Polls and Politics: The Dilemmas of Democracy

4. Continuing to Campaign: Public Opinion and the White House

4 Continuing to Campaign: Public Opinion and the White House Diane J. Heith According to George Edwards, “the Clinton presidency is the ultimate example of . . . a presidency based on a perpetual campaign to obtain the public’s support and fed by public opinion polls, focus groups, and public relations memos.”1 However, using polls to appeal to the public dates back to the Nixon administration. In 1980, Sidney Blumenthal argued that bringing polls and marketing to the White House represented a continuation of strategies learned on the campaign trail; hence his term for this behavior: “the permanent campaign.”2 Campaigning is inherently about persuasion—persuading an individual, or group of individuals, to vote. Therefore, Hugh Heclo argues that the permanent campaign (sometimes termed campaigning to govern) theory of presidential behavior merges the “power-as-persuasion inside Washington [theory] with power-as-public opinion manipulation outside Washington.”3 The resulting merger produces a different form of leadership because campaigning is inherently different from governing. With a “polling apparatus,” the White House gathers the public’s attitudes for its own purposes.4 Like modern campaigns, the use of opinion polls opens “the door of opportunity to orchestrate, amplify and inject the presumptive voices of the American people . . . into the daily management of public affairs.”5 Without polls, the candidatecentered campaigns of the late twentieth century and early twenty-first would not exist. Similarly, without a polling operation, presidential campaigning to govern could not exist. Since Nixon, all presidents have internalized the lessons learned on the campaign trail. Successful presidential candidates bring their knowledge and dependence on the polls from the campaign trenches 55 to the White House. Does the incorporation of polling produce permanent campaign leadership? The triumph of campaigning over governing within the presidency must begin with a switch from group-centered coalition building to self-centered strategizing. Traditionally, the president governs by assembling his party and interest groups on behalf of issues, policies, and legislation. In contrast, self-centered strategizing is presidency-centered, placing the president as the binding entity rather than an issue or bill before Congress. Similarly, modern campaigns are candidate-centered rather than party-centered. Moreover, self-centered strategizing during campaigns is completely dependent on poll-produced relationships. Therefore, evidence of the presidential permanent campaign begins with the retention of campaign techniques to maintain, expand, and utilize presidency-defined supporters. Using the presidential public opinion apparatus to define who is for and who is against the president is the most obvious, outward indicator of the permanent campaign. Instead of defining likely voters, presidents seek to define a base of support for the presidency as well as the presidential agenda. The Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush I, and Clinton White Houses all employed the poll apparatus to define and monitor a presidencycentered coalition.The Nixon and Ford administrations used the polls to further define traditional descriptors of support. The Carter White House continued this evolution of the presidential coalition and defined members of the coalition by support for certain issues. The Reagan and Bush I administrations redefined the presidential constituency, reincorporating party ideologies and other identifiers. By the Clinton administration, the president, his consultants, and his staff were quite sophisticated in defining advocates and adversaries. Triangulation, the Clinton administration’s constituency-based strategy, represents the epitome of an adversarial approach, which his successor, President George W. Bush, publicly repudiated and privately adopted. Polling in the White House The spending by the winning presidential candidate increased exponentially, from $25 million in 1968 to over $300 million in 2001.6 The amount spent by presidential campaigns on public opinion polling also increased over time from $1.6 million by Richard Nixon in 1972 to almost $4 million in 1992. Similarly, Jacobs and Shapiro estimate that President Nixon, while in the White House, spent over $5 million (in 1995 inflation adjusted dollars) on public opinion polling data.7 56 Diane J. Heith Patrick Caddell received over $1.3 million between 1977 and 1979 for polling for President Carter.8 In 1981 alone, Richard Wirthlin received $820,000 polling for Ronald Reagan.9 The Bush polling budget was $650,000 in 1989 for quarterly national surveys by Robert Teeter.10 President Clinton spent over $15 million on public polls during his two terms in the White House.11 With this significant outlay of party funds, these White Houses created a polling operation. Public attitudes have always been important to presidents...