The Politician

Nick Machiavelli

The PoliticianA Companion to Niccolò Machiavelli’s The Prince

Foreword by William Landon

ISBN 978-3-030-39090-7 ISBN 978-3-030-39091-4 (eBook)https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39091-4

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Nick MachiavelliIndependent ResearcherFlorence, Italy

Foreword by William LandonNorthern Kentucky UniversityHighland Heights, KY, USA

FOR MY WIFE“… nobile di stirpe, d’animo e d’intenti”

vii

An IntroductIon

The advice in this book (i.e., in The Politician) is based upon its author’s knowledge of history, a deep familiarity with politics, lived experience, and learned personal observations.1 It is filled with allusions to contemporary political leaders, and to their antecedents, and it is written in a staccato style, with hearty doses of irony, wit, and charm. And, at least as I read the text, I get the distinct impression that its author believes time is fleeting; The Politician is an urgent call to apply its rules and to stand for election—if you dare.

These descriptors and impressions, succinctly, are, in my estimation, what The Politician “is”. A discerning reader will likely come to conclu-sions which are similar. So then, if we can say with some degree of cer-tainty what The Politician “is”, it might also be helpful to suggest what it is “not”, or even better, what it intentionally lacks or neglects to be.

The Politician eschews the traditional western ethical and moral touch-stones which mandate what is “right” and what is “wrong”. In fact, those millennia old hallmarks are replaced by a different form of morality, which might be referred to as “political necessity”—or doing that which is

1 I have neither had the pleasure of meeting “Nick Machiavelli” nor the pleasure of getting to know his real name. Personally, he has chosen to remain mystery—both to me and to you, his readers. But, given that “Nick’s” The Politician pulls back the opaque curtain on political systems, running for office, and winning elections, I can certainly understand why he has chosen to remain anonymous. There are, as you might imagine, a number of secrets that he spills; secrets that “Nick’s” colleagues would rather not be made public.

Foreword

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required to be a success, without recourse to judgments of “ought-ness” and “nought-ness”.

The Politician’s motto might well be, “apply the amoral methods rec-ommended herein to gain power, while appearing to be ‘good’ (don’t worry if you aren’t!) and, without getting caught.” In the swashbuckling and all-too-blustery world of twenty-first-century politics, such a présis is tantalizing and attractive. And while The Politician is uniquely situated and pitched to our particular moment in time, it also resonates with an important part of the western political tradition, which originated in Florence, Italy, in the first two decades of the sixteenth century.

To illustrate this latter point, a very simple exercise is useful. Replace “The Politician” with “The Prince” in the text above and the echoes between these texts, cultures, and traditions become crystalline. This is not to say that the author of The Politician is anything like as severe as Niccolò Machiavelli, author of The Prince, in that wholesale slaughter and politically necessary murders are, mercifully, shunned; rather, it is to sug-gest that many of the ideas which are foundational to Machiavelli’s way of thinking about and viewing the political landscape are alive and well in “Nick Machiavelli’s” The Politician. And it is with these themes in mind that I recommend reading The Politician.

In the remainder of this introduction I will guide you through some of the most important parts of Niccolò Machiavelli’s life, and we will spend time together examining some of the most essential themes in his The Prince. This background will deepen your reading of The Politician, all while placing it in the body of literature indebted to Machiavelli’s most famous book.

As you might imagine, our agenda is, out of necessity, high level (there have been more studies written about Machiavelli than even William Shakespeare), but the notes included in this introduction will provide a layer of bibliographical richness that ought to prove useful to readers who wish to pursue key subjects in greater depth.2 It ought also to be noted that the very nature of this exercise is subjective.

2 Robert Black, Machiavelli (New York: Routledge: 2013), p. xviii. Black’s is probably the most notable of the recent biographies written on Machiavelli. For another notable biogra-phy by one of Italy’s finest historians of the Renaissance, see Roberto Ridolfi, The Life of Niccolò Machiavelli, trans. Cecil Grayson (New York: Routledge, 2010). Also, I would rec-ommend Quentin Skinner’s classic study Machiavelli (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981).

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By “subjective”, I mean that there are a number of books which nearly every scholar of Machiavelli would argue are essential to understanding the nature of the famous Florentine’s ideas, but there are other books which are loved by some scholars which are hated by other scholars of equal merit. Debates over Machiavelli-centric scholarship are fierce, but they will not distract from our efforts. They will, however, where appro-priate, be noted for the reader in the footnotes.

Having set the stage, let’s get to the game.And here, we must make a fundamentally important distinction.

Machiavelli’s The Prince is a record of his observations, experiences, and recommendations. It is not, however, autobiographical in the sense that it documented how he lived his own life.3 Contrary to what you might expect, Niccolò Machiavelli was, on the whole, a very decent man, an honest per-son, a good friend, and a devoted servant to the Florentine Republic. He was a rather poor husband, but he did in fact love his wife and their children.

One might argue, furthermore, that because Machiavelli was a “good” person, that he was incapable of practicing the advice that he meted out in The Prince’s brilliant brevity. If he had been able to live as he advised his prince to live, Machiavelli would likely have been a success as he charted his way through the vicissitudes of Florence’s political transitions.

As we will soon see, as a political navigator, at least where his own life was concerned, Machiavelli was something of a failure; dashing his hopes upon the jagged rocks of Renaissance princely rule; in large part because he was a patriot, an idealist, and incapable of keeping his mouth closed when he saw those around him make unwise decisions, or take actions which harmed his beloved Republic. This contrast between Machiavelli the man and Machiavelli the author of The Prince is a tragic irony, which is sometimes glimpsed in his personal correspondence and in the text of his The Prince.

As a result of that book, there are few writers in the western tradition, or in global culture for that matter, whose name is more widely known than Niccolò Machiavelli’s. His surname, stretched into an adjective—

3 If one wants a record of his reflections on his own life, a treasure trove of his personal letters (and letters written to him by friends) survives for the contemporary reader. For the English translation of the complete letters, see Niccolò Machiavelli, Machiavelli and His Friends: Their Personal Correspondence, trans. and eds. James B. Atkinson and David Sices (Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1996)—abbreviated hereafter as Machiavelli, Personal Correspondence. For the Italian originals, see Niccolò Machiavelli, Opere di Niccolò Machiavelli: Volume Terzo: Lettere, ed. Franco Gaeta (Turin: UTET, 1984).

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“Machiavellian”—has been synonymous with amorality, intrigue, and get-ting ahead in the piratical world of politics since almost immediately after his The Prince was posthumously published in 1532. One of the greatest ironies linked directly with the famous Florentine is that while his name is used in a common-place fashion, he is not read all that widely. Proof of this assertion can be found in the following reflections.

Commentators and lay persons alike who bandy about “Machiavellian”, and who use that adjective to deride those with whom they disagree, would be less likely to apply it to politicians and connivers of all sorts if they real-ized that real “Machiavellians” would never be so obviously “Machiavellian”. A better insult for the clumsily discernible application of the ideas con-tained in The Prince ought to be that one is a “failed Machiavellian”.

The genuine article would appear to be an upstanding citizen, a repre-sentative of all that is good about their respective position—all while prac-ticing the most fetid form of self-advancement when in the halls of power—and when unobserved (there is a good dose of this truth in the pages of The Politician). This makes the existence of the true disciple of Machiavellian thought—and let us not deceive ourselves, they surround us and likely lord over us—infinitely more terrifying, because we are unable to recognize them.

Here then are our two Machiavellis. The first was the good citizen, the devout friend, and the patriot. The other Machiavelli is the one who wrote one of the most infamous advice books in the history of the western politi-cal tradition. Is there a way to reconcile these two Machiavellis? Put shortly, yes. If we examine, only briefly, Machiavelli’s patriotism (his love of patria—the “fatherland”), we can come to understand how the good republican citizen could also be the author of The Prince. He wanted his job back.4 But how did he lose his job, and when and how is The Prince linked with Machiavelli’s sacking? We will get to those crucial moments and events in Machiavelli’s life as we wind our way through his biography.

who wAs nIccolò MAchIAvellI? A BrIeF BIogrAphy

Niccolò was born in Florence in 1469, at the beginning of the period that we now call the “High Renaissance”.5 We know very little about his youth, and very little about his family, but we do know that Niccolò’s father

4 There is more to the story. See below for the details.5 J. R. Hale’s classic Machiavelli and Renaissance Italy (London: The English Universities

Press, 1961) is a work of genius in its own right. The manner in which Hale contextualizes

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Bernardo, a lawyer by training, introduced his son quite early to the Latin language and especially to Titus Livy’s Ab Urbe Condita (On the Founding of the City of Rome), a history which tattooed itself onto the young Niccolò’s consciousness.6

The young Machiavelli’s Florence was controlled by Lorenzo de’ Medici—The Magnificent—and it remained under the Medici family’s control until 1494, when they were expelled and replaced by a republican government, headed up by a Dominican Friar named Girolamo Savonarola.7 We know from Niccolò’s early personal correspondence that he neither liked nor trusted the fiery cleric—and that he was quite likely relieved when Savonarola was deposed.8

The historical record is silent where Niccolò’s opinion of Savonarola’s hanging and burning at the hands of the Roman Church is concerned, but those events did prove personally beneficial to Niccolò, who was elected

Machiavelli’s life and literary output in the broader themes which made up the Renaissance is masterful. For a challenging and forceful take on the Renaissance, see Richard Mackenney, Renaissances: The Cultures of Italy, c. 1300–c. 1600 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004); and for what remains the foundational study of the Renaissance in Italy, see Jacob Burckhardt’s 1860 text, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (London: Penguin, 2010).

6 Catherine Atkinson, Debts, Dowries and Donkeys: The Diary of Niccolò Machiavelli’s Father, Messer Bernardo, in Quattrocento Florence (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2002), pp. 137, 142–146. Niccolò’s father, Bernardo, obtained his copy of Livy’s book by agreeing to compile a complete list of geographical features and towns included in it, likely for the Florentine publisher. In 1515, Machiavelli authored The Discourses on the First Ten Books of Titus Livy’s Ab Urbe Condita, a work of republican theoretical genius. Machiavelli’s early linguistic studies in Livy proved indispensable to his mature political thought, and arguably much more important to western republican political traditions than any other work of that period. For a good translation of Machiavelli’s treatise, see The Discourses on Livy, trans. Harvey C. Mansfield and Nathan Tarcov (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996). A new edition of the Discourses, translated by William J. Connell via Cambridge University Press, is planned.

7 The Medici family controlled Florence from 1434 to 1494, from 1513 to 1527, and from 1530 onward. In 1537, the Medici became the Grand Dukes of Florence and Tuscany. See J. R. Hale’s yet to be surpassed Florence and the Medici (London: Thames and Hudson, 1971). For coverage of Girolamo Savonarola see Lauro Martines, Fire in the City: Savonarola and the Struggle for the Soul of Renaissance Florence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). For a wider ranging study of the implications of Savonarola’s political and religious influence, see Lorenzo Polizzotto, The Elect Nation: The Savonarolan Movement in Florence: 1494–1545 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994).

8 Machiavelli noted, “He [Savonarola] acts in accordance with the times and colors his lies accordingly.” Personal Correspondence, letter dated 9 March, 1498, p. 10.

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Second Chancellor to the secular Florentine Republic in May 1498.9 Second Chancellor sounds rather fancy, doesn’t it? In reality, the office was one that we might consider rather mundane. Niccolò was a secretary.

However, he formed close ties with the head of the Florentine Republic, Piero Soderini, and Soderini gave Niccolò special assignments which allowed him to travel and to act as an ambassador on behalf of Florence. Such duties were normally assigned to elected officials who were far more important than Niccolò. In other words, Soderini allowed the Second Chancellor to act above his station.

Such privileges, when combined with Niccolò’s acerbic wit and gargan-tuan intelligence, proved detrimental to his working relationships in the Florentine Chancellery, for he began to treat his direct superior with con-tempt. As a result, Machiavelli earned the unflattering nickname “man-nerino”, which implied that he earned special treatment because he was Piero Soderini’s “puppet” or “minion”.10 Thinking back to themes that we discussed earlier in this introduction, it is helpful to recall that if Machiavelli had been “Machiavellian”, he would never have treated his boss so poorly in such an open fashion. He was human, and susceptible to the belief that there is no need to prepare for future calamities because the present appears so solid and so prosperous.

Indeed, for the better part of fourteen years (from 1498 until 1512) Florence and Machiavelli’s position therein were both solid and prosper-ous. In fact, Niccolò served the Florentine Republic with great distinction, and he ushered in important changes to its military structure which proved to have long-term consequences for western military history and practice more generally.11 All of this is to say that while he might have had person-ality flaws (and what human doesn’t?), he was keenly intelligent and well- placed to assist in Florentine policy-making. But, as noted, he was

9 For an expansive scholarly treatment of this period in Machiavelli’s life, see Peter Godman, From Poliziano to Machiavelli: Florentine Humanism in the High Renaissance (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), pp. 180ff.

10 See J.  R. Hale, Florence and the Medici, p.  92. This unflattering title was given to Machiavelli by a Florentine contemporary of Machiavelli, and chronicler, Bartolommeo Cerretani, in 1507. For that important background, see the important article by Sergio Bertelli, “Machiavelli and Soderini”, Renaissance Quarterly, vol. 28, no. 1 (Spring 1975), pp. 1–16. See page 16 for archival references to Cerretani’s name for Machiavelli.

11 Mikael Hornqvist “‘Perché non si usa allegare i Romani’: Machiavelli and the Florentine militia of 1506”, Renaissance Quarterly, vol. 55., no. 1 (2002), pp. 148–191.

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ill-prepared for the malignity of Fortune’s flood which swept across the Republic in the late summer of 1512.

On 29 August of that year, Medici Cardinal (later Pope Leo X) Giovanni re-took Florence using a large Spanish mercenary army. But first, they sacked the city of Prato, which is just to the north of Florence…, to make a point.

This is how Machiavelli described the massacre:

Having broken through some of the walls, [the Spanish mercenaries] began to force the defenders back and to terrify them. So that, after slight resis-tance, they all fled and the Spaniards took possession of the city, put it to the sack, and massacred the city’s population in a pitiable spectacle of calamity … better than 4,000 died12; the remainder were captured and, through vari-ous means, were obliged to pay ransom. Nor did they spare the virgins cloistered in holy sites, which were all filled with acts of rape and pillage.13

The smoke rising from Prato’s ruins, together with the refugees who fled to Florence from their ransacked homes, was enough to cause Florence’s defenders to surrender.14 The city fell to the Medici on September 1, 1512, when Giuliano (who traveled with Cardinal Giovanni) entered the city. The Florentine Republic lay wheezing on its deathbed, and it finally gave up the ghost on September 14, when the Medici faction tolled the bell at the Palazzo Vecchio to sound a call for a parliament. That body of elected officials agreed two days later to abolish itself, installing a small group of Medici partisans in its place. This marked the end of the secular republic that Machiavelli had served for over fourteen years.

A short time later, Machiavelli was removed from his position as Second Chancellor, banned from crossing the threshold of the Palazzo Vecchio (the “Old Palace” which contained his old office), and forbidden from leaving the Florentine dominion under penalty of a tremendous fine. Knowing what we know about Niccolò, it only seems fit to conclude that the Medici knew what measures would punish him the most. He was cut off from the world of politics altogether. Once again, it is worth recalling

12 The exact number of casualties is not known; records from the time vary from roughly 2000 up to 5000.

13 Machiavelli, Personal Correspondence, letter dated “after” 16 September, 1512, pp. 215–216.

14 Machiavelli was instrumental in creating Florence’s citizen-army. They threw down their weapons and ran when faced with the brutality of the Spanish forces.

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that if Machiavelli had been “Machiavellian”, he would have almost certainly survived the political transition (from Republic to Medici Regime), with his job intact, by carefully minding his words and actions.

Many of his colleagues were in fact “Machiavellian”, meaning that they recognized the threats and the possibilities that came with the Medici restoration of 1512, and they acted accordingly. Those in the republican Florentine government who had kept their heads down, who avoided speaking out against the Medici family, well, many of them held on to their positions in the newly restored Medici government. Such individuals were long-term political survivors—the world is full of them still. Machiavelli was an outspoken and incautious idealist, and idealists rarely survive revolutionary political transitions. Niccolò lived, but only by the skin of his teeth.

He was not only removed from office, but also, a few months after his firing, tortured for his supposed involvement in a plot to assassinate one of the Medici princes. When, under horrific conditions, he could not be made to confess to his part in any such plot, he was sent into a pastoral exile, which provided him with the forced leisure time that he needed to write The Prince.

At this point, we find ourselves in the late summer of 1513. We know from Machiavelli’s personal correspondence that ideas which became cen-tral to The Prince were taking shape, and the careful reader can also gather that by the autumn of that year, Machiavelli had sunk into a very deep depression.

He drank and gambled in San Andrea—the little hamlet in which he lived—from which he could see the tallest of Florence’s famous Renaissance buildings, including the Palazzo Vecchio. It must have been excruciating to be in such close proximity to the city that he loved and defended, but that he was now forbidden from serving, politically at least.

Above all, he wanted two things: the friendship (and patronage) of the Medici family and restoration of his civic appointment in the Florentine government. And it was with these goals in mind that Machiavelli pulled himself out of despair and poured all of his genius into writing The Prince, which he probably finished in December of 1513. Initially, he dedicated his “little book” to Giovanni de’ Medici, who promptly died without ever having seen Machiavelli’s book.15 So, Niccolò re-dedicated The Prince to

15 I have rendered Machiavelli’s original “opuscolo” as “little book” in English. This term is used in one of the most famous letters in the Western tradition, written by Machiavelli to

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Giuliano’s successor, Lorenzo de’ Medici, in 1515.16 It seems unlikely that Lorenzo ever read the presentation copy of The Prince that Niccolò pre-pared for him. On the day when Machiavelli had finally been invited to meet Lorenzo, the Medici prince was more interested in a gift of hunting dogs than in the advice of a disgraced republican.

It is unlikely that Lorenzo ever saw, let alone read, the book that was dedicated to him. Machiavelli’s disappointment was bitter, and he turned away from princes, choosing instead to focus intently on republican his-tory and what we might call “theory”.17

The next few years of Niccolò’s life were filled with disappointment, as he was forced to remain at the fringes of Florentine politics. But then, probably in 1519, he managed to gain the patronage of an important Florentine nobleman named Lorenzo di Filippo Strozzi, who guided Niccolò back into the good graces of the Medici family. As a result of Lorenzo’s patronage, Niccolò dedicated the book of which he was most proud—The Art of War—to him in 1519. Not long thereafter, Machiavelli was commissioned by Giulio de’ Medici (who became Pope Clement VII) to write The Florentine Histories. In that book, Giulio allowed Machiavelli to use his former title, “Second Chancellor of the Florentine Republic”, a title that he had been forbidden from using for nearly a decade. Lorenzo Strozzi’s patronage legitimized Machiavelli’s genius and restored his standing in Florence. Niccolò began, once again, to take part in ambas-sadorial missions on behalf of Florence (and therefore the Medici) while also acting as a political advisor when called upon to do so. The theater of the active political life which had eluded him for nearly a decade was, once again, ushering him onto the stage. Yet, such an encore was fleeting.

One of the most tragic ironies in Machiavelli’s life came near its end. In May 1527, as an army of unpaid protestant mercenaries sacked the city of Rome, the Florentines threw off the yoke of Medici control for the final time, restoring a republican government to the city. At a moment when his brilliance might have been most useful, Machiavelli was overlooked for

his friend, Francesco Vettori. It is dated December 13, 1513, and in it, Machiavelli writes about “de principatibus” or The Prince, for the first time. See Machiavelli, Lettere, p. 428. The translators of Machiavelli’s complete personal letters, into English, rendered the same term as “little study”. See Machiavelli, Personal Correspondence, p. 265.

16 It is almost certain that Machiavelli heavily edited and added to the text of The Prince at this time as well. See note 21.

17 See note 5 for details concerning Machiavelli’s The Discourses, his great statement on republican governments.

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duties for which he was suited because he had become associated with the Medici, and was therefore associated with the enemies of the Republic.

Almost immediately thereafter, a stomach ailment which had plagued him for some time became acute. His illness forced him to retire to his country home in San Casciano, where he was confined to his bed. After having had his confession heard, Niccolò Machiavelli died on June 27, 1527.18 His The Prince, which he never intended to publish, would likely have gone with him to the grave had a copy of it not been saved, copied, and shared by one of his friends.

In 1532, five years after Machiavelli died, The Prince was published for the first time. Initially, its influence and readership spread slowly.19 But, by 1559, its infamous advice had become widely known and its author post-humously condemned as a minion of Satan—even as those who con-demned Machiavelli and his “little book” the most stridently were often the famous Florentine’s greatest admirers and practitioners.20

On the whole, since the Roman Church condemned The Prince and its author, philosophers, theologians, scholars, and critics have tended to

18 There is an apocryphal anecdote regarding Machiavelli’s last moments which stresses that Niccolò expressed his desire to go to hell rather than to heaven because the most inter-esting and brilliant minds of the ancient world would be burning there, in torment, but their conversations would be infinitely more entertaining than that which one would hear in heaven.

19 The first edition of The Prince was published in Rome in 1532 by Antonio Blado, and with full papal blessing. Since 1640, when an English translation of The Prince was published for the first time, new translations have appeared with a degree of relative consistency. In the modern and contemporary eras, however, dozens of editions have been published, meaning that those who are interested in different renderings of The Prince—from Machiavelli’s Florentine to British and American English—are spoiled for choice. Among all of the edi-tions available, my favorite remains George Bull’s Penguin Classics edition. It was first pub-lished in 1961, and Bull’s translation still manages to capture the original’s textures and ironic edges masterfully. See Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, trans. and ed. George Bull (London: Penguin Books, 1961). There is also Angelo Codevilla’s translation, which is nota-ble for the accuracy of its translation and its footnotes, which explain why Codevilla rendered certain complicated words (e.g., virtù) as he did. See Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, trans. and ed. Angelo Codevilla (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997). The best edition of The Prince, overall, is Bill Connell’s, because his translation is excellent, and because he included a number of translated historical documents which trace the reception of The Prince from the time it was written through the twentieth century. This combination is wonderful. See Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince: With Related Documents, Edition 2, trans. and ed. William J. Connell (New York: Bedford St. Martin’s, 2016).

20 In 1559, Machiavelli’s The Prince, together with his other works, was placed among the first class of banned books on the Tridentine Index Librorum Prohibitorum.

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conclude that the advice contained in The Prince is antithetical to tradi-tional morality, but they have also conceded that Machiavelli’s observa-tions concerning how one must act to gain and maintain power are, in fact, accurate. Perhaps it is this stark reality which makes Machiavelli so hated, so feared, and so simultaneously admired. His advice, when fol-lowed, works. But, as we have learned, Machiavelli did not conduct his own life in anything like the way he advocates for in The Prince.

Machiavelli wasn’t “Machiavellian”. He was an observer, an anthro-pologist avant la lettre, who, through experience, was able to comment on how and why human beings act in such peculiar ways, and how an astute leader is able to harness and guide large, self-interested populations by managing his public persona with incredible care. But, unlike an anthropologist, Machiavelli’s observations were not disinterested.

He wrote The Prince, as noted above, hoping to get his job back, but Machiavelli’s long-term goals were far loftier. They were focused on a very particular, very special moment in time—what he emphatically referred to as an “occasione” (an “opportunity”) to be seized.

In 1515, when Machiavelli re-dedicated his The Prince to the “prince” of Florence, Lorenzo de’ Medici, the head of his ancient family coinciden-tally happened to be Pope Leo X (Giovanni de’ Medici).21 This spectacular “occasion” presented the Medici family, and Florence, with the possibility of not only freeing Florence from foreign interference, but also uniting Italy politically under Florentine rule.

In order for that to happen, the wealth of the Church, together with Medici might, would raise citizen armies across the peninsula and force Italy’s barbarian oppressors (Spain and France) out.22 Thereafter, Lorenzo de’ Medici would, as the Roman Dictator Cincinnatus had done before, give up his power and form an Italian republican government that would

21 There is a great deal of debate over the date of the famous 26th chapter of The Prince (An Exhortation to Liberate Italy from the Barbarians). I, together with a number of Machiavelli scholars, believe that chapter 26 was added in 1515 when Machiavelli re-dedi-cated The Prince to Lorenzo de’ Medici. In a related point, that Machiavelli was still perfect-ing the text of The Prince has been proved by William J. (Bill) Connell, who analyzed internal evidence and found that Machiavelli noted events that occurred well into 1515. It is clear then that Machiavelli began The Prince, and even finished most of its first twenty-five chap-ters in the late autumn and winter of 1513, and that he kept going back to the text, in order to revise it, through the first half of 1515.

22 The Spanish and the French had been warring over the Kingdom of Naples in Southern Italy since 1494. Italy was turned into the battlefield of Europe.

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rival that of Rome’s ancient grandeur. And, lastly, Pope Leo X would remove the Church from Italy’s secular affairs, leaving the new nation to seek its own course in the ever-shrinking world of the sixteenth century.

Such possibilities called for severe measures and a suspension of tradi-tional morals (periods of revolution often do), and Machiavelli’s political advice was intentionally crafted for just such an “occasion”.

The Prince, at its heart, is about gaining and maintaining power—themes which are directly linked with laying the groundwork for a united Italy, all without recourse to traditional morality. In its place, Machiavelli offered “political necessity” and a promise to reveal “the real truth” rather than the “imagined” truth so prized by philosophers.

Political necessity is, at its route, expediency—a call to do that which leads to success, whether or not the actions required are “right” or “wrong” according to tradition. In fact, that which is “wrong” according to tradition might be “right” if it leads to success. The real truth is political necessity’s companion. In a nutshell, the real truth is quite simple to com-prehend. It explains how the self-interested world of political leaders and their subjects really behave. The real truth does not take into account how men “ought” to behave. But there is the pressing need for the prince to fashion himself in such a way that he is perceived as acting how he “ought” to act. Machiavelli’s political advice is made for a world of intense action, constant self-fashioning, carefully considered words, and deftly dealt cru-elty; no action is without implication and no word without ramification.

His advice is also made for individuals who can bear the weights of their actions, and who can thrive on intellectual solitude, even amid a crowd of fawning courtiers and hangers-on. It is as practical as it is terrifying.

It would be unfair for me to quote from The Prince in an introduction of this sort, because it would be impractical, if not impossible, to lift pas-sages from it without losing their proper context. Of course, it would be easy to shock you with passages that recommend lying and every sort of perfidy, but these would unjustly color your views of Machiavelli’s text. I would, therefore, suggest that you pass from the ranks of those who use the term “Machiavellian” improperly, by joining the vanguard who “know”, and have read The Prince. Then, you can judge the text from the vantage point of experience, just as Machiavelli would have preferred. And this last point takes us back to The Politician.

As you will have gathered, Niccolò Machiavelli was incapable of follow-ing his own advice, but he was masterful at distilling and disseminating it. The author of The Politician is different. He admits quite readily to fol-

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lowing at least some of the advice he offers, “though only for the best of centrist ends”. And he has managed to be elected and re-elected to office on numerous occasions. That surely would have made Niccolò smile.

Northern Kentucky University William Landon Highland Heights, KY, USA

xxi

Whatever one may think about democratic government,it is just as well to have practical experienceof its rough and slatternly foundations. Winston Churchill

Churchill by Himself, R.  Langworth, ed., Public Affairs (Philadelphia: 2008), p. 384. The line mates well with another attributed to Churchill—that democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others that have been tried from time to time (House of Commons, November 11, 1947). What better way to understand this best-by-default form of government and its slat-ternly foundations than by studying its principal player.

The denigration of the professional classes is a hallmark of our time. Whether doctor, lawyer, or chief of state, individuals who once enjoyed a measure of respect by virtue of their professional credentials have lost the position they once considered an entitlement. This state of affairs is the contemporary expression of a longer-term phenomenon: the ever- widening embrace of our liberal democratic faith in the equal value of all men and women, and the corresponding elimination of any supposed dif-ference in moral authority based solely on status. Professionals may have more education, they may be better paid, they may drive better cars, but they are, as people, neither better nor worse than the rest of the popula-tion. And perhaps Montaigne foretold this phenomenon when he wrote

prolegoMenA

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more than 500 years ago: “On the highest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own bottom.”1

Certainly, politics is counted among the lowest forms of professional life, even in those nations that best reflect liberal democratic ideals. Boies Penrose thought politics the last refuge of scoundrels2; Mark Twain, that Congress was the only evidence of a distinctly native American criminal class3; and Simon Cameron, that an honest politician is one who, once bought, stays bought.4 Amusing as these views may be, the picture they paint is an unfair one. Not all politicians are dishonest scoundrels, ready to peddle their influence either in the short term or permanently. But neither are they Girl Guides, nor Boy Scouts. If they were just that, they would be of little use to those they serve.

In a democracy, service to all of the people, as opposed to some portion thereof—those whom private providers of goods or services call their cus-tomers or clients—is what politicians are supposed to provide. But others do as well. Witness the police, fire, and emergency medical services main-tained by local governments, as well as the civil servants who populate the various ministries and departments of more senior levels of government. Compared to these public employees, however, the politician is unique. As politics is, according to Robert Louis Stevenson, “…the only profession for which no preparation is thought necessary”,5 the aspiring politician need write no test to qualify for his position, nor submit to an interview by a selection committee, nor demonstrate the physical capacity required for the job, as, for instance, firefighters must do. Instead, the politician is subject to a particular form of recruitment known as an election, at least once, and regularly afterward, if he wishes to continue his service.

Thus, it is reasonable to suggest that the most objective measure of a successful politician is his getting elected in the first place and continuing to be victorious in later elections, these serving as regularly scheduled dates for the renewal of his employment contract. If we choose this method to gauge a politician’s success, it is easy to separate the political wheat from the chaff. Those who get elected are good politicians. Those who get

1 Essais (1580), quoted in The Oxford Dictionary of Political Quotations, Anthony Jay, ed. (Oxford: 1997), p. 263.

2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boies_Penrose. Retrieved November 5, 2012 and June 26, 2018.

3 Following the Equator (1897), op. cit. Jay, p. 372.4 Attributed (no date), ibid., p. 72.5 Familiar Studies of Men and Books (1882), ibid., p. 151.

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re-elected over and over are even better politicians. Those who don’t make the cut will never have the chance to prove themselves. And those who succeed and then fail in a subsequent election can be said to have caught the brass ring but could not keep it. As Richard Nixon put it, “Finishing second in the Olympics gets you silver. Finishing second in politics gets you oblivion.”6

And yet, something in each of us resists accepting this method of assess-ment. For which of us does not know the disappointment of our preferred candidate in some election—the one we view as best fitted for the job, whatever it might be—losing decisively, or worse, seeing someone we loathe win by a comfortable margin, and perhaps for a second, third, or fourth time? In such circumstances, which of us is prepared to concede that mere electoral success is an adequate measure of a politician’s worth? If you agree, read on, for much of what follows paints a different picture of political success, one you may find more to your liking.

This then is a guide for a trek across the political landscape in search of a greater understanding of modern-day politics as a vocation, or simply as a job. It is intended to help the democratic voter better understand the workings of the politician’s mind and the motivations behind his behavior. But it is also a handbook for aspiring politicians, written by a practicing politician who has been involved in politics at different levels in different countries and in different ways for a number of years, someone who has been around the block, and more than once.

Do not expect to find a typology of politicians in what follows. We poli-ticians are a sub-set of the general population, distinguished only by our role as facilitators of relations between the people and their government. Some of us are good at our jobs, when we achieve what the people elected us to do, and some of us are not. But we cannot be categorized according to the means we choose to pursue our goals, because the same means are available to each of us. Nor can we be typecast by virtue of our member-ship in some political party. Parties are important, but I have chosen to focus on the basic unit of politics—the individual politician. I do so because, as every politician knows, no matter what political philosophy or party manifesto binds us to a set of colleagues, sooner or later, only I can look after myself and my career. I am on my own.

Besides, how cohesive is any political party? Surely Will Rogers got it right when he said, in reference to the world’s oldest such grouping: “I am

6 In Sunday Times, November 13, 1988, ibid., p. 274.

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not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat.”7 Ivor Crewe expressed a slightly darker truth when he said that the British pub-lic has “…taken it for granted that members of parliament are self-serving imposters and hypocrites who put party before country and self before party”.8 Well, maybe sometimes, and not without good reason.

Lastly, some may think this exercise entirely unnecessary, since we already know the truth about politicians: “They are all the same!” Others may mistake this for a sort of political memoir à clef, even an apologia for politicians. It is neither. My aim is not to excuse politicians, even less to justify a particular action or set of actions by any politician, myself included. Rather, I seek to explain how the politician must conduct himself if he is to achieve any success—not just on election day, but afterward as well—given the realities of liberal democratic rule.

In short, as in The Prince, I seek to represent things “…as they are in real truth, rather than as they are imagined”.9

Nick Machiavelli

7 http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Will_Rogers. Retrieved November 5, 2012 and June 26, 2018.

8 In Guardian, January 18, 1995, op. cit. Jay, p. 104.9 The Prince, Niccolò Machivelli, George Bull, transl., Penguin (London: 1995), p. 48.

xxv

Though the writing of this manuscript was very much a solo endeavor, it did not go unaided.

The professor of political science who reviewed an early version of the manuscript spared me future embarrassment over my mistaken under-standing of political practices in certain jurisdictions.

The two journalists whom I engaged as editors at different points along the way taught me the value of concision and color—by the use of both historical and contemporary examples, quotations, and turns of phrase—all of which added texture to the text.

The few fellow politicians with whom I shared the manuscript were all kindly, quietly, tactfully discouraging. In the end, I took that as a good sign, that I was getting past the camouflage and revealing sometimes frank details.

Lastly, two academics—both in-laws, so not easily avoided—kept me believing that my manuscript deserved a wider audience.

I am grateful to all of the above, but unfortunately their identities must be, as the hymn concludes, “…known only unto God”.

Three persons whom I can acknowledge—and must thank—are Professor William Landon, a Machiavelli scholar of the first water, who graciously wrote the introduction to this work, placing it in the context of princely studies. And Michelle Chen and Rebecca Roberts, of Palgrave Macmillan, who guided me through the process that produced what you hold in your hands.

AcknowledgMents

xxvii

Part I The lay of the land 1

1 From the prince to the politician 3

2 The role of the politician in the liberal democratic state 5

3 What draws the citizen to the world of politics 15

4 Why all politics is local 19

5 The politician: crusader and opportunist 23

Part II Getting elected 27

6 How the aspiring politician may gain election 29

Part III Holding office 35

7 How the politician should deal with his political superiors 37

8 How the politician should deal with her political peers 41

contents

xxviii CONTENTS

9 How the politician should deal with his political inferiors 45

10 How the politician should behave in curia 49

11 How the politician should behave in camera 55

12 Concerning particular dangers for the politician as office holder 59

13 Concerning the politician and his constituents 63

14 Concerning the politician and her personal staff 69

15 Concerning the politician and the bureaucracy 73

16 Concerning the politician and her financial backers 79

17 The politician and those who may command blocs of voters 87

18 Concerning the politician, policy-makers, consultants, and lobbyists 93

19 Concerning the politician and the media 97

20 Concerning the politician and her family 103

21 Concerning political discourse 107

Part IV Getting re-elected 111

22 How the politician should behave between elections 113

23 How the politician should behave during re-election campaigns 125

24 Concerning the risks attendant upon political ascensions 133

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Part V Ends and means 137

25 The politician’s better angel 139

26 Conclusion 143

Postscript: Concerning Donald Trump 147

Glossary of proper names 151

Index 193