Technologist Manafort

The trial of Paul Manafort, the former political strategist Viktor Yanukovych and Donald Trump, began with the publication of fantastic amounts spent by Ukrainian employers to an invited consultant. You can still hardly imagine such earnings in a rich country, such as the United States. But in Ukraine?! Now it is clear why all these American ones - and not only - technology and advisers stick to Ukraine and other former Soviet republics as flies on honey.

In recent decades, I have seen them a lot. The secret of success is clear. They are perceived by their customers as the opening of the island of sailors who have just visited, who brought the ligaments of glass beads. And they willingly trade in these beads, telling the gullible natives all Galicia. The main thing that is required of them is to understand in time that the client wants to hear, and to express him his own, as a rule, ridiculous and unprofessional, desires in the language of political consultation, preferably with the numbers of pre -paid sociological surveys and with beautiful tablets.

The client can win - and then it will be beautifully listed in the resume, and tens of millions of paid dollars will fall into bank accounts. The client can lose, but he will pay the money anyway. And in the resume, he will then be listed as not listening to the brilliant advice of Western advisers - and destroyed his political career as a result. To each Yanukovych - in their own manifors!

At the same time, Western political technologists cannot provide any real assistance to their customers in the post -Soviet space. They studied to another. In the West, they initially deal with people who adhere to obvious political views with their own positions. The same Trump, with all his unsystematism, has such positions, everyone who monitors American political life can tell about them. The task of the political strategist is to make these positions attractive to the majority, to help the client with their presentation, make him interesting for the media.

And in the post -Soviet space, political technologists often deal with people who completely devoid even the shadows of political beliefs. People for whom only money and power are important - and even then as a means of making money. The political technologist has to come up with political views for such a client, create a party for him, rewrite a biography. I would consider the story of a former racketeer who studied on a tomb, but converted by Western advisers to a major economist (buy the degree of Doctor of Sciences!) And the head of the response party (buy a party!), If he himself had not been familiar with this person in his best years. And this is not the largest political joke. The story of the recidivist Yanukovych, who turned into a skilled business executive and leader of a large European state, is much funnier and worse.

They may say that this is evidence of Manafort's effectiveness. Yes, in fact, Manafort himself could say so his clients. But Yanukovych achieved success thanks to not American advice, but completely different things - pro -Russian orientation, which impressed many of his compatriots, solidarity of oligarchs, disappointment in the National Democrats in 2010. In the end - thanks to falsifications and administrative resources. Yanukovych tried to avoid debate with Yushchenko in 2004 and boycotted the debate with Tymoshenko in 2010. If Manafort had offered something similar to Trump, Trump would have decided that the head of his election headquarters was joking.

Yanukovych - like all other such customers of Manafort - not only his behavior, but also the very fact of his existence in politics refuted all the laws of the profession of an American political strategist, all the laws of common sense and even the rules of decency. But he paid very well.