Marcos, Machiavelli and the Media

...Who better to go to for illumination than Niccolo di Bernardo Machiavelli, the master of realpolitik, the diplomat who gave a lifetime to the study of where the Renaissance rulers of Italy's city states went wrong...

...Aquino as events closed in on him, Marcos was abiding by Machiavelli's maxim that he who believes "new benefits will make old injuries be forgotten deceives himself...

...Aquino...

...It is generally agreed, though, that whether in theorig-inai or at second hand, somewhere along the way he absorbed at least one of Mach-iavelli's celebrated dicta—when circumstances so require, the Prince who wants to stay in power must "learn to be able not to be good...

...The translation, by Harvey C. Mansfield Jr., published last year by the University of Chicago Press, suggests that it is as dangerous for a 20th-century ruler to follow the counsel of this 16th-century instructor as to ignore it...

...Not a particularly helpful formulation for an embattled head of state...

...As Machiavelli understood, "the people desire neither to be commanded nor oppressed by the great"—a modest desire, and one Machiavelli taught had better be satisfied because "a prince can never secure himself against a hostile people, as they are too many...

...The Prince teaches, for example, that "one should not care about incurring the reputation of those vices without which it is difficult to save one's state.' And Marcos could find solace in the observation that "something appears to be virtue, which if pursued would be one's ruin, and something else appears to be vice, which if pursued results in one's security and well being...

...But here, too, the press got in the way...

...Who could foresee in the 16th century a time when bringing in heavy armor against civilians before the reporters of the world would give pause even to the most tough-minded ruler...

...Until the end, Marcos was shielded from popular wrath by his Army...

...he was a clever historian and observer of the ways of power in his own day—which makes him an uncertain guide to the current era of the omnipresent tube...

...Perhaps that does not apply to United States aid...

...Prophecy was not Machiavelli's strong suit...

...The wise prince, Machiavelli emphasized, "must think of a way by which his citizens always and in every quality of time, have need of the state and of himself, and then they will always be faithful to him...

...Marcos has not admitted to having read the works of Machiavelli, but then he never admitted that the last Presidential election in the Philippines was touched by fraud or that he was considering leaving the country and taking some of it with him...

...Caress or Eliminate Among the famous pieces of Machiavelli's advice to a prince was this: "...men should either be caressed or eliminated, because they avenge themselves for slight offenses but cannot do so for grave ones...

...Or perhaps Marcos' mistake, as he sometimes sighed, was in being too much the democrat, and not having Corazon Aquino taken care of too...

...Speaking of virtue, Machiavelli taught that "thosedefensesalonearegood, are certain and are lasting that depend on you yourself and on your virtue...

...At the end, no one except Imelda seemed to need Ferdinand Marcos . We can be pretty sure that if Machiavelli had been in Marcos' employ, he would have been among the first to offer his services to Mrs...

...Nevertheless, they do seem to fit Machiavelli's specifications...

...Marcos' downfall, finally, was brought about by the people of his country...

...Nor does it seem that the ruler of the Philippines folk}wed the advice to choose a few wise counselors and permit them to tell him the truth, rather than what they thought he wanted to hear—a suggestion, one surmises, that was Machiavelli's bid for a job from Lorenzo de Medici, to whom he dedicated his great work...

...He was so prominent that there was no one else to blame for the prevailing corruption and recurrent crackdowns, except perhaps Imel-da, and he appears to have been too devoted a family man to put that formidable lady to such a purpose...

...so the offense one does to a man should be such that one does not fear revenge for it.' Now, Marcos has not been convicted of the murder in 1983 of his preeminent opponent, Benigno S. Aquino, or of any of the other murders of opposition figures during his reign...

...Fair Game BY WALTER GOODMAN Marcos, Machiavelli and the Media As Ferdinand Marcos was slipping out of history, I turned to a new translation of The Prince to discover how the shrewd, tough prince of the Philippines had gotten himself into such a predicament...

...Machiavelli warned that "one cannot call it virtue to kill one's citizens, betray one's friend, to be without faith, without mercy, without religion...

...Although that seems to have been Marcos' main problem, he may be pardoned for not being able to do much with Mach-iavelli's use of the word "virtue...

...The prudent ruler, he taught, should be sparing about spending the wealth of his subjects...

...Still, if he could not be a model of virtue, Marcos might have tried to folio w a rule that even the tsars of Russia understood: "Princes should have anything blameable administered by others, favors by themselves...

...Yet in resisting proposalstomakesomcsort of power-sharing deal with Mrs...

...In a similar spirit, Machiavelli advised his prince to order matters so that when his people no longer believe in him, "one can make them believe by force...

...The Florentine did not, however, recommend that such murders take place in view of the television cameras...

...Empire or Glory There is , evidently, a side to the mentor of princes that Marcos did not take to heart...

...In sum, the strain of The Prince that Marcos seems to have been most comfortable with is the one that has come into common usage as "Machiavellian...

...Machiavelli meant the belongings of outsiders, not of the prince's own subjects...

...More specifically, to judge from the wealth the Marcos family squeezed out of their country over the years and shipped to safer locales, as well as the amount and nature of the luggage they carried into exile, Marcos misinterpreted Machiavelli's approval of spending what belongs to others...

...In Machiavelli's dictionary—drawn from political experience, not the Scriptures— virtue was what was required to maintain rule over a dominion, with the caution that repression, while it might be necessary, was not by itself sufficient for the job...

...Marcos was not exactly wrapped in glory to ward the end of his regime, which may explain why he made so much of his alleged exploits as a guerrilla against the Japanese invaders in World War II and furnished his palace like a prince...

...By those means, he granted, one may acquire empire, but never glory...