Playing to Win in Rome

With the 2012 Republican National Convention having sent its candidate forward and the Democratic National Convention set to do the same, this year’s presidential campaign enters its most focused and fevered phase. Candidates, voters and dedicated observers of this vaunted political ritual would do well to take a deep breath and pick up a copy of “How to Win an Election,” the advice Quintus Tullius Cicero sent his brother Marcus in 64 BC when the latter ran for consul, the highest office in the Roman republic. At once a validation of how we humans choose our leaders and cunning in the way of Machiavelli’s “The Prince,” Quintus Cicero’s words of wisdom, filtered through the fluid new translation by Philip Freeman, are sobering and more than a little deliciously self-serving.