Lamenting the dominance of pollsters in U.S. political campaigns

My summer travels took me to gala events with Bill Clinton and Tom Daschle, to commercial shoots in senior living complexes, and to shipyard docks to hear the concerns of longshoremen. At each stop I was flanking the same man, my uncle Bill Bradbury, Oregon's democratic challenger for the U.S. Senate seat. I worked this summer as the campaign "body man," which essentially is campaign speak for full-time personal assistant to the candidate. My duties entailed those of chauffeur, staffer and confidant.

For me, this summer was an education nonpareil in the politics of American campaigns. Like any other observer of the campaign process, I will now strongly echo the chorus of calls for campaign finance reform. What you may not have gathered from my opening sentence was that a great percentage of my summer was spent in the campaign headquarters call room with my uncle, as he incessantly "dialed for dollars."

Every day, calling prospective donors from various Democratic National Committee local and national lists presented a test of Bill's commitment to the race. The good days were those when he was calling lists of family friends, who quickly warmed up to the idea of contributing $500 or $1,000 to the campaign.

The way most of us envision campaigns, with candidates riding frantically around the state, shaking as many hands as possible and dialoguing with diverse interest groups is largely a myth — a myth that only applies to the final weeks of the campaign, after all the hard work has already been done. The dominant task for a challenger candidate who is not a multimillionaire is fundraising.

This means spending countless hours on the phone — at certain points this summer, Bill averaged ten hours a day in the call room — and more importantly, carefully plugging yourself into profitable party channels. The troubling reality is that prospective donors occupy a far greater percentage of the candidate's time than do prospective constituents.

After this summer, what I truly lament is the dominance of polling in the American political process, for the pollster has effectively silenced the constituents and the candidates.

I have witnessed through my uncle's campaign that a candidate's personal connection to his state and its people is not sufficient to determine his campaign platform. Rather, candidates' messages have largely been conceived by political consultants and pollsters. My uncle's platform is no exception. The uninspiring mantra of corporate accountability and "seniors matter" have made his platform virtually synonymous with every other democratic candidate across the country.

The problem is that candidates are not represented in their campaign messages, at least not adequately. They might have compelling ideas about issues such as education, health care and the environment, but their pollsters and campaign managers tell them that these ideas "won't sell."

Focus groups and benchmark polls have served to pacify the public and have eliminated the need for politicians to hold focus groups of their own. Now, a series of calls from a polling group in Washington, D.C. suffices to collect an accurate picture of the "public mood."

In this world, protesters and vocal constituents are unthinkingly written off as extremists. This to me is perverse logic, as we are marginalizing the concerns of thoughtful and caring constituents. What few acknowledge, although it is very clear upon minimal reflection, is that polls offer us a simple snapshot, a surface level understanding of the public's concerns. After all, you can do no more than scratch the surface in a five-minute conversation with a complete stranger. Polls do not offer us a deep understanding or a thoughtful account of the issues facing the electorate.

The dominance of pollsters and political consultants has effectively eliminated the natural tension between the trustee and the delegate models of representative leadership in republic society, for politics is no longer about sticking your neck out and making hard choices. Polls make every choice easy for the "delegate" of the people, as they need only reflect the will of their constituents.

I would only say that such an emphasis on polls eliminates the possibility of true leadership or progress on difficult social and moral questions.

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To see this, we need only realize that a pollster never would have counseled Lincoln to take issue with Douglas's noncommittal stance on the issue of slavery. Polls can only tell you what is politically safe, not what's right.

As my uncle's confidant this summer, I traversed the very complex moral terrain of American electoral politics. To paraphrase my uncle's words, the unfortunate reality is that candidates need to play the campaign game — be a slave to the polls — to eventually be in a place to effect meaningful change. Josh Anderson '04 is a Wilson School major from Chicago, Ill. He can be reached at janderso@princeton.edu.