By Menachem Wecker
Chris Arterton, founding dean of the Graduate School of Political Management and a former pollster for local Democratic candidates, introduced the inaugural event of the Society of Presidential Pollsters at the Jack Morton Auditorium on Thursday.
The event, which was moderated by Kenneth Walsh, chief White House correspondent for U.S. News & World Report, featured pollsters Bill Schneider, Ed Goeas, Stan Greenberg and Mark Penn, who created the Mark J. Penn Endowment to the Graduate School of Political Management and Gelman Library, Dr. Arterton said.
“As you may know, there is a similar society for presidential speechwriters, the Judson Welliver Society, and there’s been talk about creating one for presidential press secretaries,” Dr. Arterton said. “Due to Mark Penn’s foresight, the pollsters have, for once, gotten the jump on presidential press secretaries.”
Dr. Arterton then turned the microphone over to Mr. Walsh, who said he has covered the White House since 1986. According to Mr. Walsh, reporters need to get to know not only the president, vice president and White House chief of staff but also the pollsters.
“Most pollsters who get to the level in their careers of the gentlemen we have here with us share something that reporters at their best have too, and that’s a tremendous interest in history, the presidency and the notion of intellectual curiosity,” he said. “There’s a bond there that I’ve always felt is very important.”
Mr. Walsh asked the panel what the role of a presidential pollster should be. Should pollsters try to shape policy? Sell or explain policy? Help shape presidents’ perception of what is going on in the country? Or perhaps, all of the above, he asked.
According to Dr. Schneider, Omer L. and Nancy Hirst professor of public policy at George Mason University and a senior political analyst for more than two decades at CNN, pollsters have two very different roles. They focus on the political task of gauging public opinion on messaging, and they also inform the president about what people think about certain topics.
“It’s important for the president to have an objective picture of where the public is on any given issue,” he said.
Mr. Penn, chief executive officer of Burson-Marsteller and of Penn, Schoen and Berland Associates and chief adviser to former President Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on their respective presidential and senatorial campaigns, focused on a different aspect of a pollster’s job.
Presidents have to push legislation through a lot of desks, from Congress to committees to special interest to the “public opinion desk,” Mr. Penn said.
“If the president gets a lot of legislation through but it doesn’t pass the desk of public opinion, he’s probably not going to get reelected,” he said, “or there will be a backlash and he will lose his ability to continue to do things in Congress.”
Dr. Greenberg, founder, chairman and chief operating officer of Greenberg, Quinlan Rosner Research and a former pollster to President Clinton, said pollsters tend to build relationships with presidents when they are candidates. Pollsters can help candidates and presidents by “giving some texture to where the public is,” he said.
Mr. Goeas, president and chief executive officer of the Tarrance Group, adviser to the McCain presidential campaign and a member of the Graduate School of Political Management’s Council on American Politics, started off by debunking what he called a popular misconception.
“Policy is never developed from polling. Policy comes from the principles, the agenda and the policymakers,” he said. “Where the pollster comes in from a policy standpoint is the messaging part – how to sell the policy and how to monitor the policy.”
Whereas people often think that pollsters order politicians around, “We are brought in later in large part,” he said.
Mr. Walsh wondered what the panelists did when presidents ignored their polling information.
Mr. Goeas reminded the audience that a pollster is just one of many advisers and just one piece of talent. When a president – or a sheriff, or whoever has hired the pollster – makes a decision, it’s final. But the conversation focuses on facts, not beliefs. “Because you have the numbers in your hand, it’s a different type of discussion,” he said.
Dr. Greenberg noted that presidents often have areas of their platforms that are totally out of bounds for polling. “He will empower you when it’s in his interest to use you,” he said.
Mr. Penn shared an experience that showed him the limitations of polling. Advising a candidate who became president of Colombia, he shared strong results from a poll that suggested that the candidate should go after drug cartels. After several moments of silence from the group, an adviser told Mr. Penn that going after drug lords would be great for the polls, but they would all be killed.
Dr. Schneider said a “dirty little secret” of the U.S. government system is that it was designed, by people skeptical of the evils of government, not to work. But the system actually does work, he said.
“Give us a crisis and everything works beautifully every time,” he said, but it takes pollsters to help the president decide what is, and is not, a crisis.