and
O’Flynn (2017) on evaluating success in public sector reform in Bhutan. The big
contribution of this paper was to bring into starker relief the importance of when
policy evaluation is conducted and to clearly articulate that ‘temporal aspects of
perceptions are central to understanding policy success’ (Ugyel and O’Flynn 2017,
p. 124). In particular the authors detail the importance of ex post evaluations to
balance ex ante studies, and moreover, how evaluations might be expected to change
as the years go by (that is, an argument that time within the ex post phase is also
critical to the nature of evaluations).
2.2.1 A View of Policy Success for the Public Policy

Salesperson
It is one thing to critique the work of others and quite a different matter to put forward
one’s own ideas that will inevitably attract critique. In our motivating case study (the
invasion of Iraq) and throughout my review of the literature I have tried to underline
the importance of who one asks and when one asks, with respect to the type of
judgements that will be made on public policy matters. I believe that judgements are
principally contingent on the who and when, and that we can only try to understand
the why (because often even those making the judgements will be unable to articulate
their reasons). The ‘who’ is defined in the mission of the public policy salesperson,
that is, the target market informed by political reality. The ‘when’, I would argue,
is also tied to the public policy sales process—specifically the schmooze, ringing
up the sale, and over the after-sales care period as defined by the implied returns
term. At each stage of the sales journey the public policy salesperson needs to give
particular attention to distinct sales techniques, important stakeholders and potential
risks. Notably, while I reject the idea that judgements about success lie along a four
point continuum (perhaps I just don’t like the number as much as Bovens, t’Hart, or
3Prime Minister Turnbull famously banned sexual relationships between Ministers and staff, and
some universities have recently made sexual consent training mandatory for students and staff—
both policy interventions into the bedrooms of citizens were probably born of pure motives, but it
does go to show that nothing is off bounds to the public policy architect in this modern enlightened
world of ours.
McConnell), I do accept that it is helpful to view the why according to two, more
or less, orthogonal dimensions (facts and impressions). This doesn’t mean that I
believe that all stakeholders use both dimensions, or even that they could articulate
the reason for their judgements, simply that I see facts and impressions as a helpful
way through which the public policy salesperson can plan the campaign, schmooze
the public, ring up the sale, and prevent product returns.
An initial working definition of public policy success for public policy salesper-
sons could therefore take the following form:
Success to the public policy salesperson is to sell a ‘suitable’ product to their target market
and keep it sold for the implied returns period. This requires that the salesperson is attuned
to how facts and impressions are received at various stages of the sales life-cycle by different
stakeholders who are subject to dynamic cultural and political contexts.
Returning to our Iraq invasion example for a moment, and putting ourselves in the
shoes of President Bush, we can briefly glimpse the utility of our definition. In this
example, our friend President Bush was the salesperson-in-chief and the ‘suitable’
product was the invasion of Iraq. I do not assert that President Bush considered this
to be the ‘best’ product possible (he may well have understood that his troops would
ultimately be bogged down in a remote war zone for decades)—but in the wake of
the 9/11 terrorist attacks the American public needed to see a strong response and the
invasion may well have been a product born of necessity. The target market in this
particular example changed somewhat over time—there were moments when Presi-
dent Bush sought to sell the product to the international community (especially during
the initial sales campaign), American citizens (during the schmooze and after-sales
care periods) and even Iraqi citizens and military personnel (proximate to ringing up
the sale). The implied returns period was similarly associated with the target market:
when seeking to obtain international support and hence a measure of legitimacy
for the action most of the emphasis would have been placed on avoiding ‘returns’
during the invasion and early occupation; with respect to the support of American
citizens the critical returns period was bounded by the upcoming presidential elec-
tions (November, 2004), and the most crucial time for maintaining support from
Iraqis was the invasion itself and the time that it was expected for weapons of mass
destruction and key regime personnel to be located and neutralised. Moreover it was
important for the salesperson-in-chief to be cognisant of how facts and impressions
were portrayed to key stakeholders over the product lifecycle, and there is evidence
that he tried to accommodate same. For example, when President Bush stood under
the now infamous banner ‘mission accomplished’ on the USS Abraham Lincoln and
quoted from Isaiah Chapter 49 verse 9, it was clear that he was attempting to create
positive impressions chiefly amongst conservative Christian voters, who represented
his key electoral base. However, when the allegations of prisoner abuse surfaced
in 2004, impressions of righteous behaviour were quickly replaced with facts of
sodomy and other acts which are condemned by all three monotheistic faiths. Facts
and impressions changed throughout the sales lifecycle and there is some reason to
believe that President Bush was not always attuned to such changes.
In the next section I explicate on why it is important for salespersons to be closely

attuned to the dynamics of shifts in costs and benefits, emergence of kairotic events,
and framing contests.
2.3 New Approaches for the Public Policy Salesperson
Everything I describe in the succeeding chapters has relevance for the job of selling
public policy and keeping it sold over the implied returns period. However, three ideas
seem particularly important at this juncture: the distribution of costs and benefits over
time, kairos, and framing contests (specifically the role of the media and Commissions
of Inquiry in same).
2.3.1 The Distributions of Costs and Benefits Over Time
Costs and benefits of any public policy are rarely distributed evenly amongst stake-
holders, nor do they remain constant over time. If we were to look at just one set
of stakeholders—the American public—the truth of this assertion becomes clear.
For instance, the cost of the Iraq invasion certainly wasn’t distributed evenly—some
Americans paid with their lives, some through their taxes (one estimate put the cost at
$3 trillion USD), and others seem to have largely escaped any cost at all. Similarly,
benefits were not distributed evenly—people fearful of weapons of mass destruc-
tion probably benefited more than others, as did those who had fled Iraq and been
granted asylum in the USA. Moreover, costs and benefits did not remain static over
time. Sticking with our example of American stakeholders, and focussing on the
most poignant cost—loss of life—facts suggest that they were much higher after
the ‘mission accomplished’ speech than they had been at any time leading up to
same (for example, 134 U.S. military personnel had lost their lives prior to ‘mission
accomplished’, but a further 3,924 died in the five years following President Bush’s
speech). Further complicating matters is the fact that only a portion of Americans
would have been considered to be the target market, and the distribution and shifts
among the broader public probably differed significantly to this group of persons.
The astute public policy salesperson will be cognisant of the initial concentration
of costs and benefits, and also the way that costs and benefits change over time
because the concentration of costs and benefits is likely to be proportional to the
expected levels of support or opposition for the public policy. Moreover, given the
evidence that most people suffer from negativity bias—the idea that people are more
sensitive to losses than gains of a similar magnitude—suggests that the public policy
salesperson should pay particular attention to shifts in costs over time (Weaver 1986,
p. 373—see also Chapter 5). Indeed, it is this quirk of human nature, in concert with
varying distributions of costs and benefits over time, that may well create distinct
moments of kairos.
2.3 New Approaches for the Public Policy Salesperson 21
2.3.2 Kairos
Kairos is the qualitative aspect of time that stands in contrast to the chronos which
is the quantitative face with which modern persons are more familiar. Essentially, it
is the idea that there is a propitious moment for all things, a time when the stars will
align and good fortune will follow (I discuss this idea at greater length in Chapter 3).
Kairos is an essential, but a rather neglected, aspect of rhetoric.
Because of the changing distribution of costs and benefits, it is important for
the public policy salesperson to remain vigilant with respect to emerging kairotic
moments. For instance, most opponents of the Iraq invasion perceived correctly that
May 1, 2003 (President Bush’s victory speech) was not a propitious moment to
attack the public policy. Moreover, it was not necessary to launch an attack on the
policy at this juncture in time given that the planned temporary occupation of Iraq
would undoubtedly give rise to kairotic moments—such as the inevitable reckoning
of fiscal costs by the Congressional Budget Office, tragic moments of civilian deaths,
and casualties among the occupying military forces. Indeed, ‘the fewer [the] deaths,
the easier it is for news organisations to show every fallen soldier and frame the war’s
cost in human terms’ and thus create kairotic moments for opponents to exploit at
their leisure (Feaver cited in Tankersely and Parsons, 2008). Opponents simply had
to bide their time and wait for the certainty of a more propitious moment in which
to embark on framing contests.
2.3.3 Framing Contests
Framing contest occur between supporters and opponents of a public policy in

response to a kairotic event. Boin, t’Hart and McConnell (2009, pp. 85, 87), present a
useful framework regarding the determinants of framing contests—notwithstanding
their neglect of kairos—which focusses on the significance of the event (which they
refer to as ‘ripple or crisis’), and the causality attributed to the event (‘incident or
symptom’). Supporters of a policy will seek to downplay the significance of an event
or the causality (or sometimes both), and opponents will seek to play up same. For
example, President Bush referred to the tactics and precision of weapons employed
in the invasions but acknowledged that ‘no device of man can remove the tragedy
from war, yet it is a great advance when the guilty have far more to fear from war than
the innocent’. In so doing, he didn’t seek to downplay the significance of civilian
casualties, but did reject causality (the deaths are blamed on the vagaries of war,
and also on the evil men responsible for 9/11, and of course on ‘a dangerous and
aggressive regime’; CNN 2003a). The fact that support among Americans for the
invasion was initially estimated at 71% suggests that President Bush won the initial
framing contest (Oliphant 2018).
However, a year later when a report of sexual abuse of prisoners emerged, Pres-
ident Bush came out very strongly in voicing his ‘deep disgust that those pris-
oners were treated the way they were treated… that’s not the way we do things in
America’ (CNN 2004). Arguably the significance—whilst appalling—was not quite
as pronounced as the deaths of civilians during the invasion, but despite censor from
the Commander-in-Chief and a swift and strong military law response, supporters of
the invasion seem to have lost the framing contest (as evidenced by a fall in support
for the invasion to just 55%). The crucial factor, exploited by opponents to win the
framing contest, seems to have been causality—American military personnel, in situ
as a direct result of the invasion, had deliberately abused the prisoners—and there
was no getting around this fact.
The mass media plays a critical role in framing contests. One view of the media’s
role is that supporters and opponents of a given public policy compete to capture the
attention and support of the media in their framing war (Boin et al. 2009). Under this
view the way that salespersons handle themselves is the major determinant of who
wins the framing war. An alternate view is that the media frames an issue according to
its own bias and organises material to achieve its agenda (see Chapter 4 for a discus-
sion of the heresthetic of media reporting). This bias will be distributed according to
the nationality of the media (undoubtedly the American media reported the invasion
of Iraq in very different terms to the Iraqi media), and the political bias within national
media (in the USA Fox is generally thought to have a conservative bias, whilst the
Huffington Post is often considered to be left-leaning). My own experience with the
media suggests that this latter view, of the media as herestheticians, is certainly valid
in some instances. When the media do manipulate the public, then the performance
of the salesperson is less important—however, it can still prove to be critical, as even
the best heresthetician cannot make an opponent salesperson look uncaring, guilty,
or inept without some material to work with.
Another way in which framing contests may be played out is through commissions
of inquiry set up to investigate a crisis (although given that almost no-one ever
reads the entire report, media reporting, and hence media bias, is still important).
Independent inquiries are a widely employed heresthetic (see Chapter 4) to assert
agenda control and it would appear, at first sight, that the incumbent government
holds all the cards when it comes to influencing the outcomes of commissions of
inquiry—most importantly, the government selects the commissioner and it sets
the terms of reference for the inquiry. However, Sir Humphrey Appelby, and many
of his real-life contemporaries shy away from inquiries citing ‘two basic rules of
government: Never look into anything that you don’t have to. And never set up an
inquiry unless you know in advance what its findings will be’ (Lynn and Jay 1988,
p. 453). The main trouble, it seems, is that it is difficult to know, with a satisfactory
level of certainty what the findings will be. Sure, a ‘suitable’ person, ostensibly
independent and eminent, can be sounded out and appointed to head an inquiry
(which is bounded by ‘suitable’ terms of reference), but the devil of the matter is that
the ‘sound’ person can succumb at the ‘“fateful day” of existential choice’ and go
rogue, rather than acquiesce as expected (Grant et al. 2015, p. 32). Otherwise stated,
there is a choice to be made, by the commissioner, between integrity and personal
2.4 A Guide to Using Policy Success to Clinch the Sale 23
reputation, on the one hand, and doing the job for which they were commissioned
on the other—and it is, for some, a perplexing fact that commissioners may place
greater value in avoiding regret in the future, than doing what is required in the
present (and hence demonstrating their loyalty to those who commissioned them
in the present). When this occurs, commissions of inquiry may end up framing the
crisis in a way that does not suit the incumbent politicians. Moreover, because the
fortunes of governments and individual politicians wax and wane—and because it
is in the interests of those working on the commission to prolong their employment
and hence maximise their utility—it is entirely possible that the commissioner may
ultimately report to a government of a different political bias than the one which set
up the inquiry and therefore do so within different bounds of loyalty. Add to this,
the potential for media to ‘re-frame the frame’ and it quickly becomes apparent that
Sir Humphrey Appleby’s advice was sound—an inquiry is something to be avoided
wherever possible, and heavily influenced whenever it is not.
Our brief review of three important influences on public policy success suggests
that keeping the public policy product sold to various stakeholders who constitute
the target market requires the salesperson to be on constant alert for kairotic events
(particularly one-off poignant events), constantly monitoring the shifting distribution
of costs and benefits (and perhaps placate some stakeholders through remedial design
should a concentration of costs threaten the balance of support within the target
market), and remain constantly vigilant with respect to framing contests (seeking
to nullify same wherever they threaten to alter the target markets’ satisfaction with
the product). With this knowledge in hand I can now put forward a model to guide
salespersons seeking to sell a public policy and keep it sold, during three critical
phases of time, and in cognisance of dynamic cultural and political contexts in which
both facts and impressions may hold sway.
2.4 A Guide to Using Policy Success to Clinch the Sale
In the succeeding chapters I will outline five distinct tools for selling public policy
to the target market and keeping it sold for the implied returns period: rhetoric
(use of the pathos (emotions), ethos (portrayed character of the rhetor) and logos
(reasoning to prove an apparent truth) to come as close as possible to selling the
public policy product as the circumstances allow; Chapter 3), heresthetic (the strategy
of politics; Chapter 4), blame games (use of lightning rod strategies and weapons of
mass expertisation; Chapter 5), evidence (how to put together supporting evidence
in a way that reduces the likelihood of contestation; Chapter 6), and ethics (how
to tailor rhetoric and remedies to accommodate people’s ideas of right and wrong;
Chapter 7). Each tool is important, but not sufficient, in its own right for the public
policy sales journey. Moreover, the relative importance of each tool is not uniform
but rather waxes and wanes throughout the journey as will become evident in our
case studies of selling COVID stimulus (Chapter 9) and selling the Ukraine war
(Chapter 10).
Figure 2.1 is a depiction of a model for public policy success. Those of my readers
who studied high-school physics have probably noted already that our model looks
very similar to a ray diagram for a divergent lens. If you haven’t noticed this similarity
there is no cause for alarm—I don’t presume that my readers studied physics, and
I promise to refrain from a detailed science lesson here. All you need to know is
that three rays of light can be traced from a single object (labelled A), which in our
example is a public policy. Each of these rays passes through a divergent lens (which
represent specific stakeholders in the target market; labelled B) which bends the rays
and projects them to points on the right of the lens (labelled C, D and E respectively).
Because these rays diverge no real image is formed. However, if one traces the rays
back in a straight line (which I have marked in as a dotted line) then they do indeed
converge at a point between the object and the lens on the left-hand side (labelled
G). In physics this is referred to as a virtual image—to the observer it appears to be
an image, but if we were to place a white sheet of paper or a projector screen on
the left hand side of the diagram at point G, we wouldn’t see any picture there at
all.4 By employing a model based on a divergent lens I seek to emphasise that the
judgements made by specific stakeholders who constitute the target market at each
phase of the public policy journey may differ markedly and that it is only at the end
of a journey that one can really seek to grasp at a picture of whether the entire policy
has been perceived to be a success by the stakeholder (but even then what an observer
‘sees’ is only a virtual image, a mere tracing-back of points that are specific to the
stakeholder, that defies objective measurement).
At each temporal phase of the public policy, rays are projected from the object
to the divergent lens where information and events are processed by the stakeholder
according to their intellect, cultural and political bias. What reaches the stakeholder
is not the actual object, but rather the portrayal of the object through the five tools
that I discuss in this book (rhetoric, heresthetic, blame games, evidence, ethics). In
the sales campaign and initial schmooze, facts dominate—why is there a need for
intervention, what will the intervention cost, what will the intervention achieve—and
thus, evidence will be of critical importance; but also this is the time for heresthetic
manoeuvres and blame games to be planned which may alter the way in which
facts are received by the stakeholder. Whilst facts dominate in the sales campaign
and initial schmooze, impressions are still important therefore the public policy
salesperson will still need to pay due attention to rhetoric and ethics. The ray thus
projected passes through the stakeholder who perceives costs and benefits and hence
makes a judgement regarding the success of the public policy at the particular phase
of time.
Judgements are formed in a similar manner in the ringing up of the sale. Now
new facts are being created (for instance, actual cost information is starting to be
accumulated) and impressions (about how the implementation is proceeding against
plans) are starting to take on greater significance. At this phase heresthetic and
4 Just like a mirror on a wall, we perceive a virtual image that appears to be staring out at us from
the mirror, but it cannot be considered to be a real image (because the only thing on the other side
of the mirror is the wall).
2.4 A Guide to Using Policy Success to Clinch the Sale
Fig. 2.1 A heuristic for success in selling public policy

25
rhetoric are being employed to focus stakeholder attention on matters most conducive
to the public policy salesperson’s cause, and those to whom the salesperson hopes to
ultimately deflect blame are being brought out before the public in case their public
sacrifice later becomes necessary. Moreover, the portrayed ethics of the salesperson
and policy are being projected to stakeholders as is the evidence of success.
The after-sales care phase is more difficult to define than the sales campaign and
ringing up of the sale phases, in part because it may last months, years or even
decades depending on the nature of the public policy. The principle determinants
of the after-sales care period are generally likely to be the electoral cycle (the 55th
quadrennial election in November 2004 in one sense marked the time where it was no
longer critical for the salesperson-in-chief to have the support of his electoral base)
and warranties (the promise made to Iraqis to ‘rebuild…then leave’ (Bush cited in
CNN 2003b)) offered or implied during the sales campaign. There are however a few
other seminal factors that will affect the calls made upon the salesperson during the
after-sales care period. For example, a public policy that can’t be reversed (because
the egg has been thoroughly scrambled (see Chapter 4)) provides less motivation to
opponents to prod and poke around the policy looking for contrary evidence. In addi-
tion, the emergence of kairotic moments—sometimes entirely unpredictable (such
as the rise of ISIS in Iraq)—is a sure way to provoke an exhumation and autopsy of
a public policy corpse. In the after-sales care period, impressions dominate. This is
the point at which one’s scapegoat5 is sent into the wilderness, rhetoric (particularly
the ethos and pathos) becomes important in framing contests, judgements are made
regarding the ethics of the policy and salesperson, and evidence emerges to support
or refute the contention that the policy was a success (see Chapter 6 regarding the
malleability of evidence). The heresthetician may still be called upon for their ability
to raise new dimensions, block votes of no confidence or impeachment in parlia-
ment, or set the agenda (through selection of ‘suitable’ commissioners and terms of
reference, should a commission of inquiry prove unavoidable).
Thus, it can be seen that different tools come to the fore at different phases in the
public policy journey. Public policy salespersons must seek to tailor the tools to both
the specific policy and the stakeholder to which they direct their pitch. Moreover,
it is not until the after sales care period has been exhausted that a virtual image of
public policy success can begin to replace disparate points of projection arrived at
during each phase of the public policy sales journey. Planning a sales campaign and
schmooze is critical, but does not in itself determine success. Similarly executing
a great schmooze can have the stakeholder begging to purchase the public policy
product, but it is not quite the same as ringing up the sale. Even when the sale
has been concluded, success is not guaranteed—the stakeholder may have second
thoughts and try to return the product for a refund, or find a defect in the product
and make a warranty claim, or decide they just don’t like it anymore. Thus the
public policy salesperson must remain constantly on alert ready to convince important
5 The term scapegoat is derived from the Judaeo-Christian tradition. On the Day of Atonement two
goat kids were taken; the first was sacrificed, and the second goat (chosen by lot) was cast out into
the wilderness to carry the community’s sins away from the camp.
References 27
stakeholders that the product, contrary to their perception or the perceptions of others,
really remains suitable. Otherwise stated public policy success for the sales person is
selling the suitable product and keeping it sold for the duration of the returns period,
by ensuring that shifting distributions of costs and benefits, kairotic moments and
the framing efforts of one’s rivals (in particular) are not allowed to generate a level
of buyer’s remorse in the target market sufficient to result in wide-spread product
returns.
In sum, understanding public policy success has a lot to offer the public policy
salesperson with respect to planning the sales campaign and schmooze, ringing up
the sale and providing satisfactory levels of after sales care. If sales techniques
are employed in a tailored manner reflective of how particular stakeholders which
constitute the target market perceive matters with reference to their cultural and
political biases at distinct phases of the sales journey, then greater success is likely
to result. However, public policy salespersons must remain vigilant over the implied
returns period for shifts in costs and benefits, as well as kairotic moments, that might
give rise to reframing contests. Selling public policy is easier to accomplish when
one understands what success looks like and also has the tools at one’s disposal
required for each stage. In this chapter I have provided salespersons with a detailed
description of their quest and in the next chapters I will equipped them with the tools
required to carry out their mission.
References
BBC (2016) Chilcot report: findings at-a-glance. 6 July 2016

Boin A, t’Hart P, McConnell A (2009) Crisis exploitation: political and policy impacts of framing
contests. J Eur Publ Policy 16(1):81–106
Bovens M (2010) A comment on Marsh and McConnell: towards a framework for establishing
policy success. Public Adm 88(2):584–585
Bovens M, t’Hart P (1996) Understanding policy fiascos. Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick
Bovens M, t’Hart P (2016) Revisiting the study of policy failures. J Eur Publ Policy 23(5):653–666
Bush G (2003) Bush: ‘leave Iraq within 48 hours’. CNN, 18 March 2003
CBS News (2008) Mission accomplished, 5 years later. CBS
CNN (2003a) White House pressed on ‘mission accomplished’ sign. CNN, 29 October 2003
CNN (2003b) Bush makes historic speech aboard warship. CNN, 2 May 2003
CNN (2004) Shock, outrage over prison photos. Father of soldier: “there’s two sides to the story”.
CNN, 1 May 2004
Donnison J (2015) Australia’s Nanny State: a case of arrested development. BBC News
Grant B, Ryan R, Lawrie A (2015) Dirty hands and commissions of inquiry: an examination of the
independent local government review panel in NSW, Australia. In: Conscience, leadership and
the problem of dirty hands. Emerald Insight, London
Herszenhorn D (2008) Estimates of Iraq war were not close to Ballpark. New York Times, 19 March
2008
Lewis P (2018) After a tabloid storm and the bonk ban, voters are keen to move on. The Guardian,
27 February 2018
Lynn J, Jay A (1988) The complete “Yes Prime Minister”. BBC Books, St Ives
McConnell A (2010) Policy success, policy failure and grey areas in-between. J Publ Policy
30(3):345–362
Oliphant B (2018) The Iraq war continues to divide the U.S. public, 15 years after it began. Pew
Research Center, Washington
Tankersley J, Parsons C (2008) Measuring the political costs of war. Chicago Tribune, 22 September
2008
Ugyel L, O’Flynn J (2017) Measuring policy success: evaluating public sector reform in Bhutan.
Int J Public Adm 40(2):11–125
Weaver K (1986) The politics of blame avoidance. J Publ Policy 6:371–398
Chapter 3
Rhetoric: Not Just What Is Said, but Also
Who Says It and How
Abstract Colloquially, rhetoric is understood as empty words uttered with the intent
to manipulate and deceive. However, in classical times rhetoric was conceived much
more broadly as being the art of observing all the available means of persuasion—
where “means” included the kairos (propitiousness of the moment), the ethos (char-
acter or portrayed character of the rhetor), pathos (the emotions of the rhetor and
auditors), and the logos (the ways of proving a truth or apparent truth). This broad
conception of rhetoric recognised that in a heterogeneous society, where public policy
decisions are characterized by uncertainty, words alone are rarely enough to persuade
citizens to trust in a particular public policy. By way of contrast, more modern schol-
arship has focused on identifying the types of arguments that can be used to win
in disputatious public policy arenas as well as the costs associated with employing
rhetoric. I contend that a fuller appreciation of the art of persuasion—one which
combines the lessons of classical times with those of just three decades past—will
expand the repertoire of the public policy salesperson and allow them to make better
use of technologies and opportunities that these past scholars could not have even
dreamt of (but certainly would have exploited).
Keywords Rhetoric · Aristotle · Riker · Hirschman · Rhetoric of reaction · Public

policy · Policy success · Selling public policy
3.1 What Is Rhetoric?
If I were to walk outside my office now and ask a passer-by (assuming I could find
a passer-by in the big smoke of Moonbi,1 Australia) what the word rhetoric meant I
would probably receive a very disparaging reply along the lines of “mere words used
by politicians to deceive us”. However, if I were to ask precisely the same question of
a passing Greek around 2,300 years ago I am likely to have been told that rhetoric was
a high art—one which, when mastered, allowed a rhetor to understand all the means
available to come as near as circumstances permit to persuading auditors over to their
position. Upon further inquiry, our friendly Greek would likely draw our attention to
the salient aspects of the art, including inter alia the kairos, ethos, pathos and logos
1 Moonbi has a population of just 500.

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-0381-8_3
30 3 Rhetoric: Not Just What Is Said, but Also Who Says It and How
and direct us to the Lyceum where we might sit at the feet of Aristotle or browse the
great library to learn from its wisdom. I imagine that the classical Greeks would have
been dismayed to hear about our current cynical and narrow view of rhetoric and
may have pointed out to us that our limited understanding of rhetoric must surely
have deleterious implications for our ability to sell public policy—especially in a
heterogeneous community where public policymaking occurs in conditions of great
uncertainty.
Despite the largely debased colloquial meaning assigned to rhetoric nowadays, it
seems that there are still some rhetors who understand the importance of (at least) the
kairos, ethos and pathos and employ same to convince the public of the merits of a
given public policy. For instance, Kim Jong-Un (henceforth referred to as President
Kim) provided us with a salient lesson on rhetoric in his response to United States
of America (U.S.) calls for sanctions at the United Nations (arising from the North
Korean public policy of developing intercontinental nuclear weapons):
Now that Trump has denied the existence of and insulted me and my country in front of
the eyes of the world and made the most ferocious declaration of a war in history that he
would “destroy” North Korea, Mr. Kim said, “we will consider with seriousness exercising
of a corresponding, highest level of hardline countermeasure in history….. “I will surely and
definitely tame the mentally deranged U. S. dotard with fire”. (Sang-Hun 2017)
Here we see a fine example of recognizing an opportunity to persuade (Kairos—

bound up with the meeting of the United Nations where media attention was focused
on the North Korean “problem”), attacking the ethos of America’s Rhetor-In-Chief
(and thus implicitly drawing our attention to the fact that the relatively young Presi-
dent Kim stands in stark contrast to a mentally deranged dotard) and seeking to stir up
the pathos of fear amongst the citizens of the United States (by threatening a taming
by fire) and the pathos of anger (at the asserted insult) amongst the citizens of North
Korea. Unfortunately, President Kim’s rhetoric probably failed to impress anyone
outside of his captive audience in North Korea, however, given the circumstances—
which were wholly unconducive to nuclear armament of a “rogue” state—his use
of the kairos, ethos and pathos is a good example of “coming as near to success as
the circumstances of each particular case allow” (Aristotle 2012, p. 8; the formal
definition of rhetoric). Not all public policy sales pitches will be successful—there
are some public policies for which we might never find a buyer—however, I believe
that President Kim, Aristotle, Hirschman and Riker (who we will also meet below)
can all provide us with important lessons on how rhetoric can be best employed to at
least give the salesperson a shot at persuading others regarding the merits of a given
public policy.
I commence by first reviewing the extant literature on rhetoric—both the lessons
of antiquity and the lessons derived from more contemporary sources. Thereafter I
briefly consider some promising and relatively new avenues for public policy rhetors
which include the use of ‘words with unexamined power’, empirical rhetoric and
deployment of new media channels. I conclude by outlining a heuristic developed to
guide decision-making by prospective rhetors intent on successfully selling public
policy.
3.2 Lessons from the Literature
Rhetoric has a long and distinguished history which cannot be thoroughly surveyed
within a single book chapter. However, I can give the prospective public policy
salesperson some exposure to the most important rhetorical tools by first briefly
examining the classics; and then by augmenting this knowledge with more recent
scholarship borne in the crucible of public policy analysis.
3.2.1 Lessons from the Classics
Kairos (the notion of a season for all things—a qualitative idea of time that stood in
contrast to chronos) held such importance in classical Greek conceptions of rhetoric
that it was ultimately mythologized and Kairos became enrolled among the gods.2
Yet for most modern public policy salespersons it is not at all certain that they would
pause to reflect should the rather strange character sporting a long forelock (with the
remainder of his head shaved) wings and winged feet was to make an appearance
at a public policy launch! This neglect of Kairos seems most unfortunate given that
kairos fulfils an important role in drawing our attention to the fact that persuasion is
often dependent on having the right circumstances combine with the right audience at
the right time. King Solomon (and The Byrds who famously performed ‘Turn, Turn,
Turn’) recognised that there was a season for all things under heaven, but it often
seems that many public policy salespersons are appalling ignorant—or recklessly
impatient—about the need to pause and consider whether the issue has come to
public consciousness, whether there is a receptive and identifiable audience and
whether the medium of communication (often the media) is ready and willing to
convey the rhetors’ message. Otherwise stated, Kairos reminds us that we need to
look to see if the stars are suitably aligned to give us the greatest chance for success,
and cautions us that if they are not then perhaps the best course of action might be
to direct our efforts towards preparing for a more propitious moment in the future.
However, it is not just Kairos who has been relegated from the divine to obscurity.
Auditor disposition—as represented in Aristotle’s ethos and pathos—seems to have
also been largely forgotten by rhetors (although in all deference to modern rhetors
we should note that Aristotle also expressed concern about the neglect of auditor
disposition in The Art of Rhetoric—which, incidentally, is a thoroughly accessible
and enjoyable read). The reason why ethos and pathos are particularly important to
persuasion on public policy matters can be traced back to the nature of the political
public: an enterprise that brings together people of disparate wealth, skills, knowledge
and ideologies for the pursuit of the common good (the help accruing to persons in
the pursuit of their ends as a result of co-operation with others—see Drew 2022). That
2 Kairos is usually attributed to the sophist Gorgias, although others have argued that the concept
is implicit through much of Aristotle’s work, an argument which I agree with (see, for instance,
Kinneavy and Eskin 2000).
is, the public policy decision is made in an environment where there is no prima facie
reason to trust, where the outcomes for each person are often largely unknowable
(due to inter alia uneven initial distributions of advantage and different utilities
derived from public goods) and where extreme levels of information asymmetry
exist (for example, a President or Supreme Leader is likely to be in receipt of far
more comprehensive information relating to a given public policy than any of his
auditors). In this sort of environment, reasoning (logos) alone is unlikely to ever
be sufficient to persuade—what is required is a reason to trust and a reason to pay
attention and act.
In classical rhetoric the ethos was declared to be “the most effective means of
persuasion he (sic) possesses” (Aristotle 2012, p. 9). Yet somewhat surprisingly–at
least for people familiar with Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics—Aristotle did not insist
that the character be inherent to the rhetor, merely that the portrayed character be
conducive to creating the conditions necessary for trust amongst disparate persons.
Thus, Aristotle exhorts rhetors to portray their character in terms of good-sense,
good-morals and good-will but allows that this might be invented. Interestingly, these
attributes of ethos parallel the three ingredients that sociologists largely agree are
necessary for trust—ability (good-sense), integrity (good-morals) and benevolence
(good-will) (see, for example, Rousseau et al. 1998). Thus it seems that the ethos has
an important role in generating the conditions necessary for trust between disparate
persons.
Indeed, in modern times the media still often focusses on the ethos of powerful
political figures which can at times seem quite incongruous with behavioral norms in
the wider population. For example, President Trump has been hounded by the media
for many years regarding an alleged affair with a ‘porn star’ and an alleged payment
of ‘shush money’ so that the story would never see the light of day. Now by many
(but not all) moral paradigms a married man having an affair is neither good-sense,
good morals, nor good-will (certainly not to his wife). However, research (De Paulo
2010) suggests that around half of married men in America have had extra-marital
affairs, so it is prima facie hard to understand why a single case of infidelity might be
considered news-worthy (unless of course the media proposes to report on hundreds
of millions of similar cases). The reason why the media has grabbed hold of this
particular alleged infidelity, like a dog with a bone, is that it goes to the heart of
whether or not the person can be trusted on matters of contentious public policy (and
also conveniently provides a left-leaning media with plenty of ammunition to throw
at one of the most hated conservatives in American political history). The apparent
reasoning of the media seems to be that the President does not have an ethos which
inspires trust, and may therefore not be worthy of trust on weighty public policy
matters where there is extreme information asymmetry.
However, trust alone does not automatically lead to persuasion. For instance, one
is likely to trust that the Pope has good-sense, good-morals and good-will however;
one probably isn’t prepared to “care first for the poor, before concerning themselves
with their own wants and needs” (Pope Francis cited in Bunderson 2014).3 For one
thing many do not feel that it is dignifying to give the poor hand-outs, whilst others
of us may feel that the needs of their close family must trump the needs of strangers.
It would therefore seem that trust alone is insufficient to persuade us—something
more powerful than trust appears to be required to motivate us (in this case, to put
the needs of the poor ahead of our own).
Aristotle, President Kim (it seems) and the author believed that this missing dispo-
sition element of persuasion is the pathos—emotions have the power to motivate us
to action, to unite us for a common cause, to reach deep within ourselves to do
things we never thought possible. Indeed, Aristotle (2012, p. 80) lists “anger, pity,
fear and the like” as powerful forces that can change person’s judgments. That’s
why some benevolent societies employ images of starving children in their adver-
tisements despite the fact that aide is also provided to adults—because images of
the helpless and innocent are more likely to motivate us to feelings of pity, and thus
elicit the desired response (to set aside some of our wants for the needs of the poor).
Another example of a powerful pathos might be found in the emotion of love, which
can persuade us to give up almost everything (in some cases life itself) for our child,
spouse, friend or G-d. Aristotle encourages rhetors to understand extant pathos in the
auditor population—specifically, to consider (i) what is the state of mind, (ii) who
is affected, and (iii) on what grounds are they affected. This knowledge allows the
rhetor to tailor their schmooze to particular audiences in a heterogeneous population:
where extant pathos is conducive to the message of the rhetor, then an appeal should
be made to same (indeed Cicero—a successor to the Aristotelian rhetorical legacy—
claimed that the rhetor should work themselves up to feel and display the emotion
that they wished to appeal to in auditors); where the emotion is hostile to the course
of action that the rhetor wishes to propose then the contrary emotion should still be
raised as the discordance is almost certain to gain the auditors attention. However,
where there is no extant pathos then the rhetor must either give auditors a reason to
care (perhaps invent a pathos) or wait for a more propitious kairos.
The last major element of classical rhetoric was the logos—the reasoning which
complements the disposition of auditors in order to prove a truth or an apparent truth.
In Part 2 of The Art of Rhetoric Aristotle (2012, p. 12) claims that “everyone who
affects persuasion through proof does in fact use either enthymemes or example”.
These two devices are thus worthy of some explication.
Enthymemes are rhetorical syllogisms whereby one states some premises that
lead, or appear to lead, to a logical conclusion. Thus, just prior to our motivating
example, President Kim may have had the following thoughts to persuade himself
and his inner sanctum of the wisdom of pursuing a nuclear arms program:
MAJOR PREMISE: Nuclear weapons are a deterrent to hostile countries
MINOR PREMISE: America is hostile to North Korea
3 I have briefly departed from our North Korea and United States example because, whilst I recognise
their rhetorical prowess, I just couldn’t bring myself to declare that either party has good-sense or
good-will.
CONCLUSION: Therefore I (President Kim) should develop an intercontinental

nuclear missile.
There are various different ways that the syllogism might be constructed—for
instance, the first premise might have been an example rather than a reason—but
the above illustration should give one the general idea. The problems with syllo-
gisms are that they can result in truly strange conclusions—if extraneous premises
are linked or if one or more of the premises are false (or not always true). For instance:
MAJOR PREMISE: No country with a space program has yet been conquered
MINOR PREMISE: America has a space program and is hostile to North Korea
CONCLUSION: Therefore I (Kim) should develop a space program.
Notwithstanding the fact that many of us might have preferred that President Kim
present the above logos to his inner sanctum, it is clear that the conclusion that a
space program would protect North Korea from attack, is a rather strange one (even
though it is based on true premises).
The use of examples (by themselves) are likely to be much more straightfor-
ward and familiar to readers than rhetorical syllogisms. Examples essentially take an
observation about the past (a historical incident or even film or literature) to evoke
rich memories in a kind of shorthand. For instance, President Kim may cite the
following example: “Saddam Hussein didn’t have a nuclear weapon and Iraq was
conquered by America” as justification for his public policy. In so doing, President
Kim asserts that what was true in the past will also be true in the future—although
this, of course, may not be the case at all. Notably, Aristotle (2012, p. 139) cautioned
that enthymemes should always precede the example so as to avoid an “inductive
air” and instead cast the example in the light of a witness giving evidence in support
of truth (proved in the enthymeme). It would seem that there is some merit in this
ordering for the schmooze given that an example alone might easily be dismissed as
an unrepresentative case.
3.2.2 Lessons from Public Policy Analysis
The late, great, Albert Hirschman—former freedom fighter, underground operative,

soldier and developmental economist—was an academic of extraordinary breadth
and innovation (Adelman 2013). His work The Rhetoric of Reaction: Perversity,
Futility and Jeopardy represents a marked departure from Aristotle’s Rhetoric and
it is thus important to understand given its potential to augment the public policy
salesperson’s rhetorical skillset. Hirschman is barely interested in the ethos (and
ignores most of the spectrum of the pathos—except fear) but instead seeks to identify
the most probable and most penetrating arguments that might be employed by rhetors
in disputatious public policy debates. To achieve this end, Hirschman surveys great
historical debates—the French and American revolutions, the introduction of the
poor laws and universal suffrage—and presents a compelling argument that both
Table 3.1 Hirschman (1991) typology of progressive and reactionary rhetoric

Progressive position Reactionary position
Imminent Danger Thesis and Synergistic Jeopardy
(fallacy) The program involves unacceptable
Emphasises the danger of passivity and the consequences of one sort or another
need to act to avoid impending disaster
Desperate Predicament Thesis and Perversity
Fracasomania Unintended consequences from reform
The old order must be smashed and the new including effects opposite to the proposed goal
rebuilt regardless of possible consequences
Futility of Resistance Thesis Futility
Appeals to the historical inevitability of the Proposed reforms will not improve the
proposed reforms circumstances at which they are aimed; they
are a smoke screen for a political agenda
Source Adapted from Wallis and Dollery (1999)
reactionary rhetoric (reasoning put forward to oppose a given public policy) and
progressive rhetoric (words employed to persuade others to support a public policy)
can be classified according to just three theses apiece (see Table 3.1 for a description
of each thesis). The purpose of Hirschman’s (1993, p. 314) work was to “stem the
neo-conservative tide of the 1980s” by identifying flaws in the reactionary positions.
However, his work also serves as an important heuristic for progressives: it not only
provides a ready source of powerful ideas to promote a public policy, but it also
provides public policy salespersons with a ready reckoner of the Opposition’s likely
attacks (and forewarned would seem to be forearmed).
To see how progressive arguments might be deployed we could—just for a
moment—put ourselves in the shoes of our friend President Kim, just prior to trying
to convince the world that he should vigorously pursue a nuclear armament program.
One option available to him was to appeal to the “Imminent Danger Thesis” and argue
that the region was about to descend into armed conflict because of the U.S’s provo-
cations and that he therefore needed a deterrent of sufficient gravity to save the region
from this real and present danger. Alternatively, President Kim might have argued
from the “Desperate Predicament Thesis” that the old order of nuclear superpowers
subjugating the rest of the world had led to exploitation, inequality and poverty and
thus required an extraordinary act to re-balance power and hence improve the lives
of the majority of the human race. Lastly, Kim might have invoked the “Futility
of Resistance Thesis”, pointing out that Pakistan had achieved nuclear capability
and that Iran was also well progressed along this road and that therefore a nuclear
arms race was unavoidable—merely a progression of history akin to the adoption of
gunpowder or the use of airplanes in warfare.
Each of these arguments, had they been made by Kim, would have likely led to
a predictable refutation. “The Imminent Danger Thesis” would have had the U.S
responding that a nuclear arms race on the Peninsula would put the survival of all its
inhabitants (including North Koreans) in peril (“Jeopardy Thesis”); the “Desperate
Predicament Thesis” might elicit the response that nuclear armament was likely to
exacerbate inequality as other nations would be obliged to invest more funds into
countering the program and would therefore have less resources for foreign aid and
the like (“Perversity Thesis”); whilst the “Futility of Resistance Thesis” would argue
that the nuclear program was not designed to improve power balance or the prospects
for peace in the region but was instead being used as a smokescreen for a political
agenda to shore up support for President Kim’s regime at home (a “Futility Thesis”).
The fact that many of these arguments have been raised by the North Koreans
and the U.S during the crisis points both to the predictive power of the theses and
also to the contention that the opposing parties probably believe the theses to be
most efficacious (Riker 1990)—a contemporary of Hirschman who we will meet
shortly—raised the idea that the frequency with which a rhetorical technique is
employed could be used as a proxy to measure the persuasiveness of same. However,
as I noted earlier, Hirschman’s theses are not just prompts for rhetors who might
be looking for an argument to support their proposed public policy. They also allow
rhetors to gain an edge over their opponents by pre-empting and, where possible,
negating or increasing the costs of rhetorical reprisals. For instance, Kim might have
foreseen the Jeopardy thesis response to his argument citing the Imminent Danger
facing his region and used the absence of armed conflict between nuclear powers in
the past (an Aristotelian logos) as testimony to his reasoning—thus increasing the
rhetorical cost put before his external Opposition.
The costs of rhetoric were very much on the mind of the 20th century’s other great
rhetoric scholar, the late William H. Riker, shortly before his death in 1993 (see, for
example, his attempt to explain the dynamics of rhetoric in his (1996) The Strategy
of Rhetoric4 and his intriguing observations in an oft-overlook 1990 book chapter,
somewhat uninspiringly, titled “Heresthetic and rhetoric in the spatial model”). First,
Riker draws our attention to the costs of rhetoric inherent in its imposing remit of
persuading those who disagree—or who just don’t care—about a public policy to
support same. In the former case, we need to get persons to “acknowledge that they
previously erred”—which most of us recoil from doing (well, after all, we all know
that we are always right—so of course it must be the other party (in this case the
rhetor) who is wrong). In the latter case—where there is a pathos vacuum—we have
to invent a reason to care. Second, Riker uses his observation of rhetoric’s imposing
remit to explain why it usually involves “predictions of extremely unlikely disasters”
(Riker 1990, p. 60)—because a big threat is required to get people to contemplate
that they might be wrong—which perhaps explains the alarmist claims that form
the foundation of four of the six Hirschman theses. Indeed, Riker draws on the
concept of negativity bias—the idea that people feel a loss much more than a gain
of the same magnitude—as a tentative way5 of explaining why unlikely disasters
are so effective for persuasion purposes (he also opines that ignorance of basic
probability concepts in the general population also plays a large part—a belief that
4 Riker’s “Principles of Dispersal and Dominance” were roundly criticized—which seemed rather
unfair given that the book was posthumously published on the basis of his notes.
5 Tversky and Kahneman (1992) probably hadn’t developed their theory sufficiently when Riker
penned his book chapter.

I, as a former mathematics teacher, share wholeheartedly). Third, Riker expounds

a cogent argument for why rhetors engage in rhetoric in the first place (instead of
perhaps Riker’s (1986) preferred art of heresthetic, which I explicate on in our next
chapter)—because politicians, particularly, are often locked into political ideologies
that they can’t abandon for fear of alienating their supporter base. Otherwise stated,
for Riker a public policy salesperson may not necessarily be promoting a policy
because they believe that it is good, but because they have little other choice (which
leads me to note that I am not the only cynic in the scholarly academy—or perhaps
us rhetorical types are the last of the realists in an academy full of optimists). Finally,
Riker (1990, p. 48) alludes to the palatability of rhetorical flavoring, which I extend
below in my concept of “words with unexamined power”.
3.3 New Approaches for the Public Policy Salesperson
Despite its long and distinguished history, the study of rhetoric still has room to
grow as academics borrow from other disciplines and react to new technologies and
new meanings imparted to old words. I briefly review some promising relatively new
avenues for the public policy salesperson.
3.3.1 Words with Unexamined Power
Not all words are created equal—in particular, some words have come to be ascribed
with qualities that probably wouldn’t stand up to rational inquiry. One good example
of this trait is the word “efficiency”, which is considered by most people to be
ipso facto good. Thus, we are often presented with a plan for reorganization or
redeployment of government resources with the assurance that it will be efficient—
as if efficiency, in and of itself, is some sort of holy trait worthy of all sacrifices
(especially if an “unknown” minority of the population bears the sacrifice). Yet, this
assumption, that efficiency must be good, really doesn’t stand up to close scrutiny.
Certainly, most of us wouldn’t want inefficient government.6 However, this is an
entirely different matter from pursuing efficiency as an end because it is deemed to
be good. Indeed, if one asks the right questions then it generally becomes quickly
apparent that efficiency is usually merely a means to achieving some other end. So, for
instance, if we were to ask why public schools are being consolidated by governments
across the developed world, we would probably be told something along the lines of:
“Because it will allow us to provide better resources”, or “because it will allow us
to reinvest savings into our health system”, etcetera. What we probably won’t hear
by way of reply is: “Because efficiency is good”. That’s because efficiency is not
6Although democracy inevitably must result in inefficiency as we attempt to satisfy the wants of
diverse groups in the absence of price signals.
the desired “good” at all, but rather is merely a means to achieving something that
some people, at least, think is good—better resources or money reinvested for some
other desirable end. Efficiency, when we think about it, is therefore little more than
an exercise in trading-in some things that are thought to be good (smaller schools,
administration staff jobs) for other things thought by some to be good.
Another example of words with unexamined power are the words “independent”
and “expert”. It seems as if Government policy is always being supported by at
least one, if not multiple, independent experts (see Chapter 5 on Blame Games).
However, the idea that someone selected, commissioned and paid by an incumbent
government could somehow be independent really doesn’t stand up to anything other
than a cursory examination. Moreover, it seems that everyone is now an “expert”
irrespective of whether they have a record of expertise. It is hard not to think that the
“independent expert” is a cynical attempt to assert the bona fides of things known to
be untrue—just like the word “democratic” that invariably appears before the name of
communist dictatorships (did someone say Democratic Republic of North Korea?).
There are a number of other words that have power to convince as long as they
remain unexamined—‘fair’, ‘right’, ‘just’ (see Chapter 7) are some more—and it
would seem important for prospective public policy salespersons to be mindful of
these terms when choosing the seasoning that might make their pitch most palatable
(especially in view of the fact that the media seem unwilling to interrogate these
powerful words). Moreover, in the age of the focus group it would be prudent of the
rhetor to test the seasoning applied to their culinary masterpiece ahead of serving it
up for public consumption.
3.3.2 Empirical Rhetoric
Little attention has been given to the nature of empirical rhetoric and, in particular,
how the costs of empirical rhetoric can be used to the public policy salesperson’s
advantage. The classical authorities didn’t live in a big data world, nor did they
have computers (or even the mathematical tools required to conduct econometrics or
data envelopment analyses—see Chapter 6) which probably explains their neglect
of the topic. Indeed, they might not have recognised empirical rhetoric as rhetoric
at all—for Aristotle and his contemporaries’ rhetoric was an art involving invention,
whereas facts were simply extrinsic proofs ready to be used by the rhetor as required.
However, it would be a mistake to think that extrinsic proofs were taken at face
value in Aristotle’s system—indeed, in classical rhetoric what we refer to as empirical
proof might probably be best classified as testimony and the classical authorities had
strict views on what constituted valid testimony. Specifically, classical authorities
wisely declared that “detached persons [are] highly trustworthy” (Aristotle, 2012,
p. 78)—that is, that the witness (in our case, the person or persons providing empirical
proof) should not be subject to any corruption or apprehension of bias. Aristotle
(2012, p. 78) also notes that a witness “who shares the risk of punishment if their
evidence is pronounced false…are valid witnesses”—that is, the presence of a real
consequence (reputational or financial) for providing misleading empirical proof

might be important to ensure prudent empirical witness. He also notes the merits of
testimony given under torture—although (sadly) for most scholars of selling public
policy it is probably not an option to torture persons collating empirical proof!
Fortunately for public policy salespersons (and especially for the consultants that
they hire to produce empirical testimony) the criteria laid out by sages for valid
witness are rarely applied today (see Chapter 6). This means that empirical proof
can be used for persuasion purposes with little risk of being challenged. Moreover,
because media like the sound of an incredible saving in taxpayer dollars, or an
incredible quantum of stimulus for an economy, or an incredible creation of jobs,
empirical proof has a ready audience (who probably won’t interrogate the headline
number at all). This all augurs well for the prospective empirical rhetor (one who
commissions and uses empirical proof for persuasive purposes).
There are costs associated with empirical proof, however, that the public policy
salesperson should remain mindful of. In the first instance, there is the potential
for the media and audience to be lost in a technical discussion—so it is important
to keep the message to a simple soundbite (for example, “Government reforms to
create 10,000 new jobs”) and leave the detail of how it was calculated for some large
imposing document that no-one will ever read.7 Second, empirical proof takes time
(and money) to procure—so it is important for the rhetor to gather the proof, during
the sales campaign planning, before an attempt is made to sell the public policy (and
this has implications given the salience of kairos). Third, there is always a rather
remote possibility that an alternative expert will contest the empirical proof or will
offer alternative empirical testimony. In this last regard the empirical rhetor is well-
advised to take full advantage of the information costs of empirical proof that we
just noted (time) —principally by conducting the study over a long time horizon and
employing as many variables from different sources8 as possible—as this will likely
delay the response to a time well after the sale has been clinched, the public policy
has been implemented, and the fickle media has moved on (see Chapter 6).
3.3.3 New Mediums for Tailored Messaging
The most exciting and promising new avenue for public policy salespersons must be
the rise of social media. The mere existence of an alternative to established media—
which President Kim’s protagonist tells us is ‘fake news’—means that Kairos is now
somewhat less shackled than it has been in the past. That is, the public policy sales-
person may not need to wait until the popular media has taken note of an issue, but
7 Aristotle (2012, p. 145) notes that ‘we must not carry reasoning too far back, or the length of our
argument will cause obscurity…..[and that] it is this simplicity that makes the uneducated more
effective than the educated when addressing popular audiences’. It seems that little has changed in
2,300 years.
8 Preferably sources that are not summarized elsewhere in databases.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
three long hours they—found no sign of a German? The
Coldstream’s sole trophies were some bombs, a box of loaded M.G.
belts, and one rocket!
When they relieved the Coldstream on the 11th January, they
naturally tried their own hand on the problem. By this time they had
discovered themselves to be a “happy” battalion which they
remained throughout. None can say precisely how any body of men
arrives at this state. Discipline, effort, doctrine, and unlimited care
and expense on the part of the officers do not necessarily secure it;
for there have been battalions in our armies whose internal
arrangements were scandalously primitive, whose justice was
neolithic, and yet whose felicity was beyond question. It may be that
the personal attributes of two or three leading spirits in the beginning
set a note to which the other young men, of generous minds,
respond: half a dozen superior N.C.O.’s can, sometimes, raise and
humanise the soul of a whole battalion; but, at bottom, the thing is a
mystery to be accepted with thankfulness. The 2nd Battalion of the
Irish Guards was young throughout, the maker of its own history, and
the inheritor of the Guards’ tradition; but its common background
was ever Warley where they had all first met and been moulded—
officers and men together. So happiness came to them and stayed,
and with it, unity, and, to use the modern slang, “efficiency” in little
things as well as big—confidence and joyous mutual trust that
carries unspoken through the worst of breakdowns.
The blank raid still worried them, and there may have been, too,
some bets on the matter between themselves and the Coldstream.
At any rate 2nd Lieutenant Brew reappears—his C.O. and the deeply
interested battalion in confederacy behind him.
On the night of the 11th of January, Brew took out a small patrol
and entered the German trench that they were beginning to know so
well. He re-cut the wire, made a new gap for future uses, explored,
built two barricades in the trench itself; got bogged up among loose
wire, behind which he guessed (but the time was not ripe to wake up
that hornet’s nest) the German second line lay, and—came back
before dawn with a periscope as proof that the trench was occupied
by daylight. “The enterprise suffered from the men’s lack of
experience in patrolling by night,” a defect that the C.O. took care to
remedy.
As a serious interlude, for milk was a consideration, “the cow at
Red House calved successfully. Signallers, orderlies, and others
were present at the accouchement.” Doubtless, too, the orderly-room
kitten kept an interested eye on the event.
In the afternoon the Brigadier came round, and the C.O. and the
2nd Lieutenant discussed a plan of the latter to cross the German
line and lie up for the day in some disused trench or shell-hole. It
was dismissed as “practical but too risky.” Moreover, at that moment
there was a big “draw” on hand, with the idea of getting the enemy
out of their second line and shelling as they came up. The Battalion’s
private explorations must stand over till it was finished. Three
infantry brigades took part in this game, beginning at dusk—the
Guards on the left, the 114th Brigade in the centre, and the left
battalion of the Nineteenth Division on the right. The 114th Brigade,
which was part of the Thirty-eighth Division, had just relieved the 1st
Guards Brigade. Every one stood to arms with unlimited small-arm
ammunition handy, and as daylight faded over the enemy’s parapets
the 114th sent up a red rocket followed by one green to mark Zero.
There was another half minute to go in which a motor machine-gun
got overtilted and started to gibber. Then the riot began. Both
battalions of the 2nd Guards Brigade, the left half-battalion of the
114th Brigade, and the left of the Nineteenth Division opened rapid
fire with rifles, machine-, and Lewis-guns. At the same time, our
artillery on the right began a heavy front and enfilade bombardment
of the German line while our howitzers barraged the back of it. The
infantry, along the Winchester Road, held their fire, but simulated,
with dummies which were worked by ropes, a line of men in act to
leave the trenches. Last, the artillery on our left joined in, while the
dummies were handled so as to resemble a second line attacking.
To lend verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing
narrative, the guns on the right lifted and began shelling back-lines
and communication-trenches, as though to catch reinforcements,
while the dummies jigged and shouldered afresh on their energetic
ropes. The enemy took the thing in quite the right spirit. He replied
with rifle-fire; he sent up multitudes of red lights, which always
soothed him when upset; and his artillery plastered the ground
behind our centre with big shells that could be heard crumping
somewhere in the interior of France till our own guns, after a ten
minutes’ pause, came down once more. Over and above the
annoyance to him of having to rush up supports into the front line, it
was reasonable to suppose that our deluges of small-arm stuff must
have done him some damage. “The men were all prepared and
determined to enjoy themselves, the machine-gunners were out to
show what a lot of noise they could really make, and the fire must
have been infinitely uncomfortable for German quartermaster-
sergeants, cookers, and others, wandering about behind the line with
rations—if they walk about as much as we do. One of the companies
alone loosed off 7000 rounds, including Lewis-guns, during the
flurry.”
They were back at La Gorgue again on the 13th January, in
divisional rest; the 3rd Guards Brigade relieving them. While there
the C.O. launched a scheme for each subaltern to pick and train six
men on his own, so as to form the very hard core of any patrols or
bombing-parties he might have to lead hereafter. They were
specially trained for spotting things and judging distance at night;
and the tales that were told about them and their adventures and
their confidences would fill several unprintable books. (There was an
officer who did not so much boast as mount, with a certain air, a
glass eye. One night, during patrol, he was wounded in the shoulder,
and brought in by his pet patrol-leader, a private of unquestioned
courage, with, by the way, a pretty taste for feigning abject fear when
he wished to test new men with whom he was working in No Man’s
Land. He rendered first aid to his officer whose wound was not
severe, and then invited him to “take a shquint” at the result. The
officer had to explain that he was blind on that side. Whereupon, the
private, till the doctor turned up, drew loud and lively pictures of the
horror of his wife at home, should it ever come to her knowledge that
her man habitually crawled about France in the dark with an officer
“blinded on the half of him.”)
They rested for nearly a fortnight at La Gorgue, attended a lecture
—“if not instructive, at least highly entertaining”—by Max Abbat, the
well-known French boxer, on “Sport and what England had done for
France,” and had a regimental dinner, when ten of the officers of the
First Battalion came over from Merville with their brigadier and the
Staff Captain, and Lieutenant Charles Moore who had saved the
Battalion Christmas dinners, looked after them all to the very end
which, men say, became nebulous. Some one had been teaching
the Battalion to bomb in style, for their team of thirty returned from
Brigade Bombing School easy winners, by one hundred points in the
final competition. (“Except that the front line is mostly quieter and
always more safe, there is no differ betwixt the front line and
Bombing School.”)
They went back into line and support-billets on the 26th relieving
the 3rd Guards Brigade; and the Battalion itself taking over from the
1st Grenadiers on the Red House sector, Laventie. Apparently, the
front line had been fairly peaceful in their absence, but they noted
that the Grenadier Headquarters seemed “highly pleased to go,” for
the enemy had got in seven direct hits that very day on Red House
itself. One shell had dropped in “the best upstairs bedroom, and two
through the roof.” They took this as a prelude to a Kaiser’s birthday
battle, as there had been reports of loyal and patriotic activities all
down that part of the line, and rumours of increased railway
movement behind it. A generous amount of tapped German wireless
lent colour to the belief. Naturally, Battalion Headquarters at Red
House felt all the weight of the war on their unscreened heads, and
all hands there, from the adjutant and medical officer to the orderlies
and police strengthened the defences with sand-bags. A battalion
cannot be comfortable if its headquarters’ best bedrooms are turned
out into the landscape. No attacks, however, took place, and night
patrols reported nothing unusual for the 26th and 27th January.
A new devilry (January 28) now to be tried were metal tubes filled
with ammonal, which were placed under enemy wire and fired by
electricity. They called them “Bangalore torpedoes” and they were
guaranteed to cut all wire above them. At the same time, dummies,
which had become a fashionable amusement along the line, would
be hoisted by ropes out of our trenches to the intent that the enemy
might be led to man his parapets that our guns might sweep them. It
kept the men busy and amused, and they were more excited when
our snipers reported that they could make out a good deal of
movement in the line in front of Red House, where Huns in small
yellow caps seemed to be “rolling something along the trench.”
Snipers were forbidden to pot-shot until they could see a man’s head
and shoulders clearly, as experience had proved that at so long a
range—the lines here were full two hundred yards apart—“shooting
on the chance of hitting half a head merely made the enemy shy and
retiring.” One gets the impression that, in spite of the “deadening
influence of routine” (some of the officers actually complained of it in
their letters home!) the enemy’s “shyness,” at that moment, might
have been due to an impression that he was facing a collection of
inventive young fiends to whom all irregular things were possible.
They went into brigade reserve at Laventie on the 30th of the
month, with genuine regrets, for the trenches that they had known so
long. “We shall never be as comfortable anywhere else,” one boy
wrote; and the C.O. who had spent so much labour and thought
there lifts up a swan-song which shows what ideal trenches should
be. “Handed over in November in a bad state, they are now as
nearly perfect as a line in winter can be. The parapets are perfect,
the fire-steps all wooden and in good repair. The dug-outs, or rather
the little huts which answer to that name in this swampy country,
their frameworks put up by the engineers and sand-bagged up by
the infantry, are dry and comfortable. The traffic-trench, two boards
wide in most places, is dry everywhere. Wherever trench-boards ran
on sand-bags or mud they have been painted and put on piles. The
wire in front of the line is good.”
They were due for rest at Merville, farther out of the way of fire
than La Gorgue, for the next week or so, but their last day in
Laventie was cheered by an intimate lecture on the origin, nature,
and effects of poison-gas, delivered by a doctor who had seen the
early trials of it at Ypres. He told them in cold detail how the
Canadians slowly drowned from the base of the lung upwards, and
of the scenes of horror in the ambulances. Told them, too, how the
first crude antidotes were rushed out from England in a couple of
destroyers, and hurried up to the line by a fleet of motor ambulances,
so that thirty-six hours after the first experience, some sort of
primitive respirators were issued to the troops. The lecture ended
with assurances that the ’15 pattern helmets were gas-proof for three
quarters of an hour against any gas then in use, if they were properly
inspected, put on and breathed through in the prescribed manner.
Their only diversion at Merville was a fire in the local chicory
factory close to the messes. Naturally, there was no adequate fire-
engine, and by the time that the A.S.C. turned up, amid the cheers of
the crowd whom they squirted with an extincteur, the place was
burned out. “When nothing was left but the walls and some glowing
timbers we heard, creeping up the street, a buzz of admiration and
applause. The crowd round the spot parted, and in strode a figure,
gaunt and magnificent, attired in spotless white breeches, black
boots and gaiters, a blue jacket and a superb silver helmet. He was
the Lieutenant of Pompiers, and had, of course, arrived a bit late
owing to the necessity of dressing for the part. He stalked round the
ring of urban dignities who were in the front row, shook each by the
hand with great solemnity, stared gloomily at the remains of the
house and departed.”
There was no expectation of any imminent attack anywhere, both
sides were preparing for “the spring meeting,” as our people called it;
and leave was being given with a certain amount of freedom. This
left juniors sometimes in charge of full companies, an experience
that helped to bring forward the merits of various N.C.O.’s and men;
for no two company commanders take the same view of the same
private; and on his return from leave the O.C. may often be
influenced by the verdict of his locum tenens to give more or less
responsibility to a particular individual. Thus: Locum Tenens. “I say,
Buffles, while you were away, I took out Hasken—No, not ‘Bullock’
Hasken—‘Spud’—on that double-ditch patrol, out by the dead rifle-
man. He didn’t strike me as a fool.”
Buffles. “Didn’t he? I can’t keep my patience with him. He talks too
much.”
L. T. “Not when he’s outside the wire. And he doesn’t see things in
the dark as much as some of ’em.” (Meditatively, mouth filled with
fondants brought from home by Buffles.) “Filthy stuff this war-
chocolate is.” (Pause.) “Er, what do you think? He’s lance already.”
Buffles. “I know it. I don’t think he’s much of a lance either. Well ...”
L. T. “Anyhow, he’s dead keen on night jobs. But if you took him
once or twice and tried him.... He is dead keen.... Eh?”
Buffles. “All right. We’ll see. Where is that dam’ logbook?” Thus
the matter is settled without one direct word being spoken, and
“Spud” Hasken comes to his own for better or for worse.
On the 7th February, they were shifted, as they had anticipated, to
the left of the right sector of the divisional front, which meant much
less comfortable trenches round Pont du Hem, and badly battered
Headquarters at Winchester House. They relieved the 1st
Coldstream in the line on the 9th, and found at once plenty of work in
strengthening parapets, raising trench-boards, and generally
attending to their creature comforts. (“Never have I known any
battalion in the Brigade that had a good word to say for the way the
other battalions live. We might all have been brides, the way we
went to our new housekeepings in every new place—turnin’ up our
noses at our neighbours.”)
And while they worked, Headquarters were “briefly but accurately”
shelled with whizz-bangs. On the 11th February the pace quickened
a little. There was mining along that front on both sides, and our
miners from two mines had reported they had heard work going on
over their heads only a hundred and twenty yards out from our own
parapets. It might signify that the enemy were working on “Russian
saps”—shallow mines, almost like mole-runs, designed to bring a
storming party right up to our parapets under cover. The miners were
not loved for their theories, for at midnight along the whole Battalion
front, pairs of unhappy men had to lie out on ground-sheets listening
for any sound of subterranean picks. The proceedings, it is recorded,
somewhat resembled a girls’ school going to bed, and the men said
that all any one got out of the manœuvres was “blashts of ear-ache.”
But, as the Diary observes, if there were any mining on hand, the
Germans would naturally knock off through the quietest hours of the
twenty-four.
In some ways it was a more enterprising enemy than round the
Red House, and they felt, rather than saw, that there were patrols
wandering about No Man’s Land at unseemly hours. So the Battalion
sent forth a couple of Lewis-gunners with their weapon, two bombers
with their bombs, and one telephonist complete with field telephones.
These, cheered by hot drinks, lay up a hundred yards from our
parapets, installed their gun in an old trench, and telephoned back
on prearranged signals for Very lights in various directions to illumine
the landscape and invite inspection. “The whole scheme worked
smoothly. In fact, it only wanted a few Germans to make it a
complete success.” And the insult of the affair was that the enemy
could be heard whistling and singing all night as they toiled at their
own mysterious jobs. In the evening, just as the Battalion was being
relieved by the Coldstream, a defensive mine, which was to have
been exploded after the reliefs were comfortably settled in, had to go
up an hour before, as the officer in charge, fearing that the Germans
who were busy in the same field might break into his galleries at any
moment, did not see fit to wait. The resulting German flutter just
caught the end of the relief, and two platoons of No. 1 Company
were soundly shelled as they went down the Rue du Bacquerot to
Rugby Road. However, no one was hurt. The men of the 2nd
Battalion were as unmoved by mines as were their comrades in the
1st. They resented the fatigue caused by extra precautions against
them, but the possibilities of being hoisted sky-high at any moment
did not shake the Celtic imagination.
While in Brigade Reserve for a couple of days No. 1 Company
amused itself preparing a grim bait to entice German patrols into No
Man’s Land. Two dummies were fabricated to represent dead
English soldiers. “One, designed to lie on its back, had a face
modelled by Captain Alexander from putty and paint which for
ghastliness rivalled anything in Madame Tussaud’s. The frame-work
of the bodies was wire, so they could be twisted into positions
entirely natural.” While they were being made, on the road outside
Brigade Headquarters at Pont du Hem, a French girl came by and
believing them to be genuine, fled shrieking down the street. They
were taken up to the front line on stretchers, and it chanced that in
one trench they had to give place to let a third stretcher pass. On it
was a dead man, whom no art could touch.
Next night, February 15, between moonset and dawn, the grisliest
hour of the twenty-four, Lieutenant Pym took the twins out into No
Man’s Land, arranging them one on its face and the other on its back
in such attitudes as are naturally assumed by the old warped dead.
“Strapped between the shoulders of the former, for the greater
production of German curiosity, was a cylinder sprouting india-rubber
tubes. This was intended to resemble a flammenwerfer.” Hand- and
rifle-grenades were then hurled near the spot to encourage the
theory (the Hun works best on a theory) that two British patrols had
fought one another in error, and left the two corpses. At evening, the
Lewis-gun party and a brace of bombers lay out beside the kill, but it
was so wet and cold that they had to be called in, and no one was
caught. And all this fancy-work, be it remembered, was carried out
joyously and interestedly, as one might arrange for the conduct of
private theatricals or the clearance of rat-infested barns.
On the 16th they handed over to the 9th Welsh of the Nineteenth
Division, and went back to La Gorgue for two days’ rest. Then the
2nd Guards Brigade moved north to other fields. The “spring
meeting” that they talked about so much was a certainty somewhere
or other, but it would be preceded, they hoped, by a period of
“fattening up” for the Division. (“We knew, as well as the beasts do,
that when Headquarters was kind to us, it meant getting ready to be
killed on the hoof—but it never put us off our feed.”) Poperinghe, and
its camps, was their immediate destination, which looked, to the
initiated, as if Ypres salient would be the objective; but they had
been promised, or had convinced themselves, that there would be a
comfortable “stand-easy” before they went into that furnace, of which
their 1st Battalion had cheered them with so many quaint stories.
Their first march was of fifteen miles through Neuf and Vieux-
Berquin—and how were they to know what the far future held for
them there?—to St. Sylvestre, of little houses strung along its typical
pavé. Only one man fell out, and he, as is carefully recorded, had
been sick the day before. Thence, Wormhoudt on the 22nd
February, nine miles through a heavy snow-storm, to bad billets in
three inches of snow, which gave the men excuse for an inter-
company snowball battle. The 1st Battalion had thankfully quitted
Poperinghe for Calais, and the 2nd took over their just vacated
camp, of leaky wooden huts on a filthy parade-ground of frozen
snow at the unchristian hour of half-past seven in the morning. On
that day 2nd Lieutenant Hordern with a draft of thirty men joined from
the 7th Entrenching Battalion. (“All winter drafts look like sick
sparrows. The first thing to tell ’em is they’ll lose their names for
coughing, and the next is to strip the Warley fat off ’em by virtue of
strong fatigues.”) They were turned on to digging trenches near their
camp and practice-attacks with live bombs; this being the beginning
of the bomb epoch, in which many officers believed, and a good few
execrated. At a conference of C.O.’s of the Brigade at Headquarters
the Brigadier explained the new system of trench-attack in
successive waves about fifteen yards apart. The idea was that if the
inevitable flanking machine-gun fire wiped out your leading wave,
there was a chance of stopping the remainder of the company before
it was caught.
A lecture on the 1st March by the Major-General cheered the new
hands. He told them that “there was a great deal of work to be done
in the line we were going into. Communication-trenches were
practically non-existent and the front parapet was not continuous. All
this work would have to be done by the infantry, as the Divisional
R.E. would be required for a very important line along the Canal and
in front of the town of Ypres.” One of the peculiarities of all new lines
and most R.E. corps is that the former is always out of condition and
the latter generally occupied elsewhere.
Their bombing-practice led to the usual amount of accidents, and
on the 2nd March Lieutenant Keenan was wounded in the hand by a
premature burst; four men were also wounded and one of them died.
Next day, when their Quartermaster’s party went to Calais to take
over the 1st Battalion’s camp there, they heard of the fatal accident
at bomb-practice to Lord Desmond FitzGerald and the wounding of
Lieutenant Nugent and Father Lane-Fox. They sent Captains J. S. N.
FitzGerald and Witts, and their Sergeant-Major and Drum-Major to
FitzGerald’s funeral.
On the 6th March they entrained at Poperinghe for Calais, where
the whole Brigade lay under canvas three miles out from the town
beside the Calais-Dunkirk road. “The place would have been very
nice, as the Belgian aviation ground, in the intervals of dodging the
Belgian aviators, made a fine parade and recreation ground, but life
in tents was necessarily marred by continued frost and snow.” More
intimately: “The bell-tents are all right, but the marquees leak in the
most beastly manner. There are only a few places where we can
escape the drips.”
Here they diverted themselves, and here Sir Douglas Haig
reviewed them and some Belgian artillery, which, as it meant
standing about in freezing weather, was no diversion at all. But their
“Great Calais First Spring Meeting” held on Calais Sands, in some
doubt as to whether the tide would not wipe out the steeple-chase
course, was an immense and unqualified success. Every soul in the
Brigade who owned a horse, and several who had procured one,
turned out and rode, including Father Knapp, aged fifty-eight. There
were five races, and a roaring multitude who wanted to bet on
anything in or out of sight. The Battalion bookmaker was a second
lieutenant—at home a barrister of some distinction—who, in fur coat,
brown bowler of the accepted pattern, and with a nosegay of artificial
flowers in his buttonhole, stood up to the flood of bets till they
overwhelmed him; and he and his clerk “simply had to trust to people
for the amounts we owed them after the races.” Even so, the
financial results were splendid. The mess had sent them into the fray
with a capital of 1800 francs, and when evening fell on Calais Sands
they showed a profit of 800 francs. The star performance of the day
was that of the C.O.’s old charger “The Crump,” who won the
steeple-chase held an hour after winning the mile, where he had
given away three stones. His detractors insinuated that he was the
only animal who kept within the limits of the very generous and
ample course laid out by Captain Charles Moore. There followed a
small orgy of Battalion and inter-Battalion sports and amusements—
football competitions for men and officers, with a “singing
competition” for “sentimental, comic, and original turns.” Oddly
enough, in this last the Battalion merely managed to win a
consolation prize, for a private who beat a drum, whistled, and told
comic tales in brogue. It may have been he was the great and only
“Cock” Burne or Byrne of whom unpublishable Battalion-history
relates strange things in the early days. He was eminent, even
among many originals—an elderly “old soldier,” solitary by
temperament, unpredictable in action, given to wandering off and
boiling tea, which he drank perpetually in remote and unwholesome
corners of the trenches. But he had the gift, with many others, of
crowing like a cock (hence his nom-de-guerre), and vastly annoyed
the unhumorous Hun, whom he would thus salute regardless of time,
place, or safety. To this trick he added a certain infinitely monotonous
tom-tomming on any tin or box that came handy, so that it was easy
to locate him even when exasperated enemy snipers were silent. He
came from Kilkenny, and when on leave wore such medal-ribbons as
he thought should have been issued to him—from the V.C. down; so
that when he died, and his relatives asked why those medals had not
been sent them, there was a great deal of trouble. Professionally, he
was a “dirty” soldier, but this was understood and allowed for. He
regarded authority rather as an impertinence to be blandly set aside
than to be argued or brawled with; and he revolved in his remote and
unquestioned orbits, brooding, crowing, drumming, and morosely
sipping his tea, something between a poacher, a horse-coper, a
gipsy, and a bird-catcher, but always the philosopher and man of
many queer worlds. His one defect was that, though difficult to coax
on to the stage, once there and well set before an appreciative
audience, little less than military force could haul “Cock” Byrne off it.
They celebrated St. Patrick’s Day on the 14th March instead of the
17th, which was fixed as their date for removal; and they wound up
the big St. Patrick dinners, and the Gaelic Football Inter-company
Competition (a fearsome game), with a sing-song round a bonfire in
the open. Not one man in six of that merry assembly is now alive.
The Salient for the First Time

They marched out of Calais early on the 17th March, through
Cassel, and Major the Hon. A. C. S. Chichester joined on transfer
from the 1st Battalion as Second in Command. Poperinghe was
reached on the afternoon of the 18th, a sixteen-mile march in
suddenly warm weather, but nobody fell out. The town, crowded with
troops, transport, and traffic of every conceivable sort, both smelt
and looked unpleasant. It was bombed fairly regularly by enemy
planes, so windows had long since ceased to be glazed; and at
uncertain intervals a specially noxious gun, known as “Silent Susy,”
sent into its populated streets slim shells that arrived unfairly before
the noise of their passage. But neither bombs nor shells interfered
with the cinemas, the “music hall,” the Y.M.C.A. or other diversions,
for every one in “Pop” was ipso facto either going into the Salient or
coming out, and in both cases needed the distraction of the words
and pictures of civilised life. They lay there for a few days, and on
the 26th March about midnight, in a great quiet, they entered Ypres,
having entrained, also with no noise whatever, from Poperinghe. The
Diary, rarely moved to eloquence, sets down: “It was an impressive
sight not to be forgotten by those who were present, as we threaded
our way through the wrecked and shattered houses. Those of the
Battalion who knew it before had not seen it since the dark days of
November ’14, when with the 1st Battalion they played their part in
the glorious First Battle of Ypres, a fight never to be forgotten in the
annals of the Irish Guards.”
Emery Walker Ltd. del. et sc.
THE YPRES SALIENT
Second Battalion Actions
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY EMERY WALKER LTD., LONDON
The impression on the new hands, that is, the majority of men and
officers, struck in and stayed for years after. Some compared their
stealthy entry to tip-toeing into the very Cathedral of Death itself; and
declared that heads bowed a little and shoulders hunched, as in
expectation of some stroke upon the instant. Also that, mingled with
this emotion, was intense curiosity to know what the place might look
like by day. (“And God knows Ypres was no treat to behold, then or
after—day or night. The way most of us took it, was we felt ’twas The
Fear itself—the same as meeting up with the Devil. I do not
remember if ’twas moonlight or dark when we came in that first time.
Dark it must have been though, or we felt it was, and there was a lot
of doings going on in that darkness, such as Military Police, and men
whispering where we was to go, and stretchers, and parties carrying
things in the dark, in and out where the houses had fallen by lumps.
And there was little blue lights showing here and there and around,
and the whole stink of the Salient, blowing back and forth upon us,
the way we’d get it up our noses for ever. Yes—and there was
transport on the pavé, wheels going dam’ quick and trying, at the
same time, not to make a noise, if ye understand.
“And I remember, too, voices out of holes low down betwixt the
rubbish-heaps. They would be the troops in cellars over against the
Cloth Hall, I expect. And ye could hear our men breathing at the
halts, and the kit squeaking on their backs, and we marching the way
we was striving not to break eggs. I know I was.”)
At the time no one seemed to have noticed the peculiarity of the
Salient, which, like Verdun, appears at night surrounded by a ring of
searchlights and artillery; so that on going forward one feels as
though one were altogether cut off from the rest of the front, a target
open to every fire.
They were welcomed on the morning of the 27th March by three
shells well and truly placed, one after the other, in the courtyard of
the Convent where Battalion H.Q. stood. Six N.C.O.’s and men were
wounded, of whom Sergeant McGuinn died a few hours later. This
was the prelude to a night-long bombardment from a battery
evidently told off for the job, which opening at eleven kept it up till ten
of the morning of the 28th, when it ceased, and the remainder of the
day was quiet. One must remember that the enemy used Ypres
through the years as their gunnery school officers’ training-ground.
The 29th March was also a quiet day for the Battalion. There was,
naturally, no walking about, or any distraction from the wonder where
the next blast of fire would choose to fall, a sensation of
helplessness which is not good for the nerves. They were the right
Reserve Battalion of the Right Brigade, which, elsewhere, would
have been equivalent to being in the front line, but Ypres had its own
scale of sufferings. They worked quietly on repairs from dusk till the
first light of dawn in their trenches beyond the Canal. From daylight
to dusk again they lay up in dug-outs for the most part, and all fires
that showed smoke were forbidden. But a race accustomed to peat
can miraculously make hot tea over a few fragments of ammunition-
boxes or a fistful of stolen coke, even in the inner bowels of a sealed
dug-out. Any signs of life were punished by visits from observation-
planes or a shelling from one flank or the other; for the enemy
commanded practically all their trenches, and this implied a constant
building and repair of traverses and blindages. It took them three
hours to relieve the 1st Coldstream in the front line on the night of
the 30th March, and during relief the reserve trench which was being
taken over by No. 4 Company under Captain Eric Greer (he had
reverted to Company Officer on Major Chichester’s arrival as Second
in Command) was shelled and badly knocked about. There were
only eight men wounded, however, and the company was “perfectly
cool throughout.” (“When you know ye may be for it every minute,
you can not be more frightened than frightened. The same as getting
drunk, I think. After a while—dead-drunk ye get, and dead-drunk ye
stay. Ah, but they was genteel trenches and pleasant-spoken Jerries
down at Laventie where we’d come from, in front of Red House and
all!”)
The last day of March brought them for one breathless half-hour
the heaviest shelling they had yet undergone; but it ended, as so
many such outbursts did, in nothing but a few slight wounds, and a
searching of the Menin road by night with big stuff that roared and
rattled on what remained of the tortured stones. One could always
know when Ypres city had been shelled afresh, by the pools of blood
on the pavé in the raw morning or some yet undisposed-of horse
which told that the night-hawking processions of the transport had
caught it once again. Their daily lives in the front and reserve line
were dark, confined, and unsavoury. One officer was ill-advised
enough to pry into the vitals of his dug-out. (“When I arrived, it did
not look so bad, as the floor was covered with sand-bags as usual.”)
A strong-stomached orderly turned in to remove a few. He found no
less than six layers of them, progressively decaying; then floor-
boards of a fabulous antiquity, and last the original slime of ’14’s
corruption. It was neglectful, but men who may be blown out of this
life any hour of the twenty-four do not devote themselves to the
continuities of house-cleaning.
In Ypres city that spring not one single building was habitable,
though many of them still retained the shapes of human dwellings.
The Battalion messes were all underground in cellars, a couple of
which, with a hole knocked through the dividing walls, make a good
anteroom; but their sole light came from a small window which also
gave passage to the stove-pipe. A tired man could doze down there,
in gross fuggy warmth and a brooding stillness broken only by the
footsteps of small parties moving without ostentation till the triple
whistle of the aeroplane-watchers sent feet scurrying loudly to cover.
Those who have known of both terrains say Verdun Salient, by
reason of its size, contours, and elevation was less of a permanent
tax on the morale than the flatness and confinement of Ypres. One
could breathe in certain spots round Verdun; look out over large
horizons from others; and solid, bold features of landscape
interposed between oneself and the enemy. The thickness and
depth, too, of all France lay behind for support. In the Salient it was
so short a distance from Calais or Boulogne that one could almost
hear the Channel threatening at one’s back, and wherever wearied
eyes turned, forwards or flank wise, the view was closed by low,
sullen rises or swells of ground, held and used in comfort and at
leisure by an established enemy.
They reckoned time in the trenches by the amount of shelling that
fell to their share. A mere passage of big stuff overhead seeking its
butts in the town did not count any more than excited local attacks to
left or right of the immediate sector; and two or three men wounded
by splinters and odds-and-ends would not spoil the record of “a quiet
day.” Occasionally, as the tides and local currents of attack shifted,
our guns behind them would wake up to retaliation or direct
punishment. Sometimes the enemy’s answer would be immediate;
sometimes he accepted the lashing in silence till nightfall, and then
the shapeless town would cower and slide still lower into its mounds
and rubbish-heaps. Most usually a blow on one side or the other
would be countered, it seemed to the listeners in the trenches
between, exactly as in the prize-ring. But the combatants were
heavy-, middle-, and light-weight guns, and in place of the thump of
body blows, the jar and snap of jabs and half-hooks, or the patter of
foot-work on the boards, one heard the ponderous Jack Johnsons
arrive, followed by the crump of the howitzers, and then the in-and-
out work of field artillery quickening to a clinch, till one side or the
other broke away and the silence returned full of menaces of what
would happen next time “if you hit my little brother again.” A local
and concentrated shelling of the Battalion’s second line one day,
which might have developed bloodily, was damped down in three
minutes, thanks to a telephone and guns that worked almost
simultaneously. Nobody but themselves noticed it in the big arena.
Suddenly on the morning of the 9th April (it was due, perhaps, to
some change of troops on the front) the enemy snipers and
machine-guns woke up; and Lieutenant Kinahan, a keen, well-
trusted, and hard-working officer, was shot through the head by a
sniper, and died at once. By next day, Captain Greer of No. 4
Company had the pleasure to report that his C.S.M.’s little party of
snipers had “accounted” for the killer. Sniping on that front just then
was of a high order, for the local enemy had both enterprise and skill,
with rifle and bomb.
Their trenches were a little below the average of those parts, that
is to say, almost impossible. A consoling local legend had it, indeed,
that they were so vile that a conference of generals had decided to
abandon them, but that, hearing the Guards Division were under
orders for the Salient, forebore, saying: “We’ll put the Guards in ’em
and if they can’t make ’em decent we’ll give ’em away to Jerry.” And
in addition to repairs and drainage (“County Council work,” as one
sufferer called it) there were the regular fatigues which, as has been
pointed out many times, more than any battle break down and tire
the body and soul of the soldier. Here is one incidental, small job,
handed out as all in a night’s work. The officer speaks. “It was
particularly beastly. We were supposed to make a dummy machine-
gun emplacement for the enemy to shell. I took forty men to meet the
R.E. officer at a pleasant little rendezvous ‘two hundred yards north-
west from Hell Fire Corner.’ Of course, we were sent to the wrong
place to look for that Sapper; and, of course, the Boche was shelling
the road on both sides of us. That was about half-past nine. Then we
drew our stuff to carry up. There were two sheets of iron, each 12 by
6, and any quantity of sand-bags, shovels, and timber. We had to
travel a mile and a half by road, then up a communication-trench,
and then a few hundred yards across the open. That was all. Well, it
took four men to carry each of those cursed pieces of iron on the
level, open road. You couldn’t get ’em up a trench at all. But we hung
on to ’em, and about one o’clock we had covered the road-bit of the
journey and were half-way from the road to the place where we had
to build our blasted dummy. Then we got on to ground absolutely
chewed up by shell-holes and old trenches. You couldn’t go a foot
without falling. When we’d struggled a bit longer with those sheets,
we simply had to chuck ’em as unshiftable; and make the best
dummy we could of sand-bags only. Imagine two parties of four
tottering Micks apiece trying to sweat those tin atrocities across that
sort of country! And then, of course, a mist got up and we were lost
in the open—lovely!—and our guide, who swore he knew the way,
began to lead us round in circles. The R.E. and I spotted what he
was doing, because we kept an eye on the stars when we could see
’em. So, after any amount of bother, we all got home. There were
bullets flying about occasionally (that’s part of the job), and we ran
into some shelling on our way back at four in the morning when the
Huns could see. But what I mean to say is that if it hadn’t been for
those two dam’ sheets which weren’t really needed at all, a dozen
men could have done the whole business straight off. And that was
just one small fatigue!”
Nothing of all this worried the morale of the men. They took it all
as a part of the inexplicable wonder of war, which orders that the
soldier shall do what he is told, and shall stay where he may be put.
A platoon was being inspected that month in Ypres. Suddenly
shelling opened some distance off, at first, but methodically drawing
nearer to dredge the town, till at last the shrapnel burst almost
directly overhead. The men stood rigidly to attention without moving
a muscle, till the officer gave them orders to take cover. Then they
disappeared into the nearest cellar. Later on, it occurred to the officer
that the incident “though commonplace was not without its
interesting aspect.”
They lay at Poperinghe in divisional rest from the 13th till the 19th
April, during which time Lieutenant Nutting, and 2nd Lieutenant
Reford from the 11th Notts and Derby Regiment, joined for duty.
Thence they shifted over to camp near Vlamertinghe in Brigade
Reserve as left Battalion of the left Brigade.
On the 21st April Lieutenant R. McNeill joined, and on the 24th
they went into the line to relieve the 1st Coldstream in the left sector
—as unpleasing a piece of filth as even the Salient could furnish.
Five days before their entry it had been raided and blown in, till it
was one muddled muck-heap of wreckage and corpses. Front-line
repairs, urgently needed, could only be effected in the dark; traffic-
and communication-trenches had to be spasmodically cleaned out
between “crumps,” and any serious attack on them during their first
turn would have meant ruin.
The enemy tried a bombing raid on the night of the 28th-29th,
which was beaten off, without casualty, by our bombs, rifles, and
machine-guns. Nothing worse overtook them, and the bill for their
five days’ turn was one man killed and ten wounded, of whom three
did not quit duty. But the mere strain was poisonous heavy. They
handed over thankfully to their opposite number, the Coldstream, on
the 29th, and lay up in Ypres Gaol. “The prison is a fine example of
the resistance to shell-fire of brick walls if they are thick enough.”
Verdun forts, at the far end of the line, were learning by now that the
best and thickest stone-facings fly and flake beneath the jar of the
huge shell that the enemy used against them, while ancient and
unconsidered brick-work over deep earth cores, though it collapses
into lumps hardly distinguishable from mould, yet gives protection to
the men in the galleries beneath.
May-Day at Ypres opened with “a good exhibition” of German
shooting. The enemy spent the whole day shelling the water-tower—
a metal tank on a brick pedestal—close to the prison. Every shell fell
within fifty yards, till the sole object that escaped—for a while—was
the tower itself. The “weather being hot and dry,” some of our officers
thought good to bathe in the Canal, but, not being water-towers,
found it better to come out before a flight of “crumps” found them.
Looking back upon this, one of the bathers counted that bath as his
own high-water mark of heroism. (“There were things in the Canal,
you know.”)
They went up on the 2nd May, relieving the Coldstream in the
same evil sector, and the enemy machine-guns filling the dark with
bullets as effectively as and more cheaply than artillery, killed one of

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Selling Public Policy: Rhetoric,

Heresthetic, Ethics and Evidence 1st

Astrobiology: Science, Ethics, and Public Policy 1st

Cambridge IGCSE and O Level History Workbook 2C - Depth

International Public Health Policy and Ethics (2nd

Business and Society: Stakeholders, Ethics, Public

Mary Warnock : Ethics, Education and Public Policy in

Healthcare Law and Ethics and the Challenges of Public

Natural Law & Government: After The COVID-19 Revolution

Public Finance and Public Policy 6th Edition Jonathan

Selling Public Policy

ISBN 978-981-99-0380-1 ISBN 978-981-99-0381-8 (eBook)

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023

Appendix 1—The Rhetorical Tropes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

7 Ethics: Right and Wrong Can Be Contestable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101

Keywords Selling public policy · Policy success · Public policy

1.1 Motivation for the Book (and Who It Is For)

Accordingly, some of the material that follows—especially the examples I employ

1.2 The Public Policy Product Lifecycle

Fig. 1.1 The public policy

1.3 Outline of the Book

1.4 What This Book Is

First, and foremost, I have endeavored to provide an entertaining read. When it

1.5 What This Book Is Not

This is not a textbook—nor is it meant to convey in-depth knowledge of every

Adelman J (2013) The essential Hirschman. Princeton University Press, Princeton

Butt P (2004) Butterworth’s concise Australian legal dictionary. Butterworths, Chatswood

Keywords Policy success · Kairos · Framing contests · Selling public policy

2.1 What Is Public Policy Success?

of democratic leadership implying that a product need only be sold to a politically

2.2 Lessons from the Literature

2.2.1 A View of Policy Success for the Public Policy

In the next section I explicate on why it is important for salespersons to be closely

2.3 New Approaches for the Public Policy Salesperson

2.3.1 The Distributions of Costs and Benefits Over Time

2.3.3 Framing Contests

Framing contest occur between supporters and opponents of a public policy in

2.4 A Guide to Using Policy Success to Clinch the Sale

Fig. 2.1 A heuristic for success in selling public policy

BBC (2016) Chilcot report: findings at-a-glance. 6 July 2016

Keywords Rhetoric · Aristotle · Riker · Hirschman · Rhetoric of reaction · Public

3.1 What Is Rhetoric?

1 Moonbi has a population of just 500.

Here we see a fine example of recognizing an opportunity to persuade (Kairos—

3.2 Lessons from the Literature

3.2.1 Lessons from the Classics

CONCLUSION: Therefore I (President Kim) should develop an intercontinental

3.2.2 Lessons from Public Policy Analysis

The late, great, Albert Hirschman—former freedom fighter, underground operative,

Table 3.1 Hirschman (1991) typology of progressive and reactionary rhetoric

penned his book chapter.

I, as a former mathematics teacher, share wholeheartedly). Third, Riker expounds

3.3 New Approaches for the Public Policy Salesperson

3.3.1 Words with Unexamined Power

3.3.2 Empirical Rhetoric

consequence (reputational or financial) for providing misleading empirical proof

3.3.3 New Mediums for Tailored Messaging

The Salient for the First Time

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