Niccolo Machiavelli’s letter from his book The Prince resembles a New York Times article about Republican stance on making the economy better. Both the book and the article stress the importance of appearance. In Niccolo Machiavelli’s book The Prince, Niccolo presents his perspective on how to gain and/or maintain power. In his perspective, Niccolo stresses the importance of maintaining a good public appearance. Niccolo mentions how maintaining a good public appearance does not require a person to have any substance in his quote “it is not necessary, then for a prince to have of the qualities mentioned above, but it is certainly necessary that he appear to have them.” (C, 237)
(double indent function) everyone sees what you appear to be, few touch what you are; and those few do not dare oppose the opinions of the many who have the majesty of the state defending them; and with regard to the actions of all men, and especially with princes where there is no court of appeal, we must look at the final result (C, 237)
In this quote by Machiavelli, he explains how important appearance is because majority of the people only see and judge solely on appearance. As a result, this majority will make the minority who actually knows whether or not a person has substance seem unnoticeable.
The New York Times article relates to Machiavelli because Republicans have successfully created an image of being more capable of dealing with the economy. However, the main idea of the article is that Republicans have currently done little to fix economy. The article states how a policy document provided by the House Republicans called “Pledge to America” was criticized for providing little direction on how to deal with the economy due to its vagueness. In a statement by Phillip L. Swagel, an assistant Treasury secretary policy during President Bush’s presidency, he says “even if the next two years do not result in legislative compromises on taxes or entitlement reform or other issues, we will see a vigorous and open debate in Congress about economic policy – a huge change from the Obama administration’s closed-minded and self-righteous approach” (B3) shows strong relation to Machiavelli because Phillip L. Swagel clearly states it only matters that Republicans appear to be doing something rather than actually accomplishing a task. On the other hand, The Prince and the article are different because Machiavelli explains the importance of creating a good appearance for an individual or group, but the quote by Phillip L. Swagel in the article goes further by showing how damaging the appearance of the opposition can also be important.
Hi Weng,
You do a good job portraying the Republicans as Machiavellians!
In your first paragraph, you twice refer to Machiavelli as “Niccolo.” In scholarly writing, authors are never referred to by their first names. You wouldn’t call Shakespeare “William,” would you?