Have you ever wondered why political strategists — and by extension, the rest of us — are obsessed by polls? It is not because polls tell them what is going to happen. On the contrary, polls can be notoriously unreliable. Consider, to take a recent example, the Wisconsin recall election in June. As the time approached, the polls narrowed and what had a short while earlier seemed like a shoo-in for Scott Walker now seemed up for grabs. I had several anxious emails from politically mature friends in Wisconsin who were on the verge of despair, but, hey, Walker won in a veritable landslide — take away the extensive voter fraud, and you can also take away the word “veritable.” The true margin for Walker was probably something like 60/40.
The case of Scott Walker and the misleading polls touches on a critical reality in modern politics, the reality of inertia. Many people, when they hear the word “inertia,” think it means primarily a resistance to motion or initiative. Isaac Newton had a broader conception of the phenomenon: Yes, “inertia” describes the tendency of a body at rest to remain at rest but also (absent countervailing forces) the tendency of a body in motion to remain in motion.
This fundamental law of nature has great, if metaphorical, application in the realm of politics. Among other things, it helps to explain the prominence of polls in the metabolism of our political life.
Polls are odd things. Many of them, let’s face it, are more expressions of hope than fact. And even the best polls — into which category I’d put Rasmussen and (formerly: see below) Gallup — usually have a large element of uncertainty about them.
Why, then, are political strategists as obsessed with polls as a haruspex is with the aviary? Inertia. Strategists and, by extension, journalists and the public at large look to the polls as the Romans looked to the entrails of birds: suitably interpreted, they could foretell the future.
I suspect that among Romans there was as much skepticism about the predictive power of bird guts as, in our saner moments, we entertain about polls. Deep down, we know they are flawed. But polls have this great advantage: by pretending to tell us what will happen, they can create the currents of sentiment that build momentum. Momentum creates inertia. Inertia, as Newton saw, has the aura of inevitably. Hope becomes father to the deed.
This fact helps explain why everyone interested in politics looks closely at the “bounce” politicians receive after the national conventions. Romney had his at the end of August, then Obama had his after Charlotte.
There was, however, a difference. Poll watchers had noted that both Rasmussen and Gallup were trending towards Romney. The Obama administration did not like this. Rasmussen, an explicitly conservative pollster, was out of reach. Not so Gallup. It was the work of a moment for the Department of Justice to institute an “unrelated” lawsuit against Gallup and for David Axelrod, Obama’s chief enforcer aide, to contact Gallup and, as the Daily Caller put it, attempt to “subtly intimidate the respected polling firm when its numbers were unfavorable to the president.” I hope you appreciate the word “subtly.”
I do not know what Axelrod said, or how the officials at Gallup responded. I do know that Gallup’s polls, which had been pretty close to Rasmussen’s, suddenly started to diverge and show a trend more favorable to the president. Propter hoc? Or merely post hoc? I’m not sure we’ll ever know for sure.
But my main point here is to highlight the role of polls in establishing or abetting the momentum of inertia. It’s a largely psychological phenomenon that can have a material coefficient. Polls register the perception of momentum; by means of an alchemy we do not fully comprehend, that perception of momentum begets the reality of momentum. Ultimately, it can beget the confidence of inevitably. The reality of inevitability will always elude the politician, as the headline “Dewey Beats Truman” should remind us. But it remains a coveted advantage, which is why politicians and their handlers so crave it.
And this brings me to my excursus on gaffes. If gaffes were as important as some people think, Joe Biden would long ago have been laughed out of office. And Obama would not be far behind: remember his invocation of the “57” states, or his lament for the “corpsemen”? Here’s the mysterious thing about gaffes: sometimes they are damaging, even fatal, sometimes they matter not at all. What makes the difference? Why was Dan Quayle’s potato(e) gaffe a spud of historic dimensions while Obama’s 57 shades of gray went nowhere damage-wise?
A brief, incomplete, but not inaccurate answer is our new friend, inertia. With the wind of inertia at your back, gaffes are like bugs on your windshield: tiny nuisances that can be wiped away with a little spritz of explanation and the back-and-forth motion a fresh day brings. Absent that advantage, a gaffe is like an albatross, weighing down a candidate in the windless doldrums of inactivity.
In the larger economy of political life, gaffes should be nothing more than minor nuisances. If a politician communicates a clear and compelling vision of the future, then gaffes recede into insignificance. Absent that vision, they can become damaging hand grenades, lobbed by an opposition bent on disrupting your message. When that happens, even non gaffes can be made to look life gaffes. Consider, for example, Mitt Romney’s manly response to the murder of Chris Stevens, our ambassador to Libya, on September 11:
America will not tolerate attacks against our citizens and against our embassies. We will defend also our constitutional rights of speech and assembly and religion. We have confidence in our cause in America. We respect our Constitution. We stand for the principles our Constitution protects. We encourage other nations to understand and respect the principles of our Constitution because we recognize that these principles are the ultimate source of freedom for individuals around the world.
I also believe the Administration was wrong to stand by a statement sympathizing with those who had breached our embassy in Egypt instead of condemning their actions. It’s never too early for the United States Government to condemn attacks on Americans, and to defend our values. The White House distanced itself last night from the statement, saying it wasn’t ‘cleared by Washington.’ That reflects the mixed signals they’re sending to the world.
Good stuff, no? But team Obama (aided by their press officers at The New York Times, CNN, MSNBC, etc.) jumped all over it.
“Romney camp tires to manage fallout from Libya response,” ran one CNN headline, as if, absent the furor, there was anything to manage. (Not that CNN was the most biased headline; here’s CBS: “How badly did Romney botch response to Libya attack?” Jeesh!)
If Romney’s initial statement was robust and exactly the stuff to give the troops, his response to the media onslaught was poor. There was an unfortunate deer-in-the-headlights aspect to his demeanor as reporters pummeled him with questions. Did he think he went off half-cocked? Did he regret criticizing the president as events were unfolding? Romney eventually came out with the correct answer, more or less, but he seemed fixated on the word “breach,” which he repeated four or five times (can’t have those bad guys breaching our embassy walls, you know). Obama set the tone when he said that Romney had a tendency to shoot before he aims.
This was regarded as a “gotcha” comment, but I think Mitt Romney ought to have turned the tables on the president. He ought to have defended his original statement briefly, almost off-handedly. The administration began by apologizing for America. That is always the wrong response, Romney ought to have said. Our ambassador, and three other Americans, were murdered by Islamist thugs because our security was inadequate. That is the issue, and don’t muddy the waters with partisan irrelevancies.
Finally, let me observe that there is often a lot to be said for shooting before you take aim. If your principles are correct, if your vision is clear, you are already aiming in the right direction. Just pull the trigger. In fact, this is something Obama understands perfectly well. His administration has unleashed a continuous barrage since January 2009. I happen to think he is aiming in exactly the wrong direction. But his instincts about when (if not what) to shoot are correct. If your principles are clear, you don’t need focus groups and the abundance of caution they instill. You need a simple, clear, and (I’ll use the dread word again) manly policy for the country. I think that, deep down, Mitt Romney has such a vision. Hitherto, he has allowed it to be obscured by too diligent adherence to the false wisdom of focus groups. The path to victory is cleared by the candidate that has momentum. Inertia in the positive, irresistible sense is within Romney’s grasp. He needs but seize it.
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