You’ll recall Nudge as that libertarian paternalism of choice architecture that would finesse Other Guys into a better life with just winks, nods, and the careful sequencing of options. Among the many objections I made to the practical Nudge, especially as applied to government, was that why would anyone in the government use a Nudge when you’ve got the Push.

Like this.

“I was in a meeting once and I gave an analogy to my staff about my philosophy of enforcement, and I think it was probably a little crude and maybe not appropriate for the meeting but I’ll go ahead and tell you what I said,” Armendariz said. “It was kind of like how the Romans used to conquer little villages in the Mediterranean. They’d go into a little Turkish town somewhere, they’d find the first five guys they saw and they’d crucify them,” Armendariz said.

Armendariz described his Crucifixion Persuasion Play™ to a small staff then repeated it to a larger group with a camera running while acknowledging concerns about crudeness. Two years later, the video surfaces and then Armendariz apologises. Quite the maven.

Al Armendariz is a former academic professor appointed by the Obama Administration to this regional administrative post within the EPA. It appears that Armendariz either did not get the Nudge memo or else just thought Crucifixion more effective as a government policy than the Nudge.

Power Corrupts Persuasion.

All Bad Persuasion Is Sincere.

We stand in the light of a New New Day brought forth from the New New Things, twitter, Facebook, and the rest. Don’t look for social media much in the next one.

As they prosecute hundreds of Occupy protesters on lower-level charges such as disorderly conduct, Manhattan prosecutors have turned one of the movement’s principal organizing tools—social media such as Twitter—against the defendants. In short Twitter messages, protesters coordinate activities and warn others of law-enforcement efforts. In doing so, prosecutors believe some have revealed an intent to break the law.

In New York over 1900 people were arrested as part of the OWS Revolution. Just over 1000 have faced a judge so far with 20% having charges dismissed and 80% found guilty or pleading guilty. Even New New Revolutionaries see the problem.

When Jeff Rae was arrested last October with hundreds of other Occupy Wall Street protesters during a march on the Brooklyn Bridge, he decided to fight the charges, believing he had been entrapped. On Monday, Mr. Rae changed his mind and accepted a plea agreement with Manhattan prosecutors. Why? The district attorney’s office had subpoenaed his Twitter account, raising the stakes in what he had thought would be a speedy case he could win, he said.

Perhaps there’ll be an Anonymous Anonymous App for the next one!

We’re learning about a nearly one million dollar conference for GSA employees in Las Vegas. Hundreds of government employees were involved in the conference along with hundreds of other people who delivered the services for the conference. Within a few weeks of the conference, an Inspector General was investigating and reporting his findings up and down the supervisory chain in the government, including the White House. And, now, a year later the story is finally breaking. The key administrator in the scandal has already taken the 5th in his testimony and faces legal charges. The GSA chief executive fired two key deputies for their role in the scandal, then resigned.

Where was twitter on this?

Seriously. I thought that social media had become the New New Thing in journalism, like a Wisdom of the Crowd Journalism. We no longer speak truth to power, we tweet, right? The whole world’s tweeting! The whole world’s tweeting!

Except this scandal broke the old fashioned way. Key employees in GSA lodged complaints to oversight. Those oversight guys then did their due diligence and discovered likely criminal behavior in government workers. They wrote it down and reported it up the line. And it took a year for Your Father’s Oldsmobile to drive up on the story. Social media are still looking for Kony.

Yeah. Web 2.0 changes everything.

Political observers are drawing a straight line between rising gas prices and President Obama’s falling opinion ratings. Yet any smart observer, political or otherwise, will tell you that Presidents do not and cannot control gas prices.

Consider a recent poll of a panel of economists conducted by the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, where I teach. (Disclosure: I am a member of the panel; the other respondents are well-respected economists from top universities with varying political views.) The 41 panel members were asked whether they agreed with the following statement: “Changes in U.S. gasoline prices over the past 10 years have predominantly been due to market factors rather than U.S. federal economic or energy policies.” Not a single member of the panel disagreed with the statement.

The writer then provides a rational look at gas prices and the larger market forces that drive them, then makes comparisons to other areas of economic life that are better than energy costs and suggests that Obama should at least get credit for this. All in all, the article is a standard example of a well argued, partisan position for supporting Mr. Obama.

Now, here’s the persuasion twist. The author of this NY Times opinion piece is Dr. Richard Thaler who is more famous for writing another piece, Nudge. You may remember Nudge as the progressive persuasion that would bring the Peripheral Route to the Federal Government and make the world a better place with a wide variety of artful, deep, and scientific Nudges. Other Guys would be Nudged into better diet, more exercise, less drug use, and in general becoming happy, shiny people. Thaler and his partner, Sunstein, proposed Nudge as the wonder weapon for a new society, the persuasion play no one would see, yet change everyone for the better.

As I warned a long time ago, Nudge didn’t work as advertised in the original book and wouldn’t work in the Federal government and now you see it revealed. Mr. Obama is in for a difficult re-election campaign after three years of Nudging. How can he be in such bad political shape when he followed the theory and research of his UChicago brethren, Sunstein and Thaler? He even hired Sunstein to join his Administration. All that Nudging and look where he is. Not only are the courts overturning his laws and regulations, but public opinion is turning against him.

Past all the success Nudge failed to deliver, you see that Thaler himself is repudiating the Nudge as an effective persuasion play in the op-ed piece with the Times. Where’s the Choice Architecture? Where’s the nuance? Where’s the tide beneath the surface? He orates with boilerplate, a letter to the editor that extols the virtues of one against the vices of everyone else. You’ve heard this persuasion play a thousand times and run it yourself in your local paper or with your family or friends or coworkers. The play is rational and reasonable. And worse still, nothing but Sincere, Authentic, and Obvious.

Persuasion mavens, see it. The Nudge was a half-baked Fairy Tale from the start, but the Cool Table took it to the White House anyway. And now even Nudgers won’t Nudge to budge voters or public opinion.

There’s a Difference between Persuasion, and Smoke and Mirrors; With Persuasion the Illusion Lingers.

“They were getting close enough to a sitting U.S. Cabinet member that we thought we could no longer allow this to continue,” Figliuzzi says.

This regarding the Russian spy ring broken up in 2010. The ring included Anna Chapman. You remember her.

Yeah, the attractive one nearly got to a Cabinet member and potentially compromised . . . something. The great thing about this story is not what it says, but what it doesn’t say. Who was the Cabinet member? What state secrets were at risk? This statement from Figliuzzi is a masterpiece of persuasion. It says a lot without saying anything.

Gee whiz. The oldest Cue in the Book.