Fraser Seitel Fraser Seitel

In rejecting a 24 carat-conniver and electing instead a vulgarian nitwit, American voters proved conclusively that …

Well, I have no idea what they “proved.”

But I would suggest that public relations counselors can glean several 21st century “lessons” from the most odious presidential election since Andrew Jackson’s campaign of 1828, when his press secretary, Amos Kendall, famously didn’t bathe.

Here’s what we learned:

Lesson #1: Don’t kabuki dance

When Donald Trump was hit with the Billy Bush 2005 “Access Hollywood” tape that revealed how maniacally misogynistic he was in real life, the candidate didn’t try to dance away from the potential knockout blow. He admitted he said things he wasn’t proud of, dismissed it as “locker room banter” and moved on. As a result, Bush got canned, and Trump was elected President.

By contrast, Hillary Clinton tried to waltz away from every accusation from favorable treatment by the Democratic National Committee to “pay for play” Clinton Foundation grants to national secrets on her e-mail. She lost.

Lesson #2: Don’t cheat

One late-breaking development that cast a pall on the Hillary campaign was the flap surrounding political public relations veteran and CNN contributor Donna Brazile.

After Brazile secretly planted questions with the campaign that would be asked during an upcoming CNN debate, the interim head of the DNC was caught with her pants down when Wikileaks disclosed her cheating. Brazile and the Clinton campaign became last-minute symbols of “dirty tricks.”

Lesson #3: The media are biased

The right wing, of course, has always screamed about the “biased media,” but in the Trump election, even the media acknowledged their bias.

In August, New York Times media business columnist Jim Rutenberg, a young man trying to replace the late iconic media reporter David Carr, encouraged his fellow journalists to shed its semblance of balance in the case of the decidedly-unbalanced Trump. He wrote:

“It may not always seem fair to Mr. Trump or his supporters. But journalism shouldn’t measure itself against any one campaign’s definition of fairness. It is journalism’s job to be true to the readers and viewers, and true to the facts, in a way that will stand up to history’s judgment. To do anything less would be untenable.”

And from that moment on, the former bastions of journalistic objectivity — from the New York Times to the Washington Post, from CNN to NBC — made no bones about their antipathy to Donald Trump.

Lesson #4: The “experts” are phonies

Not only are the media biased, they are flooded with phonies who likely know less than you do.

All of them were dead wrong — from David Brooks and Tom Friedman to Chuck Todd and George Stephanopoulos to Nate Silver and all the other previously-respected “analytical” pollsters.

The fact is that television is essentially for entertainment and social media is essentially for gossip. And the moderators and bloggers and pundits and talking heads who populate these media are articulate and attractive first and knowledgeable, last. They’re rarely both and often neither.

What this reality leads to is …

Lesson #5: Trust your gut — but verify

Most of the time, it makes more sense to go with your gut instincts, even if that flies in the face of consensus “wisdom.”

That’s precisely what Donald Trump, warts and all, did throughout his march to the mountain top. He disdained the advice of others to change his approach and instead, followed his own counsel. This often resulted in embarrassing tweets and buffoonish comments, but … in the end, Trump’s instincts that most people were neither MSNBC/moveon.org Democrats nor Fox News/Breitbart Republicans proved correct.

The people rejected the status quo and voted for change.

And public relations people, once they stop crying, can learn from Trump’s stupefying success.

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Fraser P. Seitel has been a communications consultant, author and teacher for 40 years. He is the author of the Prentice- Hall text "The Practice of Public Relations," now in its eleventh edition, and co-author of "Rethinking Reputation" and "Idea Wise." He may be reached directly at [email protected].