The Politics of Public Opinion
excerpted from the book
The Perpetual Prisoner Machine
How America Profits From Crime
by Joel Dyer
Westview Press, 2001, paper
p115
Republican Party, Contract with America, 1994
[We promise to pass] [a]n anti-crime package including stronger
truth-in-sentencing, "goodfaith" exclusionary rule exemptions,
effective death penalty provisions, and cuts in social spending
from this summer's "crime" bill to fund prison construction
and additional law enforcement to keep people secure in their
neighborhoods and kids safe in their schools.
p119
Peter Carlson, director, U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau
of Prisons, described this new and powerful force to his peers
- the Keeper's Voice, 1998, , a publication aimed at corrections
employees,
"What is new and remarkable is how much weight public
opinion has gained within this new freewheeling style, decisively
influencing the political machinery of government. It is important
to recognize in today's fast-moving, information-based society,
the citizens viewpoint has taken on new relevance for individuals
in public service. We live in an age in which the public demands
responsiveness from government institutions and elected leaders."
119
The New Rulers
Consultants have been a part of America's political landscape
for as long as anyone can remember. Early on, consultants tended
to be lawyers assigned to a candidate by the party to handle the
day-to-day managerial tasks of a campaign. Although they may have
had some input into the decisionmaking process, it was quite limited
compared to that of the candidates themselves or the party. But
this would change to some degree in the 1930s. The following walk
through the history of the political consultants relies heavily
on the work of Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia's Department
of Government and Foreign Affairs as published in his 1981 book,
The Rise of the Political Consultant.
In 1933, the California legislature passed a bill known as
the Central Valley Project. The bill was adamantly opposed by
Pacific Gas and Electric Company, which considered the legislation
to be a threat to private power. In an effort to overturn the
bill, PG&E threw its weight behind a citizens' initiative
that would overturn the legislature's decision. Sensing that the
initiative would be successful, supporters of the Central Valley
Project turned to two men for help, a press agent and newsman
named Clem Whitacker and a public relations wiz named Leone Smith
Baxter. The two used a paltry $39,000 radio and newspaper campaign
to defeat PG&E's initiative. The age of the political consultant
was born, and as a premonition of the way this new age would operate,
PG&E quickly hired the two men who had defeated its initiative
to handle its future political affairs.
By the 1950s, political consultants were playing an increasing
role in the election process. Even at this early stage in their
rise to dominance, some observers could see the writing on the
wall. Neil Staebler, the chairman of Michigan's Democratic Party
in the 1950s, observed that "elections will increasingly
become contests, not between candidates but between great advertising
firms." Nostradamus clearly had nothing on Staebler.
The coming of the television age increased the power of political
consultants exponentially. In 1952, Dwight Eisenhower hired an
ad agency to consult on his campaign. It would prove to be a shrewd
move. After stumbling and bumbling his way through media coverage
during the campaign, Ike's hopes for winning looked grim. But
his ad agency decided to try something new. They hired the Gallup
company to conduct a series of polls and used the information
gathered to create themes for a series of television commercials.
The ad agency believed that in a controlled environment, they
could create an image of a relaxed and articulate Eisenhower to
counterbalance the less-than-eloquent Ike being portrayed in news
coverage. The TV spots did far more than counterbalance the news;
they skyrocketed Eisenhower's popularity and thereby changed the
face of electoral politics forever.
By the time Ronald Reagan ran his 1966 California gubernatorial
campaign, political consultants had moved from their role of image
makers into the realm of political strategists. Reagan's early
attempts at campaigning were floundering. In response, his consulting
firm, Spencer-Roberts, decided to make a bold move. They hired
the aptly named firm Behavioral Science Corporation to research
the issues that were deemed to be the most important to Californians.
More significant than that, they also asked the firm to provide
suggested solutions that would appeal to the electorate. Taking
advantage of Reagan's training as an actor, his consultants wrote
the problems and solutions on a set of index cards and had Reagan
memorize the information as he would the lines in a Hollywood
production. The rest is history. The modern age of political consulting-an
age where the pollsters, a.k.a. consultants, decide what issues
are discussed and in what fashion-had arrived.
By the end of the 1970s, the biggest and best of the political
consulting firms were actually turning away potential candidate
clients left and right. The consultants, who now fully believed-and
to a large extent, rightfully so-that through the tools of polling
and television they could determine the outcomes of elections,
were now picking and choosing their clientele based largely upon
a candidate's perceived malleability to their ideas. If they thought
that a candidate was too set in his or her ways, unwilling to
follow the script that the consultants would write based upon
their own interpretations of public opinion, the firm would simply
choose to work with a different candidate. After all, the firms'
reputations were based upon one criterion-winning elections. Taking
on a client who might adopt unpopular political positions-the
"maverick" politician-was a recipe for long-term financial
failure for any consultant.
With the rise in importance of the consultants, it became
clear that any political wannabe who spurned the use of the media-savvy
pollsters during the election process was all but doomed to defeat.
More important, the opposite was also true; any candidate rejected
by the established consultants had little chance of reaching office.
As a result, virtually every candidate running for office since
the late 1970s has done so with the aid of these new rulers of
the political system and has been more or less willing to follow
their instructions.
In the late 1970s, when Larry Sabato was completing the research
for The Rise of the Political Consultant, it was not only clear
that these masters of the media had become the true driving force
of America's electoral process but that they had also become a
powerful force in postelection policy decisions as well.
It became commonplace that after winning an election for their
political client, the consultant would be retained on staff, presumably
to help maintain a politico's popularity until the next round
of elections. What this meant was that consultants were now advising
those in office about which of their policies were popular and
would translate into future votes and which might make reelection
more difficult. As a result of this political evolution, public
opinion began to take on an increasingly important role in policy
decisions and not just in campaign rhetoric.
Stuart Spencer described his role as consultant for President
Gerald Ford in 1976 in disturbingly candid terms:
When I'm working with a client I try to get him to do things
that I think are politically wise. I went to President Ford in
1976 when [Secretary of State Henry] Kissinger had trips scheduled
to Africa just before the Georgia and Alabama primaries. I went
to the President and I said, "Mr. President, you can t let
him go to Africa before these two primaries. There are too many
racial overtones in the South." But he looked me in the eye
and said, "You're probably right, Stu, but I'm doing the
right thing for the country. Well, I don't argue with that. I
made my point, and he said no . . . I did get him to change sides
on the common situs picketing bill. [The bill, strongly favored
by labor, was vetoed by Ford after he'd promised to support it.]
I don't even care about common situs picketing, but a lot of people
on the right in the Republican party did, and it became a cause
celebre.
Gerald Ford is widely regarded as a man of great integrity,
an oldtime politician who desired doing what was right even more
than being reelected. If Ford could be controlled to such an extent
by his hired handlers, I shudder to think of the influence that
consultants wield in this age of TV politicians like Bill Clinton
and Newt Gingrich. Along these lines, Sabato has written:
Consultants have emphasized personality and gimmickry over
issues, often exploiting emotional or negative themes rather than
encouraging rational discussion. They have sought candidates who
fit their technologies more than the requirements of office and
have given an extra boost to candidates that are more skilled
at electioneering than governing. They have encouraged candidates'
own worst instincts to blow with the prevailing winds of public
opinion.
One would assume that the consultants would try to dispute
such allegations regarding their effect on the political process,
but for reasons that must surely stem from vanity, they seldom
do. In fact, Dick Morris,
President Clinton's consultant until he fell from grace amid
a sex scandal of his own, has written two books describing his
role in the Clinton administration, a role that fits perfectly
with Sabato's observations.
In Behind the Oval Office and The New Prince, Morris proudly
tells his readers how he developed a three-pronged approach to
politics that is responsible for Clinton's rise to power. First,
Morris claims that he convinced the president to use "triangulation,"
a process that has been described as developing a platform to
include the most popular elements from both parties, thus eliminating
the usual Democrat-Republican conflicts. It's sort of an "all
things to all people" approach.
Next, Morris turned public opinion polling on nearly every
conceivable position into a daily, sometimes hourly, activity
at the White House. Then, as more than one observer has noted,
Morris convinced Clinton to change his stated political positions
to fit the polls. And finally, Morris takes credit for developing
the political tool known as the "never-ending campaign."
In effect, this tool dictates that even though a candidate has
been elected, he or she never quits running for office, the centerpiece
of this philosophy being that governing is made subordinate to
winning reelection.
What Morris has done for the Democratic president he has also
done for powerful Republicans, including Jesse Helms and Trent
Lott. All in all, it seems that Dick Morris is quite proud of
the fact that consultants like him are now running the show in
Washington. But such a reality has major implications for the
rest of us.
One can only shudder when wondering what America might look
like today had Dick Morris and his poll-taking peers been working
their antidemocratic magic earlier this century. For instance,
what would have happened during the McCarthy era? When the "hard-on-communism"
senator was at the height of his popularity, only 29 percent of
Americans thought he was doing the wrong thing. With lopsided
poll results like that, Morris and his pals would surely have
pushed all of their candidate-clients onto the McCarthy bandwagon.
As disturbing as this proposition sounds, I'm not sure it would
have been any more terrifying than what's happening today. It
seems inconceivable that even Joseph McCarthy and a bunch of poll-driven
clones would have imprisoned 2 million people as a means of retaining
political popularity.
The Role of the Modern Consultant
Today's political consultants have more or less taken over
the tasks that once fell under the purview of the party and the
candidate. They are hired to provide technical services such as
direct-mail fund-raising, polling, public opinion surveys, and
fund-raising from political action committees (PACs), corporations,
and the donor class. They also serve as the "experts"
in charge of managing the overall direction of the campaign. They
orchestrate the press that turns to them nearly exclusively for
their political information, a fact that accounts for the near-propaganda
quality of much political reporting these days. And most significant,
they play an important role in selecting which issues a candidate
will concentrate on and increasingly what position the candidate
will take on those issues.
Unlike Dick Morris, some consultants have actually expressed
concern over their ability to control candidates. In 1979, well-known
consultant Charles Guggenheim acknowledged, "We're the big
experts from the outside; we are prophets from another country
whose biggest problem is that they [politicians] defer to me too
much. I want to get their reactions but they hold back. If I said,
'You've got to play that,' I'd be scared they'd do it unquestioningly.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Sabato's research confirmed
Guggenheim's worst fear. As Sabato said, "Consultants are
having an increasingly greater voice in the setting of basic strategy
and the selection of (and relative emphasis on) campaign issues."
I suspect that consultant Guggenheim's fear stemmed from his understanding
that the enthusiastically followed instructions he was issuing
to his candidate clients, though helping to ensure their election,
were not based on any pertinent facts concerning the issues but
rather upon what words, according to the polls, would tickle the
ears of the most voters.
Since consultants like Guggenheim have expressed apprehension
about their role in politics, I would suggest that the rest of
us should be wholly terrified. Understanding how these "prophets"
of the election process go about determining a candidate's issues
is no comfort at all- polling, polling, and more polling-or as
this gauging of the public's desires is described by political
writer Alan Baron, "the new holy writ of American politics."
Since the end of the 1970s, which marked the beginning of
the modern era of polling, political consultants have primarily
used five types of polling tools during the course of an election.
First is the "benchmark" poll. This survey is taken
in the early stages of a campaign. Its purpose is to determine
the public's assessment of a candidate's strengths and weaknesses
as well of those of his or her opponent. Originally, these surveys
were conducted by going door to door, but as costs for such "in
person" surveys have risen, most are now conducted over the
phone.
Once the benchmark survey is analyzed, "follow-up"
surveys are conducted. These surveys serve a couple of purposes.
They help to gather more specific information about any areas
of concern pointed out by the benchmark poll, or, if a candidate
has adjusted the platform based upon the original benchmark poll,
the follow-up survey can reflect whether the adjustment has had
the desired effect on the public's opinion of the candidate.
Later in the election process, "panel" surveys are
performed. These surveys involve recontacting a large percentage,
usually more than half, of the people previously polled in the
benchmark or follow-up surveys. This information is coupled with
a new smaller survey of people not previously polled by the campaign.
The purpose of the panel surveys is to determine any shifts that
have occurred in public opinion during the course of the campaign-presumably
to allow the candidate to shift views in accordance with public
sentiment.
The next polling tool is known as the "tracking phase."
This is a small, constant sampling of public opinion that goes
on throughout the campaign. It usually consists of approximately
100 phone calls every night. These tracking polls are designed
to question members of the public about issues that arise during
the campaign. They also help the consultants gauge whether their
TV commercials are proving effective. In addition, they pick up
on any changes taking place in the general population's opinion
about a candidate or the opponent. Although such a small sampling
of opinion is relatively useless by itself, the cumulative effect
of constantly acquiring such bits of information helps to map
trends in public opinion.
And finally, consultants use what have come to be known as
"focus groups." Small samplings of individuals are brought
together in a room where they can be more or less used as human
guinea pigs. Consultants often watch from behind one-way mirrors
as the individuals are asked to respond to anything from campaign
slogans to issue positions to individual words. These days, it
is not uncommon for those who participate in focus groups to be
hooked up to electronic monitors that reflect their emotional
responses to every conceivable stimulus: the color of a candidate's
tie, the meter of his or her voice, a candidate's believability.
Pollsters have found that these electronically monitored emotional
responses are a better gauge of true public opinion than the views
voiced by the focus-group participants. Perhaps the best example
in recent years of a politician effectively using focus groups
is the case of Bill Clinton in 1998.
After Clinton finally admitted to his sexual indiscretion
with Monica Lewinsky in the Oval Office, it was time for damage
control. Clinton's consultants used a focus group that determined
that people grew angry every time Clinton used the word "truthful,"
but the group reacted favorably whenever he described his sexual
liaisons as being a part of his "private" life. In response
to the focus-group findings, Clinton went on national TV and in
a well-scripted four-minute speech, he used the word "private"
no less than six times, while steering clear of any subject matter
having to do with "truthfulness." Support for Clinton
shot up following the speech, which makes perfect sense when you
consider that the speech had, for all intents and purposes, been
written by the American people themselves, based upon what they
wanted to hear.
Trim the Sails, Divide, and Conquer
What all of these polling tools have in common is that they
are ultimately designed for two purposes. First, they allow politicians
to adjust their political platform in a manner that reflects the
public's opinion and will motivate a "targeted" segment
of the electorate to go to the polls on election day. This is
not to insinuate that all politicians are going to completely
discard their personal views on an issue simply because the polls
show them to be bucking public opinion-although this certainly
can and does happen. In 1976, famed political consultant Robert
Teeter voiced concern over the fact that many candidates are too
willing to change their platform to fit the poll results. Teeter
told the National Journal, "I've seen candidates who were
far too flexible for my tastes in being willing to realign their
positions."
Even so, I believe that polling is often used to assist a
politician in trimming the sails on issues, as opposed to outright
determining them. That is to say polling results tell politicians
which parts of their platform to emphasize or exaggerate and which
parts to avoid discussing publicly. In writing for the New York
Times in 1992, Michael de Courcy Hinds described this dilemma
in terms of crime. Hinds noted that both governors and other policymakers
were well aware that they should be seeking alternatives to prisons
because of the skyrocketing costs of incarceration. Yet after
a number of interviews with elected leaders, Hinds concluded that
the politicians believed that they had to ignore doing what was
best for their constituents because they were uniformly afraid
that supporting prison alternatives would allow them to be painted
as "soft on crime" in future elections. Although such
political positioning in-~ creases a politician's chances of reaching
and maintaining office, in the ,,, long run it means that the
election process has lost its ability to inform and thereby persuade
the public to alter its position on important issues , such as
crime when public opinion is out of touch with the facts.
The other purpose of polling is to help the consultants to
assess the best way to shrink the electorate by encouraging the
people composing the demographic groups that have not been targeted
by television commercials and issue selection to stay home on
election day. Designing a l campaign to encourage low voter turnout
allows politicians of both par- | ties to avoid having to deal
with issues such as crime in an operative manner. It also makes
it possible for those seeking office to adopt a stance on an issue
that will reward one group at the expense of another, for example,
as in the hard-on-crime position, which offers a false promise
of public safety to white suburbanites at the expense of low-income
communities of color.
Voter apathy is disturbingly high in nearly all demographic
groups, but it is the highest among the millions of Americans
who live at the bottom of the economic food chain. This lack of
political action by those with the most to lose is hard to understand
unless you realize that apathy among the poor has long been cultivated
by the powers that be. The "get out the vote" strategies
of the 1960s have been replaced with technological trickery designed
to "keep out the vote," when it comes to the poor.
p128
And just so you don't get the idea that I'm picking on conservatives
here, let me assure you that most Democrats are equally desirous
of minimal voter turnouts. In the 1998 elections, Democrats and
Republicans alike relied heavily on "targeted-voter"
strategies developed by their consultants. The idea was that it
is easier to win 16 percent of the ;' vote in an election where
only 30 percent of voters go to the polls than to try to appeal
to large numbers of people with varying and often conflicting
interests.
Writing for the Progressive, John Nichols observed correctly
that "a campaign that emphasizes issues of broad popular
appeal might turn off corporate contributors. That's something
Democratic insiders fear since, as their party has moved further
and further to the right, it has come to rely on the same Wall
Street donor base as the Republicans." Nichols concluded
that such action "leaves many voters with a clear sense that
the political choices they make don't matter." And this sense
of political helplessness among the nontargeted population is
exactly what the consultants are counting on.
In a conversation I had a couple of years ago with historian
Howard Zinn, he made a similar point. Zinn told me that throughout
our country's history, whenever the two parties have become nearly
indistinguishable from one another, as is the case in the 1990s,
people tend to remove themselves from the political process through
apathy. It seems that the current trend toward a one-party system-a
trend that has been accelerated by the rise in importance of the
political consultant-has simply made a comfortable couch on election
day preferable to a line at a voting booth, where a person more
often than not these days gets to choose between two nearly identical
candidates. In the 1990s, the choice is generally between a pro-big
business, hard-on-crime, millionaire attorney claiming to be a
Democrat in favor of abortion, or a pro-big business, hard-on-crime,
millionaire attorney claiming to be a Republican who opposes abortion.
This is too often the reality of modern politics.
If the majority of people were to actually vote, it would
be nearly impossible for candidates to efficiently target wealthy
demographic groups with their sound-bite-laden commercials and
financial appeals. This, in many ways, would make the campaign
process more difficult for politicians, and this is particularly
true for Democrats, who must still maintain, though somewhat disingenuously,
that they represent the concerns of poor and working-class Americans.
As Nichols has pointed out, Democrats these days have become increasingly
dependent upon wealthy constituents and corporations whose political
desires are, more often than not, in direct conflict with those
of blue-collar workers and people living in poverty.
p129
The flight to the burbs by those who could afford it has done
much to drive a wedge between the interests of the rich and poor.
In the past when a library or a fire station was built in urban
America, it would likely have benefited voters of every economic
strata, at least to some degree, because all the classes lived
in relative proximity to one another. But geographic segregation
has put communities of varying classes at war with one another
over government expenditures. Suburbanites would much rather see
their tax dollars go for beautiful parks, or that increasingly
popular form of class discrimination known as "open space,"
in their own neighborhoods than for some inner-city school that
they will never lay eyes on or for fire trucks that will never
spray their lifesaving water on the beautifully landscaped, nearly
identical homes found in suburban clusters with names like "Fawn
Brook" or "Aspen Meadows."
p130
Any campaign truly designed to speak to the needs of the lower
class would have to include operative discussions of such modern
political taboos as income redistribution, community-to-community
diversion of tax revenues, and the racist elements and economic
shortcomings of the war on crime-issues that, if put forward by
Democrats, would run the risk of pushing the wealthy individuals
and corporations who now pay for their TV commercials even further
to the right and possibly into the waiting arms of "moderate
Republicans.
Consequently, most politicians, including modern pseudo-progressives
of the Clinton ilk, have made the decision to cater their campaign
platform to the desires of that portion of the electorate that
political consultants tell them is most critical to victory, namely,
suburbanites who are already predisposed to vote and who offer
the added bonus of being able to fill campaign coffers. That being
the case, the challenge for politicians is to make sure that voters
from other demographic groups stay home on election day. In recent
years, political consultants have revised methods that make apathy
less a byproduct of disenfranchisement than a result of high-tech
media manipulation.
Before the first political commercial has hit the airwaves,
the political consultants and advertising executives have already
experimented with polls and focus groups composed of people of
every make and model. Rich and poor, black and white have all
been strapped into chairs and hooked to an array of electronic
gadgets designed to measure their emotional responses to all that
is political. The goal of this electronic wizardry is as much
designed to determine what content might encourage some demographic
groups to abstain from voting as it is to determine what issues
will motivate other voters.
As former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich once observed,
"When things happen that make one side's partisans unhappy,
they stay homme." That being the case, both political parties
are now spending significant time and money to search out those
issues that they believe can be hyped in commercials or leaked
to the press that will insure that selected "partisans"
are "unhappy" and, therefore, motivated to stay home
on election day. Since both sides are now courting the same well-to-do
voter base, it is largely the poor who are being encouraged to
stay at home so that their conflicting interests don't muddy up
the political waters for either party.
By 1994, this misuse of technology, coupled with the increasing
emergence of an apathy-enhancing one-party system designed to
appeal to wealthy constituents, had helped to reduce voter turnout
to a measly 38 percent of those registered. We are often told
that the "common person" no longer believes that his
or her vote counts, but we are rarely informed that such political
intuition is, for the most part, by design.
p131
The growing cost of political campaigns has greatly increased
the influence of those who provide politicians with campaign funds.
In addition, this need for massive amounts of money has become
the central force in a process that has caused the Democratic
and Republican Parties to become increasingly blended and indistinguishable,
as they have adopted many of each other's platform positions,
including a nearly universal acceptance of the hard-on-crime position.
p132
It can be argued, and many have done so, that modern campaign
financing is one of the most destructive forces in America at
the end of the twentieth century. That's because, in its current
form, our process of funding elections has resulted in nothing
short of our turning over the reins of our government to those
who pick up the tab for the campaigns. Let's take a look at the
political money supply, starting with the donor class-that all-powerful
.0025 percent of the individuals in the United States who give
money to politicians.
So who is in the donor class? What do they look like? What
do they believe in? Well, first of all they are wealthy. Many
are billionaires, or at least millionaires. A full one-fifth reported
annual incomes of over $500,000, and four-fifths made at least
$100,000. Ninety-five percent are white. Eighty percent are men.
And although over 80 percent of all donors are over the age of
forty-five, at least 62 percent of those are over the age of sixty.
Since it is these wealthy white men who have the ear of our elected
officials, it is important to understand what messages they are
whispering.
A 1998 study conducted by the Joyce Foundation of Chicago
set out to do just that. The study found that on the whole, those
who composed the donor class shared the same values. They are
generally conservative on economic issues. More than one-half
are in favor of tax cuts even if they have to come at the expense
of public services. Most are adamantly opposed to any form of
national health-care insurance. They oppose any new spending aimed
at reducing the effects of poverty. They believe that the free-market
system should be allowed to operate unencumbered by government,
and they oppose any cuts in the defense budget. Incredibly, these
are the shared values of both Democrat and Republican campaign
donors, so it should come as no surprise that this list of donor
opinions reads like the political platform of both parties during
the last ten years.
p134
The poll-driven consultants and those supplying campaign funds
believe that putting forward a position on an issue that goes
against such strong popular opinion could well result in defeat
at election time, and no one giving money wants to take a chance
on wasting it on a losing campaign.
p135
Peter Carlson of the Bureau of Prisons
The American public is growing impatient with hearing about the
horror stories of crime in our streets . . . and the number one
subject in every political poll in the land is public safety.
Our legislative bodies are reacting to public opinion-voices are
really being heard-and elected representatives are creating our
future in the prison business.
p137
What I am describing is the new "natural-selection"
process of American politics. For the most part, only candidates
holding positions deemed proper by the money supply and the consultants
are able to rise to power. Candidates who are hard on crime are
seen as more viable because their crime position is in tune with
the vast majority of the targeted electorate according to the
polls. Such anticrime candidates are therefore the recipients
of more campaign funds because they hold this popular position,
and in turn, these funds make them more likely to win and stay
in office. As a result of this selection process being in effect
over the last two decades, the vast majority of those left in
office at the end of the century are the men and woman who have
always been in favor of hard-on-crime sentencing measures or those
who have conveniently become hard on crime in order to stay in
office. Those who might have held a position contrary to the hard-on-crime
stance have been weeded out to a significant degree over the course
of time.
Because of this weeding process, the public either hears the
persuasive propaganda of hard-on-crime rhetoric that confirms
their media-induced impression that crime is very violent and
pervasive, or they hear silence from the few remaining anomalies
of modern political evolution who oppose the current crime policies.
This lack of debate all but ensures that the public's opinion
will not change regarding crime; which means the poll results
will not change; which means the recommendations of the consultants
to the political money supply will not change; which means that
the selection process will continue and that the prison population
will likely keep growing year after year, election after election.
p138
"Phase two" of the campaign-finance system takes place
postelection, or in the case of incumbents, anytime after a campaign
contribution has been made. It is in this phase of the process
that campaign contributors get what they paid for-access for the
purpose of influencing particular policy decisions. In phase one,
the pressure on the politician is exerted by public opinion polls
and the necessity to do whatever it takes to win the election.
In phase two, politicians are expected to repay contributors in
very specific ways such as introducing or supporting legislation
that will financially benefit the particular industries that have
filled the campaign coffers.
Before we move on, I should point out that many politicians,
most of them, in fact, readily admit that our current system for
funding campaigns is broken and that they do not like it. I believe
that most who voice this opinion are sincere. However, with this
broken system so heavily favoring the incumbents-the only ones
with the power to dismantle it-no one has been sincere enough
to fix the system so far. Every year, members of both parties
decry the abuses of the modern system for funding campaigns. And
every year, the same politicians fail to reach agreement on how
to correct the situation. It's like a scene from the movie Groundhog
Day where Bill Murray relives the same twenty-four-hour period
over and over again. Of course, following, and even during, this
public display of contempt regarding campaign finance, the incumbents
of both parties are busy exploiting the corrupt system to its
fullest because it all but ensures their reelection.
As a sign of just how out of control things have become in
our system of financing campaigns, the act of raising money is
now the single most important and time consuming part of the job
for our elected officials.
p144
GE and Westinghouse do have a direct vested interest in increasing
the prison population through their manufacture of products designed
for law enforcement and corrections as well as through their funding
of prison construction.
p145
There were two groups in California that lobbied hard for three
strikes-the NRA and the California Correctional Peace Officers
Association, the union that represents the state's prison guards,
parole officers, and prison counselors.
p146
In 1977, California housed 19,600 inmates. In 1998, that number
had grown to 159,000. California now runs the biggest prison system
in the Western world. It houses more inmates on any given day
than do the countries of France, Japan, Germany, Great Britain,
the Netherlands, and Singapore combined.
The
Perpetual Prisoner Machine
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