The Fly in the Ointment

Some years ago I attended a conference that brought together political practitioners and academics to see what we could learn from one another’s work. One of the first speakers, a well-known consultant, detailed how his first campaign involved trying to defeat an incumbent in a state race for secretary of state. His candidate was a vibrant 37-year old and the incumbent a well-seasoned and experienced 72. Realizing he probably couldn’t win the race on the merits, the consultant decided to make it about age, even though he could offer no evidence the incumbent suffered from any deficits.

He and his team put together an ad campaign that showed his candidate, in color, with his young children and engaged in athletic activities. The pictures of the incumbent were in black and white and made him look haggard and tired. This consultant wanted, at the end of the commercial, to put the number “37” on the screen and then reverse the numbers to indicate the incumbent’s age. He apparently thought this clever, but one of his staff members pointed out that the incumbent was not 73 years old but 72. “Better still,” the consultant told us, “because now we will have the incumbent going around the state telling everyone he’s 72. He’ll be campaigning for us.” They ran the ad, and sure enough the incumbent called a press conference the next day to inform the voters that he was not 73 but 72, and subsequently lost the race.

Thus began my two-day foray into the pit of political campaigning. As a student of Machiavelli I had fancied myself not naive about politics, but this conference made me feel like Beaver Cleaver. A few years later I was at a political science conference and ended up at a dinner with the state chairman of one of the two major political parties. We got to talking about the 2000 election and he told me how he had gone to Florida and gathered in the room with other party leaders who, he said, knew they didn’t have the votes but dedicated themselves to “losing as long and as loud as possible.” Later in the conversation, after I had suggested that a particular strategy was ethically dubious, he looked at me with a mixture of pity and scorn: "I don't give a shit about right and wrong son, I just want to win elections."

Another story: a friend of mine once ran for Congress. I had known him for over ten years prior to his ill-fated attempt. We had had many conversations about politics and cultural matters, so I believed I knew his views pretty well. He invited me to be part of his “kitchen cabinet,” and so I attended a few meetings with him, other invitees, and paid consultants and party managers. I say “a few” meetings because once the party leader heard some of my views and thoughts on strategy (where I emphasized integrity and conviction) he dismissed me from the proceedings. About two months later, while the campaign was in full swing, I had a refreshing malted beverage with my friend to see how things were coming along. He was no longer recognizable. His previous facility with ideas had hardened and he now advocated for positions which I had in the past heard him denounce. The free interplay of conversation yielded to position papers and talking points. At one point, surprised by the course our discussion had taken, I asked him what had happened to him. He told me that this was what he had to do to win (not true, and not in that district), and that if he didn’t take these positions his various sources of funding would dry up (clearly true). The party leaders had put the squeeze on him: toe the line or you're on your own.

In our retail politics we focus on candidates and their teams, but we pay little attention to the people behind the scenes who shape the campaigns and the messaging. Political consultants form a distinctive and mostly hidden class of actors. But if we want to know what makes our politics so unsavory, we best start with them.

Ellen Zeng, in the Harvard Law and Policy Review defined a consultant as a “professional who is engaged primarily in the provision of advice and services (such as polling, media, creation and production, and direct mail fundraising) to candidates, their campaigns, and other political committees.” In his NYTimes article “The Political Consultant Racket,” Adam Sheingate informed us that “The growth of the consulting industry dates to the 1970s, when Congress passed a series of amendments to the Federal Election Campaign Act that tried to regulate how much candidates could raise and spend during the course of the campaign.” Furthermore, having “unlimited amounts of money with limited ways of spending it” forces candidates to funnel the funds into consulting. Sheingate, a professor of political science at Johns Hopkins and author of Building a Business of Politics: The Rise of Political Consulting and the Transformation of American Democracy, continued:

What is the consequence of all this for our democracy? In some ways, consultants are like the microscopic bugs in our gut that help us metabolize food: Consultants help candidates and campaigns metabolize money, but their work leaves the body politic hungry for more.

The result is a system of big money donors, expensive campaigns and incessant political ads. Free speech is not really free. Money talks in American politics, and the political consulting industry is the main beneficiary — no matter which candidate eventually wins.

The movie The War Room, featuring James Carville and George Stephanopoulos prior to his transformation into a media star, gave the public one of its first glimpses into the backroom machinations of a presidential campaign, focusing on Clinton's inaugural effort. The movie was presented campaigning as an exercise in cynicism and manipulation, and in Clinton, the handlers had a most pliable subject. The book Primary Colors presented an even more jaded view of what levers were pulled behind the scenes during Clinton’s first run. Juxtaposing candidate “Stanton’s” willingness to do anything to get power with a young staffer’s idealism, the book presented a bracing portrait of “win at any cost” politics. “You don’t think Lincoln was a whore before he became President?” Candidate Stanton, at the end of the book, assures the young staffer that only the willingness to use any means necessary to win can get you to the point where you can actually do good things once you're governing. Somehow, he seemed to say, all the moral compromises you make along the way and their affect on character will magically disappear once you hold power.

Our campaigns negatively impact our governing. How can people be expected to work together given what they say about members of the other party during their campaigns? No reasonable person can be expected to put that aside as the price of doing business. I know a current member of Congress who I met on a number of occasions and found to be a decent, thoughtful, engaging human being. He seldom had an unkind word to say about anyone. My guess is that he is probably well-liked and well-respected on the Hill. I receive his campaign emails; a recent one called a member of the other party a “pro-criminal, Jew-hating, open border loving, LITERAL human baby murdering, anti-business, woke champion, school destroying, election interfering, nursing home COVID killer.” And then asked me to make a contribution!

That’s a hard pass. I don’t know if this person is aware of what his campaign staff sends out. I hope not. I’m tempted to pony up $250 and go to a fundraising event just to ask that question. I’m not a fan of the politician to whom the letter refers, but I doubt the veracity of these claims, just as I doubt that the person referred to would self-identify in those terms. Who of us likes to be falsely labeled and accused? It seems to me that, when it comes to applying labels, a default rule ought to be to defer to how someone labels themselves. “I’m none of the above” may be a falsely defensive posture, but “label unto others as you would have them label unto you” seems like not a bad policy. In any case, it seems bad either way to me: you either know your campaign staff sent this out and approved it, or you don't know what your staff is up to under your name. But it sure isn't taking the high road.

The fact I didn't identify the parties above indicates part of the problem, for readers can probably identify these negative strategies and vicious attacks as occurring on both sides. During the last election cycle, I felt sorry for both candidates for Congress in my district. Having met both of them and having done my own research, I knew how unfair the characterization of both persons and their positions were. Scholars express concerns that such negativity has an effect of lowering voter interest, especially voters not inflamed by their passions, and thus suppressing turnout rates. "A pox on both their houses" becomes a typical response. In some ways, however, it's not about parties: many consultants (I'm looking at you, Dick Morris) are guns for hire with very little principle other than promising a successful outcome. They'll follow the money wherever it leads them.

The word “politics” admits of many qualifiers. We can talk about “campus politics” or “office politics” or “dirty politics” and so forth, but there is also what I call “red-meat politics.” This politics occurs when politicians begin throwing “red meat” to ravenous voters, trying to satisfy not only their appetites but a certain kind of blood lust that, in a healthy society, is pretty thoroughly suppressed, but gets closer to the surface as a civilization begins to break down. As we have argued before, the mechanisms of civilization work to “tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world.” (Aeschylus) Throwing red meat at us unleashes rather than tames our savageness, especially at the margins of political distributions. Typically we deal with these dark spirits by creating institutional norms that channel our savage impulses into morally acceptable actions. The maintenance and teaching of these institutional norms is a central part of civilizing our impulses. Here, the world of consulting fails miserably.

The organization “American Association of Political Consultants” does provide a lovely “code of ethics” whose provisions are observed mainly in the breach. They have no way of enforcing the code, and I doubt very many political consultants use the code to guide their activities. As I’ve heard consultants say over and over: their job is to win elections. Period. The end justifies all means. The result, scholars have argued, is bad for “our democracy.” Zeng again:

Consulting involves manipulation, such as using polarizing advertisements that mislead voters and rhetorical formulas that discourage reflection and discussion, as well as heavy reliance on polling data in order to tell voters what they want to hear. The pervasive use of polling appears to be an attempt to game the system by preventing informed voting based on the candidate’s true views. In addition, due to the pressures to raise money to fund expensive campaigns, candidates end up listening more to wealthy special interests than to the ordinary voter. Campaign consulting, entangled by stratagems and propelled by money, degrades the purity of one person expressing her voice via her one vote.

Behind all the tricks, the misinformation, the attack ads, the calumnies and condemnations, the impugning of reputations, resides the age-old problem: the lust for power. The more power accumulates into one place, the more lustful and the more unrestrained the desires of those who seek it. This problem was identified clearly by the writer Cato during the Constitutional period:

The ten miles square, which is to become the seat of government, will of course be the place of residence for the president and the great officers of state—the same observation of a great man will apply to the court of a president possessing the powers of a monarch, that is observed of that of a monarch—ambition with idleness—baseness with pride—the thirst of riches without labour—aversion to truth—flattery—treason—perfidy—violation of engagements—contempt of civil duties—hope from the magistrate’s weakness; but above all, the perpetual ridicule of virtue—these, he remarks, are the characteristics by which the courts in all ages have been distinguished.

The language and manners of this court will be what distinguishes them from the rest of the community, not what assimilates them to it, and in being remarked for a behavior that shews they are not meanly born, and in adulation to people of fortune and power.

Or, more succinctly:

…that the ten miles square, if the remarks of one of the wisest men, drawn from the experience of mankind, may be credited, would be the asylum of the base, idle, avaricious and ambitious, and that the court would possess a language and manners different from yours.

It’s not hard to see why this happens: the concentration of power will encourage ambition and avarice among the most unscrupulous. It always been an issue that centralized power attracts courtiers and hangers-on, all seeking to enrich themselves without regard to principle or to the overall health of the community. Granted, many candidates are motivated by a sense of public service and a genuine desire to serve the public weal, but all-too-often they end up as playthings in the hands of those who seek not to live for politics but from politics. Consultants may be microscopic bugs in the gut, but they are also the flies in the ointment of democracy who, sadly, infect the whole enterprise.

Photo of a political rally in Chinatown, Los Angeles, featuring Betty Ford campaigning for her husband, U.S. President Gerald Ford, during the 1976 presidential campaign.

By Jeff Polet

Director of the Ford Leadership Forum, Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation

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