Dan Nimmo’s Legacy to Political Communication

by David L. Swanson

The field of political communication lost one of its most important scholars and teachers when Dan Nimmo died on September 10, 2004. Although his voice has been stilled, his legacy of fifty years of scholarship and his example of how to study political communication will continue to shape the field for many years to come.

As a graduate student in the 1960s, I was one of a growing group of people who became interested in how the relationship between politics and the mass media was changing and what the consequences might be. There was not much scholarship published on this subject, and, in fact, it was less a coherent subject for study than a series of unconnected phenomena and questions. Most of what had been published came from practitioners and political “insiders.” In 1970, Dan Nimmo published The Political Persuaders. This volume was the first to bring together in one framework the major components of the subject at that time: new campaign technologies, the emerging professionalization of campaign management, the new uses of voter research, the tactics of persuading voters in the new campaign environment, and the effects of new modes of campaign persuasion. Reading The Political Persuaders, many of us were able to see that what would later be called “political communication” might constitute a distinct field of study. In this sense, the volume was the ur-text of the field of political communication.

Over his career, Dan, working alone and with various collaborators who often had been his students, contributed a tremendous body of work, totaling some thirty-five volumes. One of the best known earlier works was the original Handbook of Political Communication (1981, edited with Keith Sanders) that became for a decade the single most influential volume defining this new field published since The Political Persuaders. In subsequent years, Dan investigated many facets of the subject, ranging from the construction and psychological foundations of political images, to the rising importance of political commentary and punditry in the media, to the many forms of political communication outside of campaigns such as news coverage of scandals and disasters and even popular films, and the foundations of political symbols, to name just a few.

In his work, Dan steadily expanded the field’s understanding of political communication and of how it could be productively studied. With each new contribution, he showed how political communication in whatever form derived from and expressed essential features of the human condition; he demonstrated how application of concepts from other fields bring to light important features of political communication that others had not noticed; and he showed in every work the great importance of grounding contemporary studies in a thorough knowledge of relevant social, political, intellectual, and literary history.

Dan’s legacy consists not only of his writings, which will become less current as political communication assumes new forms and practices, but also of his example of how to do serious scholarship in the subject. His commitment to the integrity of ideas was absolute. A distinctive mark of his work was the enormously wide range of concepts and interpretive tools he was able to draw on to show new facets of political communication. Every project tackled a new subject and a new direction. Perhaps the most characteristic attribute of Dan’s work was his interest in and, often, joy in the human condition as he saw it expressed in politics, broadly conceived. Much writing about political communication is dour and plaintive; Dan saw both comedy and drama, the best and worst human foibles, the seamless force of history working itself out in the present, and, above all, the nobility of the political enterprise and its institutions as a magnificently human undertaking.

Dan did not put much stock in the disciplinary honors that came to him. He was motivated by ideas and a love of politics in its broadest sense. After taking early retirement, his productivity continued and even increased. His understanding continued to grow, and, at the time of his death, his was working on his most intellectually ambitious project to date. Dan’s voice in the field of political communication was insightful, always original, often wry, and unfailingly wise. His legacy is a resource of great value. His example of how to do scholarship is challenging, instructive, and inspiring. We have lost one of our best.

David L. Swanson was Professor of Speech Communication and Associate Provost of the University of Illinois.