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128 | THE PROFESSIONALISM OF POLITICAL COMMUNICATION

Many observers argue that political advertising and the use of professional image-
makers have developed while the model of the charismatic political leader has
disappeared. Many refer to the communicative talent of the late Andreas Papandreou,
but few know that, apart from his natural talent at communicating with the masses, the
PASOK leader had had useful training in the field. In his youth, serving in the American
Navy, he studied psychological warfare. Another view debunks the Papandreou myth,
seeing him influenced by his wife Margaret, who had already been involved with
political marketing in the 1950s on behalf of the American Democrats.

These approaches outline the use of political marketing before the 1990s. Although
political communication has always been present in Greece, the methods and intensity
have changed. In the past, political campaigning meant home visits, friendly meetings,
treats, family connections, cartoons, poems, rhymed libels and patriotic hymns. These
were all orchestrated by professionals; in fact from 1981 on, American advisers often
visited the Prime Minister’s residence at Kastri in Attica, where they mixed business and
pleasure over dinner, much to the annoyance of local advisers who resented any
encroachment on their territory. Whether or not these experts have had an impact on
the strategies of the parties is unclear, though it soon became obvious that politicians
grew increasingly comfortable with television routines. As a result, politics saturated
television coverage before and during electoral campaigns. Even the pilgrimage of the
new PASOK leader George Papandreou to his family ancestral village of Kalenzti during
the 2004 elections, which was reminiscent of old-party campaign tactics, provided a
sample of the media ‘hoopla’, with frequent news flashes on each stop to his road to the
village.

In the 1990s the use of professionals has increased in the sense that politics is
The Professionalisation of Political Communication
subjected to the rules of television. For example, US and Greek communication experts
taught politicians of New Democracy, in a seminar organised by the Institute of
Democracy by Constantine Karamanlis in 1998, that body language counts for 55% of
the construction of a positive image, 38% for voice tone and only 7% for ideas and
arguments (in Serafetinidou, 2002, p. 30). Therefore, while in the past the ‘holy triad’ of
‘political advertising-political marketing-opinion polls’ was blamed, since the 1990s, it
has been legitimised, and has acquired such mythical status as to raise the question of
whether it has replaced real politics.

This does not, however, mean that political parties have displaced ‘party strategists’ by
non-party ‘professional’ strategists (Scammell, 1999, p. 256). Although professionals –
e.g. pollsters, media consultants (mainly journalists, TV producers, advertisers) – from
outside the political party have come to play an important role in the conduct of
elections, they have not increased their power within the parties. Their role is
supplementary to the leader and his group, who control the party. This group, formed
by politicians or party strategists, are close affiliates of the leader ‘of the day’, and this
group has responsibility for the party’s communication and political strategy. In other
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