TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/072291/0722105.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 5.4 KB | 116 lines

                                                                                NATION, Page 27

PUBLIC OPINION

Vaulting over Political Polls


A Texas political scientist is creating a new form of voter
sampling, with results to appear on PBS nationwide

By WALTER SHAPIRO


    Since the turmoil of the 1968 Democratic Convention,
American democracy has been stymied by what should be a simple
question: What is the fairest way to nominate candidates for
President?

    Nearly a quarter-century of well-intentioned reforms have
demonstrated the law of unintended consequences. Until 1968,
party leaders controlled the process, spicing up their back-room
bargaining with a handful of hotly contested presidential
primaries. This elitist tradition has been replaced in both
parties by the shallowest form of mass democracy: a gauntlet of
party primaries (36 states in 1988) that give an almost
unbeatable edge to the candidate who can raise the most money.
Rather than bring presidential contenders closer to the voters,
the current system virtually walls the candidates off behind a
TV barrier of sound bites, slogans and slick 30-second spots.

    Presidential politics has grown so dispiriting that most
Americans are inured to the impossibility of change. The op-ed
pages and opinion magazines have long been littered with
high-minded reform proposals, but every four years the system
repeats itself, a little more cynically manipulative than the
time before.

    Enter the man who may have finally invented a better
mousetrap: political scientist James Fishkin, chairman of the
government department at the University of Texas. He calls his
innovative method for bridging the chasm between electors and
the elected "a deliberative opinion poll." The voters will get
a chance to see how it works on national public television next
January.

    Fishkin begins with a telling critique of political
polling, the main tool that the candidates and their handlers
use to divine the will of the voters. As he argues in his
forthcoming book, Democracy and Deliberation (Yale University
Press; $17.95), "On many issues, about four out of five citizens
do not have stable . . . opinions; they have what the political
psychologists call `non-attitudes' or `pseudo-opinions.' "
Fishkin's point is that traditional sampling does not allow
those polled to discuss the issues, nor do the polltakers
provide more than cursory information. The result, all too
often, is a statistically impeccable snapshot of public
ignorance and apathy. Presidential candidates then respond to
the polls not by striving to present the electorate with worthy
policies but by tailoring their appeals to the lowest common
denominator of voter sentiment.

    Fishkin proposes a bold antidote: flying a random sample
of the entire electorate to a single place, where they would
meet face-to-face with the presidential candidates and debate
the issues. Then, and only then, would the group be polled on
its preferences. Such a reform, if effected, would combine the
democracy of the modern primary system with the firsthand
knowledge of candidates that old-time party leaders brought to
the nominating process.

    Sound farfetched, the kind of Rube Goldberg scheme an
armchair academic would concoct, oblivious to political
realities? Not at all. The Public Broadcasting Service has
quietly embraced Fishkin's idea and plans to televise six to
eight hours of excerpts of the exercise during the weekend of
Jan. 17-19, a month before the 1992 campaign formally begins
with the Iowa caucuses. Named the National Issues Convention,
the three-day, $3.5 million conclave in Austin holds the
potential to shape the late-starting, who's-running-anyway
Democratic race and provide a forum for the Bush Administration
to field-test its campaign themes. As Edward Fouhy, executive
producer of the PBS broadcast, puts it, "This is the only thing
that holds the hope of breaking out of the mold that we -- both
journalists and politicians -- have been caught in."

    Many of the details are still hazy, but the broad elements
of this unprecedented John and Jane Doe convention are in
place. The pivotal moment will come in December, when about 600
randomly selected adult Americans will be told they have won the
political lottery and are delegates to the National Issues
Convention. Will they agree to put aside their normal lives for
a weekend and fly all-expenses-paid to Austin? Fishkin is
optimistic. "What you're offering these people is three days on
national TV, a chance to meet the candidates, a chance to make
history, a sunny climate and a reasonable per diem allowance,"
he says. "For a lot of these people, this will be the most
important thing that has ever happened to them."

    For the Democratic contenders, whoever they prove to be,
the lure will be free TV time and the possibility of gaining
credibility by winning the delegates' endorsement. Although
Fishkin and the other convention organizers hope the President
will make an appearance, they will be satisfied if several
Cabinet members attend as Administration surrogates.

    What is so beguiling about the National Issues Convention
is that no one -- absolutely no one -- has any idea how it will
play out. But whatever happens in Austin, the novel event
itself will be an affirmation that grass-roots democracy can
still flourish in a television age.