and no, he didn't win on substance.
There's a reason why a vulture at Waterloo couldn't look happier than Newt does these days, a reason why he wears the smile of one convinced he is both above all laws and norms of decent society and among God's chosen favorites:
Substance doesn't matter in this contest.
Bear with me, please, as I take off my accustomed jester's cap and take up my amateur scientist's microscope.
Robert Cialdini, the world-renowned social psychologist and pioneer in the study of influence, identified six key principles of persuasion:
Reciprocity - People tend to return a favor, thus the pervasiveness of free samples in marketing....Commitment and Consistency - If people commit, orally or in writing, to an idea or goal, they are more likely to honor that commitment because of establishing that idea or goal as being congruent with their self image...
Social Proof - People will do things that they see other people are doing...
Authority - People will tend to obey authority figures, even if they are asked to perform objectionable acts. Cialdini cites incidents such as the Milgram experiments in the early 1960s and the My Lai massacre.
Liking - People are easily persuaded by other people that they like...
I put authority in bold for a reason.
The Milgram experiment on obedience to authority figures that Cialdini references is one of the most disturbing and illuminating in the history of psychology. In an attempt to understand how vast numbers of people could have allowed the Holocaust to happen, Milgram set up the following scenario in which participants were apparently given one of two roles: "teacher" or "student". In reality, the "student" was a confederate of the experimenter.
What was tested? Ostensibly, the effect of painful negative stimuli, in the form of electric shocks, on memory. In reality, what was tested was the willingness of an average human being to inflict pain and risk the health of another with no coercion of than the presence of a presumed authority figure.
via Wikipedia:
The volunteer subject was given the role of teacher, and the confederate, the role of learner. The participants drew slips of paper to determine their roles, but unknown to the subject, both slips said "teacher", and the actor claimed to have the slip that read "learner", thus guaranteeing that the participant would always be the "teacher". At this point, the "teacher" and "learner" were separated into different rooms where they could communicate but not see each other. In one version of the experiment, the confederate was sure to mention to the participant that he had a heart condition.[1]The "teacher" was given an electric shock from the electro-shock generator as a sample of the shock that the "learner" would supposedly receive during the experiment. The "teacher" was then given a list of word pairs which he was to teach the learner. The teacher began by reading the list of word pairs to the learner. The teacher would then read the first word of each pair and read four possible answers. The learner would press a button to indicate his response. If the answer was incorrect, the teacher would administer a shock to the learner, with the voltage increasing in 15-volt increments for each wrong answer. If correct, the teacher would read the next word pair.[1]
The subjects believed that for each wrong answer, the learner was receiving actual shocks. In reality, there were no shocks. After the confederate was separated from the subject, the confederate set up a tape recorder integrated with the electro-shock generator, which played pre-recorded sounds for each shock level. After a number of voltage level increases, the actor started to bang on the wall that separated him from the subject. After several times banging on the wall and complaining about his heart condition, all responses by the learner would cease.
At this point, many people indicated their desire to stop the experiment and check on the learner. Some test subjects paused at 135 volts and began to question the purpose of the experiment. Most continued after being assured that they would not be held responsible. A few subjects began to laugh nervously or exhibit other signs of extreme stress once they heard the screams of pain coming from the learner.
If at any time the subject indicated his desire to halt the experiment, he was given a succession of verbal prods by the experimenter, in this order:
Please continue. The experiment requires that you continue. It is absolutely essential that you continue. You have no other choice, you must go on.
If the subject still wished to stop after all four successive verbal prods, the experiment was halted. Otherwise, it was halted after the subject had given the maximum 450-volt shock three times in succession.
The experimenter also gave special prods, if the teacher made specific comments. If the teacher asked whether the learner might suffer permanent physical harm, the experimenter replied "Although the shocks may be painful, there is no permanent tissue damage, so please go on". If the teacher said that the learner clearly wants to stop, the experimenter replied, "Whether the learner likes it or not, you must go on until he has learned all the word pairs correctly, so please go on".
Before conducting the experiment, Milgram polled fourteen Yale University senior-year psychology majors to predict the behavior of 100 hypothetical teachers. All of the poll respondents believed that only a very small fraction of teachers (the range was from zero to 3 out of 100, with an average of 1.2) would be prepared to inflict the maximum voltage. Milgram also informally polled his colleagues and found that they, too, believed very few subjects would progress beyond a very strong shock.[1]
In Milgram's first set of experiments, 65 percent (26 of 40)[1] of experiment participants administered the experiment's final massive 450-volt shock, though many were very uncomfortable doing so; at some point, every participant paused and questioned the experiment; some said they would refund the money they were paid for participating in the experiment.
Milgram summarized the experiment in his 1974 article, "The Perils of Obedience", writing:
"The legal and philosophic aspects of obedience are of enormous importance, but they say very little about how most people behave in concrete situations. I set up a simple experiment at Yale University to test how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person simply because he was ordered to by an experimental scientist. Stark authority was pitted against the subjects' [participants'] strongest moral imperatives against hurting others, and, with the subjects' [participants'] ears ringing with the screams of the victims, authority won more often than not. The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation.
Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority."
Emphasis by TGWIn Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, Cialdini points out that this experiment has been replicated over and over, with subjects varied according to gender, national origin and socioeconomic status, producing essentially the same results.
The most telling part of the experiments was that the greater the perceived authority of the experimenter, the more obedience was elicited. Experimenters who identified themselves as professors at Ivy-League schools were obeyed more than experimenters who claimed to be professors from lesser-known institutions.
So we instinctively bow to authority, even though we believe that we won't, as those polled by Milgram believed.
Why? And how does this relate to Gingrich? Allow me a few more references.
Darwin, via cognitive scientist, linguist and evolutionary psychologist Steven Pinker provides a good answer.
Pinker, in his award-winning book, How the Mind Works, makes a good case for the idea that, as social animals, human beings seek out experts for help. Let's assume that is correct. Let's make another assumption: the appearance of expertise gives those who have it a reproductive advantage, attracting either more mates or the resources with which to attract them.
Pinker goes on to point out that the human reliance on expertise allows us to be taken advantage of by hucksters. He also points out that, whenever evolution provides an advantageous trait, it creates an incentive to imitatethat trait.
The appearance of authority can provide an advantage similar to the substance of authority. This is why experimenters with the same level of expertise can elicit more obedience if the trapping of their authority are impressive; remember, those who claimed to be from more prestigious schools in Milgram-like experiments were more successful than those who did not.
All human beings, to some degree, have the ability to both detect and fake emotions and acumen. Newt Gingrich is a successful mimic authority.
He has mastered the art of implying expertise: every other utterance contains a reference to his credentials as an historian, a professor or the author of a paper. A critical look at any page of any of his books will demonstrate that his "scholarship" is actually a series of unproven pronouncements and unworkable proposals, but that doesn't matter: it sounds impressive.
He has also mastered the appearance of authority. Of all the candidates on stage last night, he was the only one who made effective use of body language, reaching out, arms wide, in a gesture that was half embrace and half benediction at every moment possible. Even though this is likely a practiced move, it comes across naturally, far more so than Romney's nervous laugh at his own contradictions or Rick Perry's robot-like responses.
In addition, Gingrich radiates such confidence in his own words that he comes across as someone who actually believes what he is saying (and he just might, but that is a subject for another post), tricking the built in lie-detectors that Pinker asserts we have evolved in order to survive, and that hucksters have learned to counter to their advantage.
Gingrich has well learned the lesson burned into the Republican mind ever since Nixon lost his televised debate with Kennedy: appearance matters at least as much as substance. Nixon went on TV unshaven ad sweating, Kennedy was polished. Tellingly, however, while a majority of those who watched the debate thought Kennedy won, a majority of those who listened to it on the radio thought Nixon did.
The importance of substance has declined ever since. In 1984, Leslie Stahl delieved a scathing piece on Ronald Reagan that contrasted the damge his proposals inflicted on seniors and disabled children with images of him smiling and visiting a nursing home and cutting the ribbon at the special Olympics. She recalled Reagan staff thanking her for the piece, saying:
Gingrich gets this. This makes him very dangerous. I believe that his rivals will begin to savage him soon, but we can't depend on that.
I have said many times that a convincing lie beats an unconvincing truth every time out of the box, but a convincing truth beats anything. We need to master the art of making the truth as convincing as the lies, because the lies currently have the best marketers in the world.
Recommended Reading:
Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. by Robert Cialdini. This is the single most valuable book I have read on how to persuade and how to avoid being persuaded. Many of the most valuable keys to building effective messages are in this book. See also: Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive, by Noah J. Goldstein; Steve J. Martin; Robert B. Cialdini and subscribe to the free Inside Influence Report.
Working Psychology. The site of another great influence researcher, Kelton Rhoads. Worth visiting if only for the free and detailed online "Introduction to Social Influence."
Don't Think of an Elephant!: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate--The Essential Guide for Progressives, by George Lakoff. Lakoff specializes in debate framing for progressives. The most important lesson you can pick up from this book is that the winning frame wins the debate. Republicans know this: that’s why they have their own language specialist, Frank Luntz , turn “oil drilling” into “energy exploration”. Lakoff is just as good, turning “higher taxes” into “paying your dues” examples abound. See also: Cognitive Policy Wonks and The Progressive Strategy Handbook Project .
Frank Luntz: everything he’s written. He's a conservative message master, and you have to know the enemy. Remember the great scene in Patton, when the victorious general shouted: “Rommel! You magnificent son of a bitch! I READ YOUR BOOK!”
Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts, by Tavris and Aronson Key takeaway: Never attack a movement's members, always attack its leaders.
Cognitive dissonance (the academic theory, not the common usage) suggests that attacking the supporters may actually increase their level of commitment.
It works like this: Say someone has two contradictory ideas: "I smoke" and "Smoking is bad for me". This causes discomfort, which must be resolved. Unfortunately, it is usually resolved in an ego- protecting way, so you wind up with something like: "Smoking isn't bad for me" instead of "I'm stupid to be smoking and should quit".
If we make fun of a Tea Party supporters, they hold the following ideas": I like my candidate's ideas" and "All these people say the ideas are crazy". Well, no matter what the evidence for the lunacy, that's likely to resolve into "the ideas are right" instead of "I made a mistake". This is particularly true if they see criticisms as hostile.
On the other hand, if a supporter holds the following ideas "I like this candidate" and "this candidate just said that s/he is going to screw me personally ", the supporter is more likely to question the candidate.
The Social Animal, by Elliot Aronson. The introduction to social psychology, necessary for any real understanding of how groups of people (e.g. voters) act under different circumstances. Essential for any real understanding of the human nature that propels politics.
Making the News: A Guide for Activists and Nonprofits, By Jason Salzman. This is a great guide to the kind of activism that makes the mainstream media, something we have to do in order to be a visible presence. Our champions will be more likely to support us if we get the kind of coverage the Tea Party gets. Funny and effective.