1524) Call them the electrocardiograph of the body politic: More precise than the flat numbers of a poll or the blather of a focus group, "dial sessions" have become an essential tool in measuring public opinion and packaging politics. In a typical session, 30 to 50 people are shown video clips of a politician in action: a television ad or a snippet of a speech. The viewers register their moment-by-moment reactions using a hand-held dial linked to a computer, creating an instantaneous graph for strategists to analyze. With this data, the experts can pinpoint which words and phrases turn people on - and which turn them off.

These days, politicians on the national stage are reluctant to utter a word that hasn't undergone dial scrutiny. "It's a space-age technology," says Frank Luntz, a Republican pollster who used the dial for portions of the contract with America. "It's the most important technology I use in determining the right things[for my clients] to say."

Greg Sargent and Hugo Lindgren
"How It Works: Gut Reaction - How Politicians
Discover What Americans Want to Hear" in
George (Oct/Nov 1995)

1525) Twenty years ago, a political consulting team worked more or less like a baseball team. Each player had a distinct and often lonely assignment. Pollsters with Ph.D.'s recited numerical tables; P.R. men concocted clever rhymes for buttons, posters and radio jingles. Above all, the consultant stuck with his team. Just as a Yankee was always a Yankee, a Nixon man was always a Nixon man. All that has changed. Nowadays, a political team works more like a basketball team, on which each member plays several roles. Pollsters transform numbers into themes and phrases for speeches and advertising. Ad makers test their work in focus groups. Media buyers use demographic tables to guide their scheduling of TV commercials. And chemistry is crucial. Just as basketball players must work with one another on every play, each campaign's pollsters, speechwriters and ad makers must collaborate and communicate easily and often.

Today's political consultants often win by pushing the increasingly vague boundaries of permissible behavior. Attack ads once considered too negative and personal are now portrayed as "information." Allegations against an opponent are sometimes planted by means of suggestive "questions" asked by phone "interviewers" in a campaign "poll."

Above all, the political industry, like the sports industry, has been transformed by free agency: Money and prestige have replaced loyalty. [...] And as in sports, everyone wants to work for a winner and enhance his marketability.

William Saletan
"The Players: Political Animals" in
George (Oct/Nov 1995)

1526) Political advertising on television and radio has become enormously influential. It is a corrupting influence, to be sure - one that tilts the democratic process as severely as did the men who stood outside polling places with kegs of free whiskey in Andrew Jackson's day, or the toughs from New York's Tammany Hall who got out the vote with their lists during the decades following the Civil War.

Caleb Carr
"The Next American Revolution" in
George (Oct/Nov 1995)