The Permanent Campaign and Its Future
Book Forum

October 27, 2000

Transcript prepared from a tape recording

Introduction
Thomas Mann, Brookings Institution

Moderator
Thomas Mann, Brookings Institution

Discussant
Nelson Polsby, University of California at Berkeley

Panelists
Anthony Corrado, Colby College
Burdett A. Loomis, University of Kansas
Charles O. Jones, University of Wisconsin

Moderator
Norman Ornstein, American Enterprise Institute

Discussant
Marvin Kalb, Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy

Panelists
Karlyn Bowman, American Enterprise Institute
Stephen Hess, Brookings Institution
Kathryn Dunn Tenpas, University of Pennsylvania

Concluding Remarks
Norman Ornstein, American Enterprise Institute

Proceedings:

[Tape 1, Side 1.]

MR. MANN: --the extent to which AEI and Brookings have worked together on this Transition to Governing Project. Before we begin, a moment of silence for the Mets. Oh, I feel so badly.

[Inaudible.]

MR. MANN: I mean, I've been trying to link this to the campaign. The rich get richer. I don't know what it is, but alas--

MR. : That indicates your view of political money.

MR. MANN: This is, indeed, an event of the Transition to Governing Project, a project funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts that Norman Ornstein of AEI and I have been directing over the last several years and that our colleague John Fortier has been instrumental in. This, this project was intended really to focus on, on governing to, to see if we couldn't insert governing issues into the campaign. If we--and I think we've had some fair amount of success in that. To see if we couldn't legitimize transition planning during the campaign. And we've had absolutely no success on that score. Although there are signs subrosa [sic.] that each of the two major Presidential candidates have initiated a process, the only responsible thing to do, although they still feel it's dangerous to have that publicized in any way. And then to see if it isn't possible by focusing attention on the transition period to actually improve the quality of that transition and to move us more effectively from the campaign period to the governing period.

Now, we've held a series of events here and around the country on how each of the candidates would govern. Two days ago we had an event with the volume including Richard Neustadt's memos to Presidents-elect and others on the transition, a volume edited by our own Charles O. Jones. We published a special issue of the Brookings Review on the state of governance. And we've been actively involved in, in trying to change the law and administrative practice relating to the appointments and confirmation process.

Here we are now, 11 days before the election. Great uncertainty about the outcome, sort of frenetic campaign schedule for the two candidates. Zero campaign ads for us and the Presidential race, that is those of us who live around here. But if you live in Philadelphia or Seattle or Detroit--

MR. : --or Maine.

MR. MANN: Or Maine, or Portland, you are treated to nonstop political advertising. I think all--

MR. : [Inaudible.]

MR. : Just talking about ads.

MR. MANN: See, we're off to a good start already. I just want you to know that. I think all of us are waiting for that anticipated relief when this campaign is finally over, when we can switch gears and we can begin focusing on governing.

But the question is, is that likely? What are we going to transition from and what are we going to transition to? Part of this project from the beginning has been predicated upon a belief that our politics have changed, not dramatically day into night, but gradually over a period of years, indeed, decades, in ways that, that changes that conception that we have campaigns and elections and then we have governing. That, in fact, there are many and complex ways in which campaigning and governing have actually merged. And that if we're to have any chance of improving the quality of governance, we have to first of all understand what's going on, what's, what's at work here.

And that is an effort that produced the volume that we present to you today, The Permanent Campaign and its Future. It is a volume edited by Norman and myself. It, it contains nine chapters. The first chapter by Hugh Heclo is the overview piece for--actually I was hoping in the second or third debate that Jim Lehrer would use the word conspectus, because I was convinced that even Al Gore would be left completely at a loss.

MR. : It was such a disappointment when Bush used it three times.

MR. : Exactly.

MR. : Used it differently each time.

MR. MANN: In fact, Hugh has sort of laid out in a very magisterial sort of way the whole notion of the permanent campaign, where it came from, how he argues it is really edifical [sic.] to the conception of the framers that really, really saw campaigning and governing as two distinct spheres of activity. As Hugh puts it, and I want to quote, "permanent campaign is shorthand for an emergent pattern of political management that the body politic did not plan, debate, or formally adopt. It is a work of inadvertence, something that developed, higgledy- piggledy, since the middle of the 20th Century, much as political parties became part of America's unwritten constitution in the 19th Century. The permanent campaign comprises a complex mixture of politically sophisticated people, communications, techniques and organizations, profit, and non profit alike. What ties the pieces together is the continuous and voracious quest for public approval. Elections, themselves, are only one part of the picture where the focus is typically on the personalities and the mass public. Less obvious are the thousands of orchestrated appeals that are constantly underway to build and maintain favor of the certain publics and targeted elites for one or another policy cause."

That is really, in short, the permanent campaign and what we have under, under our telescope here today. Heclo is not reticent about his own view as to whether this is a healthy or an unhealthy development in our politics. I'm going to quote you one other paragraph from said author, who could not be with us today. "Why should one care? Because our politics will become more hostile than needed, more foolhardy in disregarding the long term, and more beknighted in mistaking persuasions for realities. The case for resisting further tidal drift into the permanent campaign rests on the idea that a self-governing people should not wish to become more vile, myopic, and stupid. Apart from that, there's probably not much reason to care."

Put Hugh down as neutral on, on the permanent, permanent campaign.

We then move to look at the press, the polls, and the role of money in the permanent campaign. Stephen Hess, who will join us later this morning, writes an essay in which, in which he documents the evolution toward a process in which the media has come to frame governing stories in terms of politics and strategies. They didn't create the permanent campaign, but they are extremely comfortable with it and have adapted their sort of campaign techniques, horse race inside strategy, to the whole business of governing with, with cost as well as benefits associated with it.

Our next chapter by Karlyn Bowman of AEI looks at the proliferation of polling in campaigning, during transitions, and during the governing period. It's hard to imagine a more timely essay. I think all of us have felt deluged by polls this election season and genuinely confused about, about the polls and the meaning of the polls. But none of us doubts the extent to which polls have become less tools for analyzing campaigns, transitions, and governing, than events themselves to be explained in ways that I think Karlyn and others would argue imposes some cost on the political system.

The next chapter by Tony Corrado, looks at the money chase in Congress. To understand the permanent campaign, one has to understand the extent to which it is fueled by political money. And Tony in this chapter looks at changes over time in the way the timing of fundraising on Capitol Hill, in the involvement of Congressional party leaders and other members in the changes in norms and expectations and patterns of behavior in the Congress that revolve around the need to raise money, not just the normal so-called hard money contributions, but the extent to which the process has been transformed by the evolution of what we now call soft money.

The next chapter by Katie Dunn Tenpas looks--is the first of our institutionally oriented chapters looking at the Presidency and the extent to which Presidents have driven the permanent campaign, that is the cause of the permanent campaign, but also how the Presidency is--evolves as a consequence of the permanent campaign. It is both cause and effect. And she trains her attention on the development of the outreach offices in the White House, on the use of political consultants inside and outside the White House, and on a set of techniques and strategies for coping with and adapting to and using the permanent campaign.

We then have a chapter by David Brady, Fiorina, of Stanford University looking at the Congress, a most electorally sensitive institution and examine the ways in which the internal organization of Congress, the rules and procedures, the norms and practices and the behavior of Congress have been shaped by the permanent campaign.

I just wanted to read you one brief paragraph from the Brady/Fiorina chapter. "In a context in which members themselves have stronger and more distinct policy preferences, where they scarcely know each other personally because every spare moment is spent fundraising or cultivating constituents, where interest groups monitor every word a member speaks and levy harsh attacks upon the slightest deviation from group orthodoxy, where the media provide coverage in direct proportion to the negativity and conflict contained in one's messages, where money is desperately needed and is best raised by scaring the bejesus out of the people, is it any wonder that common comity and courtesy are among the first casualties?"

Now our next chapter is by our colleague Burdett Loomis, from the University of Kansas. Bird Loomis looks at a central feature of the permanent campaign that oftentimes gets ignored. And that is the matter of how interest wage campaigns after elections to influence policy. Bird has a very interesting sort of conceptual handle on this by looking at the scope of conflict, whether it's narrow or broad, and the number of individuals that interest affected, whether they are few or many. And by combining those two dimensions and producing a fourfold table, Bird comes up with a classification of the kind of interest group politics that play out in the permanent campaign. And by taking a close look at what has been happening in financial services, telecommunications, and health care, Bird Loomis provides some unique insights into the changing character of politics under the rubric of the permanent campaign.

Our next chapter is by the aforementioned Charles O. Jones of the University of Wisconsin and the Brookings Institution. Chuck has written a piece called "Preparing for 2001, Lessons From the Clinton Presidency." Chuck argues that Clinton was a natural for the campaigning style of governing. It's hard to imagine anyone else who took so enthusiastically to continuing the campaigning after the election. And I think Chuck documents how, how good the fit was. But at the same time he identifies systematically the larger forces that are pushing the broader polity toward this kind of governance. And unlike Heclo who, who believes that the permanent campaign is so destructive of our sort of essential democratic system that the task is to figure out how to resist further drift in that direction.

Chuck Jones argues that, hey, it's here to stay. The question is, how do we adapt to it? How do we see and find the ways in which we can go with an inevitable flow and turn some of these changes toward more constructive governance? It's a difference in point of view, a very different I think sort of analytic scheme. And we'll have an opportunity for Chuck to develop that.

Finally, Norman and I have a concluding chapter that tote up the benefits to the extent they exist and the cost of the permanent campaign, a discussion of how we can best cope with some of the cost that are going on. And we have some very specific recommendations drawing on the analogy of the broken windows literature in crime, small steps taken that might over time add up to something substantial. But two areas that we call special attention to are, one, the criminalization of politics and the need to de-escalate the arms race on the demonization of one's political and annihilation of one's political opponent and the role of money in the legislative process, the extent to which party leaders now find so much of their incentives are to alter behavior in ways to garner larger and larger amounts of money.

We conclude by reflecting in some of the changes in telecommunications, the information revolution, how it might further fuel the permanent campaign in a very worrisome way. And argue in a manner similar to Chuck Jones' that we have to figure out a way to harness some of these, some of these technical changes to improve the quality of deliberation among citizens, between citizens and representatives, and in our legislative bodies.

Well, there is, in short, an outline of the volume that we have presented. What we have in mind for the rest of the morning is to have two panels. Norman will be moderating the second. Our first lead with someone who did not contribute to the volume, but who has read it, who will offer some reactions. And then I will pose some--we will get reactions from our authors and I will pose some questions to get our discussion going.

We will begin with Nelson Polsby, a renowned student of American and British politics, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who is spending a semester here in Washington at UC and Stanford University. We will then turn to Tony Corrado of Colby College, Burdett Loomis of the University of Kansas, and Chuck Jones of the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Nelson?

MR. POLSBY: Thank you. It's very nice to be asked to be sitting up here among all these authors. And I appreciate very much Tom's outline of the book. It certainly reminds me of the book that I read.

MR. MANN: But it isn't this one.

[Laughter.]

MR. POLSBY: I guess what I'd like to do is to put it very briefly into the perspective I'm using as a reader, and maybe some of you will find it, find it helpful as you read it. This is a book which I think of is in the tradition of Walter Bagehot, who 150 years ago wrote an essay on the English--he called it the English constitution in which he drew a distinction between dignified and efficient aspects of government. The dignified aspects of government were those principally having to do with the mobilization of primordial loyalties toward governing and toward the regime. In short, more or less public opinion as it was in those days. And he assigned the dignified aspects of government to those aspects of governing which had to do with, with the crown.

He, of course, was describing a constitution in which the government and the state were different entities, in effect. And it made sense for the efficient aspects of governance, that is real governing, to proceed, in effect, under the cover of the sorts of loyalties that were evoked by the crown. Well, as everybody knows, we've got a constitution which fuses the government and the state and in which the President is supposed to be the head both of the efficient government and of the dignified government. And that, of course, gives a kind of an opening to important institutional changes which affect a fused regime much differently than one in which these two are separated.

As I see it, basically the permanent government is about a--is a continuation of a conversation which got going maybe 40 years ago, something like that, in which people notice that an enormous constitutional change was taking place through the displacement of political parties as the main instrument by which people were linked to governing.

The second part of the story, and the one which is addressed in part--the part there's a big hang over from that, and it's still going on, and it's somewhat addressed in this book, but the next part of the story is the displacement of the permanent government by activities and considerations which Bagehot would have called dignified, but I think we would not have called dignified, namely mobilization of public opinion which in order to govern, of course, politicians must do. But the issue is whether--the extent to which the means to the end of governing have displaced the ends. That's the, seems to me, sort of master problem that this book, and a lot else that's going on in the atmosphere is addressing.

And I suppose that's the thing that people in the position of the authors of this volume, but others, have to monitor as we move into a Presidential transition. Which is to say the extent to which the government is formed with the mobilization of public opinion in mind. And I personally keep score, as everybody does, cabinet appointments. The symbolic meaning of cabinet appointment is now copiously reported in the news media. Everybody keeps score.

And to me the interesting question is, where do the criterion for appointment known as "can do the job" fall in the values of the President? Just to say in part, obviously, a new administration has to "look like America" or the actual translation of that is, looks like the, looks like the political party that the President wishes to put in back of him as he--that is to say a Democratic President's idea of what looks like America is obviously different from a Republican President's view of what looks like America. But it's all about basically mobilizing their party, as they wish to constitute it, in choosing the cabinet, sub cabinet, the whatever it is, 2,500 or 3,000 appointments they make.

But I'm interested, as I say, and I think people who are concerned with the sorts of issues raised by the authors of this book ought to be concerned with the simple questions of whether these people can govern beyond mobilizing public opinion as actually coming into the office, moving the paper, learning what the concerns of the permanent government, the bureaucracies are the agencies, the professions that encapsulate the--that are included in the permanent government. Nobody ever says, although they certainly should in transition material, the fundamental job of an assistant secretary is to learn how creatively and constructively to be captured by the bureaucracy. You never say that, will you? What you say is that the bureaucracy is your enemy. And the question is, how well have you talked the bureaucracy?

Well, the bureaucracy, in fact, is a tame animal and needs, obviously, political leadership, wants political leadership, cooperates with political leadership. But, nevertheless, has its tasks that were set down in the law, they have evolved and interaction between the bureaucracies and the interest groups that they serve. And there is, in short, a kind of intellectual task, which new people to the government must master, and that task is to understand that, the pinch, the way of which the permanent government operates is not whimsical but rather is determined by things that they have to know about. So the idea that, that knowledge is an important component of governing, not a popular notion during a campaign or a permanent campaign, but one that it seems to me, but certainly it's a value that Hugh Heclo explicitly espouses. But others on this panel, I think, think the same.

And that's precisely the tension it seems to me that this book is exploring. That is to say the forces that are, the forces that, in effect, diminished severely, significantly diminish political parties in the Presidential nomination process are also forces which are--which endanger the, endanger those interest and problems that are embodied in the permanent government from expressing themselves adequately in a Presidential transition. And that, it seems to me, is the, is the big problem that this book, that this book addresses. And since we have people who actually addressed it on this platform, I will now yield to them.

MR. MANN: Thank you very much, Nelson.

I'd like to begin by posing a question to Chuck and really picking up on one of Nelson's questions really. Have the means to the ends of government displaced the ends? I like that formulation, Nelson.

MR. POLSBY: Aristotle would have approved.

MR. : Indeed. Chuck, in many ways, sort of you and Hugh agree a lot on forces that have altered our politics, the decline and changing nature of political parties, the increase in the number of interest groups and the way in which they operate in this environment, new communications technologies, new political technologies, the growing need for political money, and, of course, the fact that government is big and permanent and therefore the stakes are higher and everyone feels obliged to operate in it. Query, have the means to the government displaced the ends? Is it--can we say with some assurance that this has really become problematic or is it just different? And if it's just different, what should we be looking for as far as the adaptations are concerned as we move into a new administration?

MR. JONES: I don't know.

[Laughter.]

MR. MANN: Next question?

MR. JONES: How about that as a response? I like that formulation too. But alas and alas, I'm not, I'm not certain that it's--that it can be so easily segmented. In other words, well, let me illustrate with the way Bill Clinton in a sense responded to that question when he talked, when he talked to the ministers the week before, I think the week before the democratic convention. The press paid a lot of attention too. Of course, once again he had another apology for that whole [inaudible]. But, as the interview moved along, he talked about, in a sense about this question. And he said in his own mind the ends, the ends that he wanted to achieve were quite clear in his mind and he sought then to use the means as a way of understanding how might you get this approved. So, now, whether that's true or not requires a probing of his own mind. But clearly as the quintessential campaigner as governor, in his mind there, there were a set of goals that he wanted to achieve.

In my analysis of him, he was--he came to be very clear on what kinds of advantages he had in a struggle with a--in Washington with a Republican Congress. And he meant to use those advantages as a campaigner to try to achieve what it is he wanted to achieve. All of this discussion, which I highly recommend to you, all of this discussion was in the context of essentially how do I use goals. And my summary of how he, well, based on what he said, was in a very interactive way. I want to understand and I want to--and I have certain goals that I want to achieve that are clearly moderated by my own analysis of it or moderated by what I think I can achieve given the reality of the politics in Washington these days which also is a part of what Nelson's getting into, which you don't have in Britain, that is to say pretty consistently split party government. So just another part of all of what we're talking about here.

It turns out I did know. Sorry.

MR. MANN: See, you did have, you did have the answer to that.

MR. JONES: Just wrong, right.

MR. MANN: When we think of the permanent campaign, our focus almost inevitably goes to the Presidency. But, alas, our conception of the permanent campaign is much more inclusive. And I wanted to ask first Burdett Loomis and then Tony too, drawing on their chapters to give, to give us a sense of how this plays out after elections? That is, in the campaigns, how is this manifest in the way in which interest groups approach their objectives and adapt strategies, Bird? And, Tony, then, what role money plays in this and how it's come to alter the way in which Congress operates? Bird?

MR. LOOMIS: It strikes me that, although I write about interest groups here, I'm actually doing research now on Democrats attempts to win control of the Congress. And I read Tony's chapter with great interest because it summarizes where we got to in 1998. And I talk about the interest as of 1998. I don't know what Tony thinks, but I think the trends are continuing. And I think what we understood about things two or four years ago are even, sort of even more so now, but maybe even quantitatively different somehow with the soft money changes.

And it strikes me that in writing about interests here, I actually, I clearly don't think that interest don't ignore, that they ignore campaigns. They're highly involved in campaigns. They're also highly involved in lobbying. But my argument essentially is that your--if the stakes are high, and not in just distributive politics, but in terms of regulation writing where a comma here or a subparagraph there in a telecommunications bill may mean literally hundreds of millions of dollars. The stakes are so high that interests pay attention first to elections, of course, and to regular lobbying. But I think they have the means to invest tremendously in creating aeratives [ph.], creating the--in psychological literature they call framing, whatever we're going to call it. I actually like to bring it, to use the fiction term narrative because I do think they're creating stories because in large part because we have so much information through technology, so much information is coming to members of Congress, and members of Congress, Presidents, but particularly I'm focusing on the Congress here, have to understand issues somehow.

Well, they may, a few of them may want to understand everything about telecommunications policy or HMOs, whatever, but that is really a handful. And we don't necessarily have a committee system that is so stable and clear and expertise as referred to right now that you can trust a few people to handle the understanding of an issue. Everybody is involved or lots of people are involved. And they often are involved to the point that they want to be able to take a position, things we know say, from Dick Fenno, take a position, forge an explanation that will get them by politically.

And what I see interest groups doing in one manifestation is trying to provide, not to public opinion broadly, but to members of Congress, political elites, a set of possible explanations to grassroots efforts, to public relations, to advertising, get things in the air.

Now, this is a very inexact science, art, whatever. But what you see is, I think, the people track how politicians explain things, how they talk about things. And there's nothing like seeing a very, very well paid interest group executive or political consultant be gleeful that some congressman had used part of their phrase in a floor speech. That's an indicator of success.

Now, this shows that people have too much money to invest in this stuff. But I think what we're seeing now with the relaxation of rules on soft money and the growth--if you read the story in the paper a couple days ago--the boom in political consultants. The money here is fueling, I think, an industry that is in the narrative providing business. And the consumers in those narratives, more than anyone else, are members of Congress, who are extremely sensitive both to their constituents and to explaining to their sponsors, interests, why they do or don't do something.

MR. MANN: Thank you, Bird.

Tony, would you pick up on the money side of that?

MR. CORRADO: Yeah. I would agree with what Bird said. You know, if you look at this and even if you put it in the framework of means and ends, it seems that what has happened is that we have developed means now that you have to ask whether these means are actually promoting the end or simply undermining the end. You know, as you look at this process that we have now, it seems to me that more and more legislators are mired in the means and less concerned about the ends. That what has increasingly become the focus is on this permanent campaign aspect, particularly this continual emphasis on fundraising.

You know, Tom asked at the start what are we transitioning from and what are we transitioning to? I have a much simpler answer than all of these highly conceptual conceptions of government that we're hearing. We're going to move from raising money to raising even more money. That's the basis of my position.

MR. : Good transition.

[Laughter.]

MR. CORRADO: At some point we will finish raising money for the 2000 elections and begin raising money for the 2002 election. And there will be an overlap between November 8th and some time in January where we're raising for both. And then eventually we will transition into simply raising money for 2002. Because it seems to me that there is no clearer aspect of this permanent campaign phenomena than this continual fundraising that now takes place, particularly on the part of incumbent legislators.

We have changed very much from the 1970s when for the most part members of Congress raised their money in the election year, to a point where they might raise some money in the last six months of the year before an election, to a point now where they are constantly raising money, particularly raising much of their money in the year before an election because they need to free up that election year time to raise money for all of the other endeavors they now raising money for. Whether it's their own political action committee or their own 501C3 organization or money for the parties or for filling their party quota or now raising soft money for the party. So what we have now are incumbents who devote an enormous amount of time on fundraising.

You know, back in the 1980s Bob Byrd complained that he was having trouble scheduling votes and getting the legislative agenda finished. In 1986 because members of the Senate wanted time so that they could go and campaign and raise money. And he complained then that the members of his Senate were becoming full time fundraisers instead of full time legislators. And that was in the good old days. You know, that was when they were just raising money for their own campaign.

And what's happened now is that we have created such a demand for funding, in part because the political parties have adopted the techniques of public mobilization and interest groups and are also engaged in constantly creating narratives, that what you get is a situation where there's enormous demands placed on legislative time to raise money.

And what that does is it's starting to change a lot of the moors that we have seen in Congress. One example, look at safe incumbents. It used to be that safe incumbents who are going to win with 80 percent of the vote rarely raised very much money. And now you find them in this election cycle raising $500,00, $600,000, $700,000. That's essentially going to be used for other purposes, for either members that they have been asked to support or for raising money for the party.

That translates into changes in Congress that are taking place, in my view, in terms of how we pick Congressional leadership and how we assign roles in the Congress. I think there's less emphasis now on norms of seniority and legislative expertise and increasing emphasis on your willingness to campaign and your capacity to raise money, and your fundraising prowess. That's one of the reasons why we have these quota systems that have been developed. You know, that means members are encouraged to engage in the means to a much greater extent than in the past. And I think one of the aspects of that is it undermines, I think, some of the ends that Nelson, and even I would like to see, with respect to either governance or even with the role of political parties. Because what's happening is we're undermining those type of ends because of the means that we now focus on to pursue those ends. So that as a result what we have now is a situation where it's often the case where you have this interesting phenomena to me which is that we have taken these campaign techniques and public mobilization techniques and incorporated them into governance and into the role of government as a way to reach out to the public and mobilize them for whatever we want to do. Yet the means we use to do that, the financial means tend to create a chasm with the broad public and tend to promote, you know, much narrower interest, as Bird noted, who have this financial strength and resources and now have the means by which the process facilitates their use of that financial advantage and strength. Because now we've found ways that, you know, if it's going to take a million dollars in contributions to get something done, it's easy to give the million dollars in contributions.

And so I think there's a disparity there. I mean, similarly I think what we have now are members who much more focus on, you know, their ability to raise funds as one of the keys to promoting their prospects either in legislative leadership or the prospects of some particular policy goal they have in the Congress. Which means that we see this development of things like leadership pacts or separate tax exempt foundations or 527 committees to give them greater vehicles for facilitating that process. Which ultimately undermines the role of political parties in some way.

And at the same time what it does it has greatly increased the access that these donors have to the legislative process and their ability to pursue their own interest, which isn't necessarily in conformance with the broader public good or the broader desires of public opinion as to what they would like to see get done.

So that it seems to me that this change that's taking place, which is dramatic, you know, if you read the book you see the difference in what's being raised now regularly is just dramatically different from even ten years ago. That this is a real problem for the system because it's altering the way not only we develop the internal structures in Congress, but it's also altering the way we go about proceeding with the business in Congress. And I think in my view, at least, in ways that undermine the capacity to build legislative coalitions in the government.

MR. MANN: Thank you, Tony.

You know, it strikes me that sometimes the very things we aspire to, good things, end up producing some real problematics. For years, decades, we said permanent one party control of the Congress is, is very unhealthy. And that--

[Tape 1, Side 2.]

MR. MANN: --historics, mind you, but at--in terms of controlling the majority in the Congress would be very healthy. And in many respects it is. But along with that comes a raising of the stakes, much more pressure on the marginal seat, and a changing pattern of norms on what's appropriate to do.

I was down in Texas the week before last and heard a couple of Texas legislators talk about the inviolate norm. That no incumbent member of the Texas legislature will ever campaign against another member. And certainly no leader would, would ever do that. That used to be a norm in the Congress. It certainly was a norm that affected all party leaders and virtually all members of Congress. That doesn't exist now. In fact, the incentive is to do just the opposite. Charlie Stenholm, who was always the moderate conservative Democrat in a position to be courted by Republicans finds himself attacked by the leader of the House Republicans in his own district. Which obviously then leads to some reactions against that. So I think this is a case where the good produces some serious problematics. And it fits in with, with what everyone here has been saying.

I wanted to pose a question to Chuck, because I think it picks up on his chapter which is really moving from the Clinton Presidency to the future. And it occurred to me, because as I was listening to the news last night and hearing the stump speeches, Governor Bush was really talking about a process of governing. "I'm not going to govern by polls," he said, "I'm going to do the right thing. I'm going to bring people together to make the kind of decisions that will operate in the interest of the American public."

Query to Charles O. Jones. Would Bush, Governor Bush on the one hand, Vice President Gore on the other, attempt to govern by campaigning in a manner similar to Clinton? And if they decide they don't want to do it, could they hold to that, given the forces that are at play in our politics?

MR. JONES: Well, for sure, neither if they made a decision, which I'd like them to do. I mean, we're talking about forces that are influencing what's going to happen. But even if they made that decision, neither would be as effective at it as Bill Clinton nor would they have as great a need to do so. The combination of something really new, that is a Democratic President in the middle of his first term having to cope with a Republican Congress all of the sudden. And then, of course, the whole scandal and impeachment forced, if nothing else, forced Bill Clinton more to the side. It so happened that he was, he was happily able to, in his judgment, use his skills.

On the other hand, I don't see how they can ignore what's happening in all the places that Tom and Norm identify in their chapter or that Bird and Tony have just discussed. So the White House will have to prepare itself to participate in a high tech communication era with a lot of money out there in a, in a policy process which is--which has become so much more participatory, so much more public than ever before. So the White House can't simply decide, well, I'm only going to do this--we're only going to participate on the basis of our, our vision or our divination of what's in the best interest of the public.

The question then is how might they each do this? And my estimate would be that you'd learn a fair amount from the campaign style right now of Bush and Gore. Bush is likely to organize to govern more from the outside in more effectively than Gore. But Gore will need to do so more than Bush because if Bush wins, he's likely to have narrow margins, to be sure, but margins in both the House and the Senate. And if Gore wins, he's unlikely to, at least to have the Senate. So there will be a need for him to do so. And in my judgment he is less skilled than Bush in managing this outside in style. And again, I think that we look to the campaign for clues. He may even believe that he should not do so in distinguishing himself from Bill Clinton in separating himself from the Clinton Administration.

So it's certainly something we want to watch. And I hope with the next panel might also talk about press expectations coming off the Clinton years, the impact of the Clinton years, and their own thinking about what the Presidency is these days as a way of enforcing a set of--or at least writing about a set of expectations of either--or a--I made this mistake--

MR. : It happens all the time.

MR. JONES: Gore or a Bush Presidency.

MR. MANN: Chuck, what do you mean specifically by organizing from the outside in?

MR. JONES: In estimating what your advantages are, you're either an in town, you have a--you have the choice of whether you're going to be an in town President, that is, working from the inside in, in working with Congress and developing--in promoting and developing coalitions of support for your program or from the outside in, trying to build public support.

In my judgment, as I write in this chapter, Clinton had reasons other than trying to influence Congress for doing that. He had to reestablish status following the scandal, but even following the '94 election where he was so badly wounded by the effects and by the interpretations of the effects of the '94 election.

MR. MANN: Okay. I'd like to turn to the audience here with some questions. Yes?

[Inaudible.]

MR. MANN: Yeah. Maybe I'll start with that. I think that's an important point because one of the things that we have seen in the 1990s is this change. One of the biggest changes is in how do you use the party structures and organizations as part of this public mobilization process, or at least as part of this framing process, more than public organization is how do you use the party to amplify the frame the President wants to impose in terms of his positions and policies.

And I think that, you know, what you point to is very important because that's where I think the new model is established. While we had a few examples and as for--as I'm sure Bird talks about--in the health care debate with interest groups taking to the air and using the airwaves to try to start to, you know, advocate certain aspects on the Clinton health plan.

What the President did was take that notion and incorporate it into his basic political tool kit. And that model, which was developed to do $46 million in advertising through the party that was funded with soft money, was one of the key things that has driven this demand for soft money. Because it was now no longer a tool for defraying some administrative expenses and defraying some get out the vote party identification phone calls, once you can get on television with the money, then it's almost a bottomless pit.

The Republicans are finding this year the pit may actually have a bottom. They're having trouble spending money at this point. They've got plenty of money left to spend, but they're literally finding trouble to spend it. That's one of the reasons why they got such a big buy up in California. Because when you have $75 million more, you got to spend it somewhere. Why not spend it in California? And as a result, that has become the new model. This was what Bird was talking about. The party committees have now started to mimic the interest groups. And with soft money you have the means to access the funds so you can engage in the activity. And I think that's something we will see continue even under the Bush administration. I think that this is the model the parties have now adopted. And particularly if the Republicans retain the Congress or win the Presidency, the mantra will be it was because of our strategy. This means we need to raise more money next time. We need to get our members starting to raise money even earlier. We have to do more issue advertising during the administration. And, thus, it will just continue to fuel this process. That's why I believe the transition will be to raising more money from raising more money.

MR. MANN: Yes?

MR. : Following on that, in terms that you have been discussing, could we get a couple of notions of what's going on now and what might go on next year? For example, right now there is brinkmanship on Capitol Hill, threat of a veto of appropriations bill over policy issues, hospitals versus HMOs getting money with no particular explanation of why the one deserves it or the other. In the context of what you have been talking, what is going on? And, in fact, if you look to next year, Bush is going to try to sell, let's say, private accounts for Social Security. He'll certainly have help for advertising from Fidelity and Merrill Lynch. There will be others on the other side. Gore might try to sell us hybrid cars, whatever, same difference.

Once again, in the generalized context you've been discussing, would you take that or another of your choices of specifics of how each candidate or each president would handle those things?

MR. MANN: Yeah. I guess I'd broaden it a little to the Congress as well. But I think you're seeing right now, you know, you wake up in the morning and you read the state of the debate, has a deal been struck? Is there enough lard in the bill and enough policy positions that are acceptable to cobble together a, a final agreement.

And here I think that you end up seeing, as we've seen several times, the linking up of issues for political purposes and governance in this end game that Clinton has learned to play so well. And what was fascinating to me in talking to people--I'm a guest scholar at Brookings--talking to people at Brookings, talking to people up on the Hill, if you're up on the Hill the last couple of weeks, you'd think there should be tension, panic. There was nothing. There was absolutely nothing. There was no--now, I think it's starting to build right now because Clinton in the end has, has the veto lever and can make issues out of governing.

But that, again, that goes at it a backward way. But what Nelson was talking about where the means become essentially the end. And I would say that there are a couple of positive elements here. One is that I do think that there are some serious issues that are being hashed out, something like immigration. That simply we may have fallen into this trap of pulling everything at the end in budget and you end up with governance that's kind of ugly, but it's really governance.

And the second thing I've been trying to find a way to sneak this in, I've been--Tom's been in Texas and various places. I've been out in a variety of competitive House districts, these 20, 25 competitive House districts. And I was in Minnesota two weeks ago and Gephardt was out there for the funeral of Bruce Vento and then did some politicking the next day. And I heard Gephardt talk about how he needed in Washington, how he needed to work with Republicans if he became speaker.

But, here, in a DFL gathering in St. Paul, very unionized place, a democratic district that should go democratic again, and he was giving the typical stump speech. Get out there. Work for the party. Work for Betty McCollum in this district to take over Vento's seat. And then about two thirds of the way through, stopped and he said, you know, you're not going to like what I got to say right now, but if we win the Congress by one, two seats, we're going to have to try and find a way to govern. And if we're going to do that, we're going to have reach out to Republicans on a variety of issues, some on health care, some on Social Security, whatever.

Now, I don't want to be Pollyanna-ish about this at all. And I--everything we've talked about leads you in a different direction. But I do think to hear Gephardt talk about this to a Democratic audience up there to me meant that he was truly serious about trying to find some way to govern. And I think it would be interesting to see, whoever wins the House, as much as the Presidency, to see how a Hastert tries to govern or a Gephardt does, at least put majorities together. Because I think all the forces that you're talking about are absolutely there. And it may be very difficult in an era of big money and very small majorities to actually, in maybe the worst environment, to try to actually govern from inside. Chuck?

MR. JONES: It strikes me in thinking about this very important question that what it would be best if all of this building of coalitions began earlier. It seems to me that you've got to move it up front more rather than having it all happen in October in the--beyond the budget deadline. That it may not work, but it seems to me either of the two Presidents has got to work on that. And if Gephardt is thinking about it, God, wow, maybe we've got a break here, you know, he's already laid the groundwork for that.

It was extremely--it has been extremely difficult for Clinton to do that, to get [inaudible] building coalition. But as I argue in this chapter and elsewhere, he was moving in that direction prior to the 1998 State of the Union message where he would argue, whether this is correct, he would argue he was melding the means to an end that he had. And what was it that he was outlining in December of 1997 and toward, aiming toward the State of the Union address, that these were a set of proposals, and Medicare and else--the whole set of proposals, that they were poll tested, but this is what he wanted to achieve. And he sought to get up front working with--identifying Republicans with whom he could work.

And the effect of the Lewinsky scandal, therefore, was to totally change the question for the 1998 State of the Union message from what is the--what are these proposals and are they, in fact, proposals where the Republicans and Democrats could work together up front to will he show up. And if he shows up, can he actually deliver the message.

So as a lesson for Bush and Gore, it seems to me, what's important is trying to make an effort to build coalitions and involve folks on both sides because either w ay it's going to be very close in Congress earlier in the process.

MR. MANN: We are going to take one more question. Then we'll have any final remarks the panelists would like to make. We'll have a very brief break. And then we will, we'll move to our second panel.

Sir?

MR. : Thank you. I'd like to ask a question to help put the book and the discussion in a little broader context. And it has to do with underlying objectives. It's been about 18 years, something like that, since I last served in the Federal Government and started a long time before that. But there was a concept that seemed to be in place called the public interest. That we were trying to do things in the public interest.

And what I'm wondering is, do we have some sort of overriding objectives now for governing? There's been references to means versus ends, but what are those ends and are there a way of describing what those objectives of governing, what they are? Is the public interest something--I couldn't find the term in here. Although, you did just use it a little while ago.

MR. MANN: Polling on it. We've got a focus group next door working on it.

MR. : But are there some overall objectives that one can use to say, okay, here is, here is the objective of governing that we're trying to achieve?

MR. MANN: Tony, that sounds like a question for a full and away political theorist.

MR. CORRADO: Yeah. Really.

What strikes me is the fact of how little we talk about that. And one reason is how much more we talk about retaining majority control, retaining control of the government, winning the election. So that much of what we do now comes in the context of what effect will this have in terms of public perceptions of what we're doing and how will that affect our prospects particularly in a time of very narrow majority control.

I think one of the factors that's developed here is that we have built up this kind of public mobilization infrastructure in a way that's created a government, you know, perhaps to get back to where Professor Polsby started us, that is much more of a responsive government than we give it credit for. I mean, it's much more sensitive to electoral considerations than it was, I would say, 20 years ago.

While government's always been sensitive to elections and election outcomes, now it's become not just a three or four month concern every couple of years, it's now become a daily concern. And as a result, I think you tend to get directed much more toward what you can achieve given what the public would like to see you achieving. And there is much less of an effort to set out here is what I believe the public interest is. You know, the old Teddy Roosevelt form of Presidential stewardship where he said, here's where I think the national interest is and I'm going to take you dragging and screaming to it, whether you like it or not. And when you get there, you will find that I was right.

You know, we don't have as much of that dimension in Presidential leadership anymore or Congressional leadership, because it's much more responsive to what is the public thinking about and how will they react to what we want to do. Or can we frame it in a way that they will accept it and we can sell it to them. If not, we try something else.

MR. MANN: I think if Hugh Heclo were here, the author of the first chapter, he would resonate your question and say that's precisely the problem that, that the mechanics of the permanent campaign work against individual leaders and collectivities of public officials tending toward long term needs and objectives, but instead maneuvering around short term preferences. And that's precisely the point.

Now, on the other hand, you could argue that emerging out of this Presidential campaign is a contrast instead of public philosophy that, that I think in contrast to some other election campaigns stand out for the clarity of the view of the role of the, of government, vis-à-vis the private sector and non profit sector, of the role of the Federal Government, vis-à-vis States and localities, of what role the U.S. should play in world affairs.

Now, maybe the citizenry hasn't engaged all of that, but I actually think that if you--in fact, I know, I've actually read both party platforms and have read a large number of speeches. And make no mistake, there is rhetorical conversions at times as candidates scramble for the median voter. But underneath that rhetorical conversions are very different conceptions of the public interest and the role of government that's there for anyone to see who looks.

And the Pew, at least the September Pew result suggested that a lot of this is in practice by the public, that they see differences. And they also, 7 out of 10, say they're talking about the right issues. In many ways it seems to me the results of that survey suggested that quite unpredictably, given the good times that we have by standard criteria of good elections.

Any parting remarks?

Well, special thanks for Nelson for joining our authors. And, thank you.

Five minute break and we'll reconvene.

[Applause.]

[End of Panel 1.]

[Beginning of Panel 2.]

MR. ORNSTEIN: I'll wait about 30 seconds for the coffee line to clear.

Well, now we're going to shift our focus a little bit, at least to talk about some other institutions. We'll talk some about the role of the White House, about the role of the Congress, the polls, and the press.

Just a couple of initial comments. And let me first note that Marvin Kalb, who was here this morning, was not feeling real well and had to leave. So he won't be joining us.

Some of the discussion in the first panel which Tony Corrado led was about how in the year 2000 we have, in effect, more of the same, only more so, a linear trend that may be accelerating even into a logarithmic trend in many of these elements of the permanent campaign. I've been struck by this phenomenon, but in another and maybe even more disturbing way. Of course this election is almost unique in our adult lifetimes in the degree to which everything is in play, is up for grabs. It's the White House; it's the House; it's the Senate; by extension, the Supreme Court, and it's also the State legislative chambers which are now themselves almost evenly divided. We have over 20 State legislative chambers this time which have margins of 5 or fewer, where if 5 seats switch, then the party majorities change hands.

And as we know from a lot of other research done by Alan Rosenthal and many of his colleagues, the trends at the State level mirror those at the Federal level. But with everything in play, the intensity level inside the beltway is higher by far than I have seen it in the more than 30 years that, more than 30 years Tom--isn't it depressing? We came here at the same time in 1969, and have been immersed in these processes. And that's a higher intensity level for all actors, indeed, I think for all observers. And, yet, the higher the intensity level gets here, the greater the complacency level grows outside the beltway.

And I think that's true in the attention paid to this campaign by the electorate. They don't see the stakes as being particularly meaningful for them. The problems with political mobilization. We have some people who are clearly mobilized, but look at the strenuous effort made by the parties and the candidates to get people to believe that this is so important that they should turn out at the polls. And we also see it in the desperate effort by people in the press to get people to pay attention, the ratings are not particularly high here, and the--we're, in fact, some of the responses are to turn to other things or to other means.

Now, I'm not sure how much, to make of a correlation here, but I think there is something to make of a correlation. And certainly, the more we see strenuous efforts inside the beltway, more people get turned off by this and probably more cynical about it. And the more cynical they get, the more they're going to feel that even if there are stark policy differences framed by these candidates and these parties, what does it matter? Once they get in, they're all going to be the same anyhow. And that will only lead to a greater level of intensity here.

And one thing we know virtually for certain is that 2002 is going to be a replay with a higher level of intensity of 1998 and 2000, because the House and the Senate are going to be very much in play yet again. We're in an era probably for some time when the majorities are close enough and the opportunities are great enough that you can strike. And what that means is that the incentive, even with well-meaning players like Dick Gephardt and Dennis Hastert, to work across party lines, when every time you do so it may reduce your chances of either holding your majority or winning a majority will be weak and very limited in terms of duration. And the incentive to raise more money now to achieve those objectives of winning or keeping your majority.

To frame issues in political terms that can work for you. To grab the public attention. And the need for a narrative, of course, becomes even greater. And to spend more money to get out there and frame that narrative if the public isn't paying a whole lot of attention or doesn't have that same intensity level.

Obviously, part of that is because we are in good times and have relative peace. They will focus more intensely out beyond the beltway if we seem to be in the midst of a crisis. But it isn't just that. It's also the interactive effect of what's going on.

I want to make just a couple of anecdotal observations about different elements here based on these chapters that we're going to be discussing in the second part of the panel. First, a couple of comments on the polls and some related to the press.

I went back, just for fun, a couple of weeks ago and did a search on the Nexus of the joint terms polls and American elections. And I just decided to take arbitrarily the first three days in August, which are before really the intense focus on a campaign, but as you're approaching or in the midst of a convention season. And I looked for 1980, 1984, 1988, '92, '96, and 2000. In 1980 there were 28 mentions during those three days of those terms together in the same articles. This is, of course, across all newspapers and magazines by and large, except the Wall Street Journal, which has opted out of Nexus so it can make money on its own through its own searches. Only to be expected, I suppose.

As you move forward, by 1992 there were about 100 or so mentions over those three days. When it got to 2000, the computer froze, because it couldn't count that high. I had to go back and do day-by-day, and there were over 1,600 mentions in the three-day period--first three days in August. It had become clear that polls are the driving focus of analysis of discourse in certainly the print press. I suspect if we did the same thing for network news that we would find a similar example. And it was quite, quite striking to watch.

Another phenomenon here, of course, has been this dramatic increase in all of this media of focus groups now as a way to supplement their polls. Of course, they make huge investments in their surveys. And that's part of the reason why we see that the stories themselves become poll driven. But now it's focus groups. And it's so interesting to me that the phenomena we see often in the press of stop us before we kill again, has come through here as well. We're getting all these stories and all these mentions of how awful it is to use these focus groups to generalize about what's going on. Even in the process of introducing their focus groups, they're saying how awful it is to use these focus groups to generalize. But, then, of course they immediately go and generalize from the focus group. So we're getting an even greater distortion of what's happening.

And, of course, what we're also seeing as this complacency level increases, as perhaps the attention to what's going on here and even in the campaign wanes for large numbers of people, the elusiveness of capturing public opinion is showing up in the rather large differences and the fluctuations going on here.

One other little press comment based in part on an aside I made earlier while Tom was speaking. There was a story, as you know, in the Washington Post this morning about the incredible wave of commercials. And they focus on the ABC owned and operated affiliate in Philadelphia, WPIV, which is one of their flagship stations. And the station manager talks about how they are totally, totally, fully subscribed with political commercials all the way through the cycle. The amount of money they're pulling in is greater by far than they ever have before. Most of these commercials, now, they are getting the full retail price, often with a premium because the demand is so high and because it's outside groups and parties that presumably are not entitled to what is called lowest unit rate, which doesn't mean much anymore anyhow, given the nature of time buying.

I was up in Philadelphia with Karlyn for a meeting a couple of days ago. And I spent a good part of the evening channel surfing for these commercials, but also watching the news. And on WPIV, there wasn't a single commercial that I saw that wasn't related to the campaigns in Delaware, New Jersey, or Pennsylvania. There wasn't a single mention of any of those campaigns, other than a few Presidential commercials, there wasn't a single mention of any of those campaigns on the WPIV news cast. This is not just coincidence, by the way. It's one of the things that's happening here in the press. And I believe it began with the California gubernatorial contest a couple of years ago when Al Checci in the primary process spent about between $30 and $40 million of his own money. And we saw the news coverage just plummet. Station managers have suddenly gotten onto the realization that if you don't cover the races in the news, there is only one way on television for candidates to get notice or to get any kind of a message across, and that's buying more advertising.

Now, I'm not suggesting that this is happening in the most insidious way, but I will guarantee you it is happening. And the news coverage is declining. It's something that Steve Hess has been monitoring. And we will talk about that a little bit as well.

[Tape 2, Side 1.]

MR. ORNSTEIN: --district in California. Now, it was pulled back at the end before it actually reached a level of major foreign policy crisis. But it tells you, again, the degree to which the legislative process itself has been driven by campaign imperatives during this year. This year may be unusual, but as we've said, by next time we may be looking back on it as the good old days.

With that, let me turn to our panelists who are Karlyn Bowman of the American Enterprise Institute, Steve Hess of the Brookings Institution, and Katie Dunn Tenpas of the University of Pennsylvania and ask them each a question. And then we'll move into a larger dialogue.

Karlyn, let me start with you. What do you see as different this time, first of all? And is this, with the rise of polling and the use of polling, simply an extension of a trend? And then I want to ask you a corollary to all of this, what I see as an outsider is it's not just, as Chuck Jones suggested, Bill Clinton, the President, using polling in an interactive way with his own policy process. I see virtually every other actor in this process, including the press, moving not to use polls as tools but in an interactive way it's becoming a central focus of everything that they do in terms of their own coverage and in terms of, as we know, their own market research determining what they cover.

Do you see that in the same fashion?

MS. BOWMAN: I do, indeed. And I also do see this as the extension of a trend. Tom began by asking what we were transitioning from and what we were transitioning to. And for my business, someone who watches public opinion polls, it will be seamless, because we will be doing the same things after the next President is elected.

And I wanted to report on something that was on one of the pollster's websites yesterday just to talk about the extension of the trend. This was something on Rasmussen Research yesterday to do a poll called Portrait of America. And this is a direct quote from the website. "For those of you who enjoy checking the daily tracking numbers this election season, Rasmussen Research will have a new service to help you stay informed after the election. For the first time in history, the new President will have his approval rating every day."

So, in fact, we are seeing an extension of a trend. I think there are some things that are similar and some things that are different in this election campaign. Clearly, we have more pollsters in the field than ever before. Twelve major national pollsters in the field on a pretty regular basis. The pollsters are advancing the campaign calendar more than they have ever done before.

The first question about the 2000 race was asked by Gallop and then in USA Today in 1995. They asked at that point if Colin Powell chose not to run in 1996, would you consider voting for him in the year 2000? So, clearly, we've seen the calendar advanced a lot more. And I'm not sure that that's helpful to the process in any particular way.

There are more questions being asked about the methodology, more questions being raised because of the shear numbers of polls. And I think that is probably healthy overall. But I think there's actually an interesting plus to this proliferation of polling. I think this business has needed an infusion of new blood. And that's one of the things that we've seen in this campaign. While it's invaluable to have the questions asked in the same way that Gallop, Roper, and Harris have asked those questions for years, there have been a lot of new people in the business that are thinking about these questions very differently.

If you look at the vast bulk of polling questions about governance over the last 20, 25 years, the questions have assumed--have used as a basic premise that government should be doing more in a whole series of areas. Individual responsibility has been virtually ignored. That's making an interesting comeback in some of the new polling questions.

And then to take a specific issue, gun control in this campaign, I think our understanding of the issue has been transformed because some of the newer pollsters have been asking about the issues in different ways than pollsters did in the past. In the past most of the pollsters said, well, should we have additional regulations on guns? And most Americans support that to some extent, and so they answered yes, and it seemed to give advantage to Democratic candidates. But in this election season, for the first time, the question was, well, should we have additional new laws or should we enforce those already on the books. The responses flip when you ask the questions that way and it changes the way we think about the political advantage for the gun control issue.

So while I am a critic of this vast proliferation of public opinion polls, I think there are some advantages. And I think Norm is also correct, to answer his second point, they are being used in a much more interactive way. The media is responding to the pollsters, the pollsters are responding to those, the candidates. So you're, you're just seeing that the polls are, in fact, becoming the driving focus of elections and they will too government.

MR. ORNSTEIN: One other small question, Karlyn. How long do you think before we get hourly surveys of Presidential approval?

MS. BOWMAN: Interestingly, in 1960 it took Gallop two weeks to tell the American people who had won the debate. In 1976 AP had results within 24 hours of the first Presidential debate. In 1992 Kathy [inaudible] of CBS News had results within 15 minutes, second debate. So hourly polling is probably not that far away.

MR. ORNSTEIN: Well, this time they had results before it was over. Next time before it begins we're going to have the results. Progress.

One other point that we might note here, for those of you who didn't see it, there was just a fascinating piece by Dan Novak, a Washington Post reporter, just over a week ago. He went up to the Zogby calling operation. They are now doing, of course 400 interviews a night in their rolling tracking survey which everybody in the business is doing now. And he discovered it was taking 30,000 calls in one night to get 400 respondents. We may want to come back to what that means for this whole business of polling and the obsession of polling and not only whether it's going to become virtually impossible to get surveys that are in any way meaningful because of all the calling, but whether there's any kind of a skew built in when you suddenly find that you can't get respondents in this process.

Steve, you wrote a really interesting chapter that looked historically at how the press has changed and the pressures on the press as we moved into this. I want to just read one half of a paragraph that you have here. "It was not journalists who invented the permanent campaign. Those in 'governance' have increasingly borrowed techniques developed in elective politics as the means to accomplish their ends. The permanent campaign is there to be reported, which is the reporter's job. Yet, it is not the only way a story can be framed."

You have been spending this election season tracking on a daily basis how these stories are covered and framed. How are they being framed now and how is that different and what does it suggest for the future?

MR. HESS: First of all, let me say, that I finally realized why Norm and Tom keep inviting me back to these things, as you reminded the audience that you are reaching the 30 year mark in Washington, and here I got here as a speech writer for Eisenhower, and it makes you feel so young. And I know the feeling because we had a little reunion of what was left of the Eisenhower staff. And it was conducted in a large phone booth. And it made me feel awfully young too. So I know, I know the feeling.

Let me--

MR. ORNSTEIN: Was that before the D-Day assault?

[Laughter.]

MR. HESS: Let me answer your question, but do it in a way because I would have asked a question of the last panel. And I thought that was such an interesting panel that I want to see if I, if I got something right. And that is that there were almost two different definitions of the permanent campaign. And while they related to each other, there were also some separations. And in some way it had to do with whether our scholars were congressionalists or presidentialists in the way that they did it.

I had a feeling that the congressionalists were talking about permanent campaign in almost the literal sense of permanent, that it's simply never stopped anymore and the driving force was raising money. And then that affected other things along the way. And, of course, if that is the definition of the permanent campaign, we can look for solutions in campaign finance reforms and otherwise.

I felt that the presidentials were looking at permanent campaign more in terms of the tools of the campaign as being used by the President. And Chuck talked about the speech that Clinton gave this summer before the ministers saying, of course, I only use these tools to get to the ends that I desire. And I can't imagine what else he would have said. So I think Robert Rice said something otherwise, as did Dick Morris. And in some way the use of these tools began before the 1994 Republican revolution, if you will, particularly with the health care bill of '93 and '94.

Now, if, if we look at that, I see the future as possibly being different. That is, George W. Bush and Al Gore are very different from Bill Clinton. And they are not great campaigners. And they don't seem to have either the skills or the energy or the interest in campaigning in the way he did. And I don't see that necessarily they will choose to do things in that way.

On the other hand of this seesaw you have the press, the media. And they are very, as Karlyn said, very committed to doing these things this way. And that is very clear from the evidence I show about how they're covering this particular campaign, which is by far the most poll driven campaign in history. Typically, if you drew the line, you would say that in September the networks talk about the issues, and then we watch the line climb through October as it becomes more and more horse race directed. This year they started and they never went down. In other words, if you took the figures this year the first week of the campaign--that's after Labor Day--69 percent of the, of the three over the network, over the air networks, ABC, CBS, NBC evening news, 69 percent focus of their stories was on the horse race.

In 1996, 43 percent had been. In 1992, 42 percent had been. Now by the time you've reached the seventh week, you're all at about the same level. But that level this time had been carried through the whole time.

In other words, what they have done and was purely poll driven, of course, was they had framed this campaign as a close election. That was the theme of virtually everything. That doesn't mean that a poll was in every story. It wasn't. But the story couldn't have been written had they not had those daily tracking polls that gave them their fix on every day, who was up and who was down, and how it changed from yesterday. So that was very, very clear.

Now, that is--by the way, the previous close elections that we knew were close after the fact, in '68 and '76, were not framed as close elections. There were a lot of ways to frame a campaign. 1992 was clearly framed as an economic story. It's the economy [inaudible] and so forth, and you see that very clearly when you're measuring it.

So we have seen this. Why? They, they love it because it gives an exactitude in a very inexact world. We love--they love it because it's a great story for the tired reporter. Virtually writes itself. And it's going to write itself. And [inaudible] this is going to go on, it's going to be a lot easier to wean President George W. Bush or President Al Gore away from this sort of stuff than it is from ABC, NBC, or CBS.

MR. ORNSTEIN: Do you find, Steve, one of the things that I've found very interesting here too is we're seeing some of these tracking surveys that show a great deal of stability. And then we have others like the time CNN--or the CNN, Gallop, USA Today one, they're showing these wild fluctuations. Now, there's some serious debate in the profession about today about whether that is a measurement problem or is reflecting reality. But if it's a measurement problem, what we're seeing on CNN and in USA Today is that they're spending an enormous amount of effort explaining the changes from day-to-day which may be spending an enormous amount of effort trying to interpret a public opinion that simply isn't there.

MR. HESS: They're doing several other things. There's nothing wrong with a horse race frame. It's an interesting story. But it doesn't help the poor listener or voter in terms of making up their mind about who to vote for or how that person would govern. So of all of the ways they can frame it, it's the least useful when you start with that.

Obviously, it takes time to do. I, I, I am questioning the use of the frame rather than the accuracy--

MR. ORNSTEIN: Yeah.

MR. HESS: --which I leave certainly to our, to our polling expert. But she made a very important point, or you did, or both of you did. And that is that they have a tremendous investment in this. I'll give you an example and I won't mention the particular newspaper. All of these newspapers have now joined up with a TV network and a polling.

But a couple of years ago, one reporter from a newspaper called me and asked for a comment on a poll that would be out the next day. And then he said something no one ever said to me, he said, I'll send you the raw material. Hey, that's great. He sent it to me and I looked at it. And I called him back and I said your skew, this is just wrong, I mean, look at your demographics. And he said, oh. And the next day the poll didn't come out. And I thought, marvelous, I can finally say I did something good in this world. And it came out a day later.

[Laughter.]

MR. HESS: So, I mean, there really is a great investment in this thing.

MR. ORNSTEIN: Yeah. But, I mean, the reason is because there was the Anna Nicole Smith story and that pushed the poll off to the side.

One other question, Steve, something you eluded to in your chapter which really was reflected to some degree in the quote that I made. Let's move away from the campaign period itself and talk about the framing of stories about the policy process. Because what I have seen anecdotally over the years is stories about the policy process have themselves moved dramatically towards a horse race focus. It's not here's what happened, here is what this bill does, here is what the amendment does. It's what do they mean by that amendment? Who's up? Who's down? Who's the winner and who is the loser here?

Comment a little bit on that phenomenon.

MR. HESS: The example I gave, which I probably can't, because this, this was--after, of course, the 1994 election, everything around here was framed as Clinton versus Gingrich. The same way the foreign policy had been framed so many years as the US versus the USSR. If you were Charles Kuralt reporting from Buenos Aires and you if wanted to get on the air, you had to find a way that that story had something to do with USA versus USSR. The same way. This was, this was a quote, a lead from a Reuter story that I saw in the Boston Globe, "Prospects for a major tobacco law grow dimmer daily even though everyone from President Clinton to House Speaker Gingrich say they want one." You know, both of them want one, but that's the lead of the story.

So, again, I must say a good part of this is bad habit. And it depends a lot on editors, a lot on journalism educators, and so forth. It is simply a lot harder to write a good story about the substance of something. You've got to call up experts. You've got to read some reports. You've got to know something. And I, I must say I'm very disillusioned at some of the reporting that I've seen in this regard. And these are very--are the cream of the crop. I mean, you know, Washington is not an entry-level place. You're seeing good, trained, educated reporters who are falling into bad habits.

MR. ORNSTEIN: You say Washington is not an entry-level place. You haven't been around Congress.

Karlyn?

MS. BOWMAN: I think for the pollsters policy issues have clearly become lots of little elections. And I'm not sure exactly when this started. But I remember seeing daily tracking on the Clarence Thomas nomination. Was he up? Was he down? We saw it once again on NAFTA, and we've seen it throughout this Administration on the health care bill. Was the President up? Was the President down? I think that is a real problem for a President's ability to govern.

MR. ORNSTEIN: Yeah. And I, I would underscore something that I had suggested earlier which is that in so many of these cases where the public is not paying close attention, they are tracking a public opinion that doesn't exist. It's non-opinion in so many cases. So it's even more kind of dangerous or skewed.

MR. HESS: This raises the question what happens if, in fact, it's not a close election? We find out on November 8th. Well, we would have been better off keeping our television sets off for the last two months at least, we wouldn't have had any misinformation.

MR. ORNSTEIN: That's--

Let me turn a little bit to the institutions. We have Katie here--we do not have, I'm afraid, Dave Brady and Mo Fiorina, who wrote the chapter on the institutional changes in Congress. Tom gave a good summary of that chapter. I'll try to bring a little bit of that in myself.

I might just note one other aside. One of the more interesting developments this time is the chairs of the various Congressional campaign committees, take Bob Torricelli the chairman of the Democratic Senatorial campaign committee, and Tom Davis, the chair of the Republican Congressional campaign committee, and each have an interesting little story this time. Torricelli has commissioned a set of attack ads used against a number of Republicans around the country for giving aid and comfort to pharmaceutical companies, a bill which he, himself, had cosponsored and helped shepherd through. Tom Davis has run a series of ads against Democrats in Congress for being soft on crime, for voting for an amendment which he, himself, had supported enthusiastically. So the level of hypocrisy here with the goal of winning seats or winning a majority is perhaps as high as one can get. And that tells you something about Congress in these times as well.

Katie, your chapter deals with the nature of the White House, the structure of the White House, how it has changed since the time that we began to develop offices of communications, public liaison, political affairs, and the like, that are now central focal points. Perhaps you could talk a little bit about that development. But also what I would ask you is how has it been different in the Clinton era and how do you anticipate it will be different from the Clinton era in either the Bush or Gore era?

One of the interesting articles of the last week or two was Bill Safire's column yesterday speculating on cabinet appointments or other offices in both White Houses. I suspect, as in many of his predictions, it will be fairly far off the mark. But it's fun to do and it's actually an interesting thing to do because it tells you something as you think about it about how they will govern. What I found interesting there was speculation about what would happen to the Bush political team, people who have not had much relationship to governing, certainly not in Washington. Talking about Karl Rove, likely to move to the Republican National Committee if Bush gets elected, and others. Fitting a pattern of taking your top people, moving them into posts outside the White House, but in the political arena, but where they then move back in and play a fairly significant role in linking politics and campaigning to governing itself. That's something we've seen before. If Safire is right, it's something we would see again with Bush. We know we will see it as well with Gore if he wins. How do you see all of this?

MS. TENPAS: Okay. Well, I'll start with your first question and that is that the subtitle of this article is called "Surviving and Thriving Amidst the Permanent Campaign." And essentially because of this sort of inexorable trend toward utilizing campaign tactics for governing, Presidents had no choice, the institution had no choice but to adapt to the permanent campaign. And so what did they do in order to be able to survive?

The first thing they did was, as Norm mentioned, structurally they added offices that were customized toward responding to public opinion or to various publics. They added offices like the office of political affairs, the office of public liaison, the office of intergovernmental affairs. And these are all efforts to improve upon the constituency outreach and in a sense to carry on a permanent campaign while they're governing.

In addition to that you had--and this all started roughly around the time of Nixon's Administration. And so this isn't anything recent. This has sort of historically been going on for the past 30 years. And I think what Steve and Karlyn have been talking about primarily are sort of, you know, the apex of this development and sort of how you're seeing constant polls now and you're seeing the press adopting many of these permanent campaign elements in their stories.

So at any rate, the White House structurally has adopted by adding these offices to the White House staff. There's also been very interesting changes in the President's advisory network. And that if you look at Presidents since Nixon, not only have they sort of expanded the size of the White House staff, but ever since Nixon, they've had their own political pollster and oftentimes a political consultant. And so you see with Nixon he hired somebody by the name of David Darish [ph.], and eventually Robert Teeter to do his polling. You see with Ford, he also hired Robert Teeter. Everybody has heard about the name Pat Caddell.

So this notion of having a permanent campaign consultant, these aren't people that they bring in right around the time of their reelection campaign to help and give them advice. These are people that sort of provide advice the day after they’re inaugurated. And they provide advice not only on politics, which seems their natural talent, but also on policy.

And they give, I mean, we've seen this with Clinton obviously with Dick Morris. But it's not a new trend. I think when you ask sort of did we see a difference in Clinton? I think what you saw with Clinton was sort of the permanent campaign at its height. You saw these offices within the White House sort of working like crazy. You also saw the adoption of various techniques, campaign-like techniques. For instance, the war room, that was something that George Stephanopoulos and James Carville sort of invented in the '92 campaign. But they also brought it into the White House and utilized it for promoting their economic package and promoting various other legislative initiatives.

MR. ORNSTEIN: That's why we call the health care event the Dien Bien Phu [ph.].

MS. TENPAS: You know, you've also heard the tactic, and this wasn't just with Clinton, but the line of the day, where they require their staff members and their staff members to adhere to the single line of the day and try not to get off message.

And if you look at many of the behaviors that are occurring within the White House and the President himself, they're very similar to what happens during a campaign. In the effort to promote the health care package, they utilize the DNC and basically turned it into the arm of the White House that was there, having phone banks, having house parties, having all of these types of events that are really, if you don't know any better, you'd think they were campaign events.

And as I mentioned before, this started with Nixon and it's gone through the President. But I think that Bill Clinton has really sort of drawn it to new heights.

Subsequent Presidents might be more reluctant to engage in these sort of permanent campaign tactics. But I think the important point is they're here to stay and Presidents really have no choice. They've got to maintain that structure within the White House that reaches out to these various constituencies and groups. They've got to maintain a very strong communications office to reach out to the press.

But the degree to which they choose to engage, in terms of hiring pollsters or hiring political consultants, that is something that can change. And I expect that probably Bush might be--I hear, anyway, that Bush is sort of more reluctant to hire pollsters and consultants, at least he says so publicly. I'm not sure whether once he's in office, if he would actually abide by that.

MR. ORNSTEIN: Well, now, let me ask you and I'd like to bring Tony back in as well another question. This has all been driven by soft money. The incentive for the President's pollster during the campaign to then move over to the National Committee, which has been done by both Administrations, to have these daily or weekly polls, to be able to poll on virtually everything, to bring in the outside consultants and integrate them directly into these processes, has worked because they're getting huge sums of money to do them that are coming from the National Committees which is soft money driven.

Now, the question is, if we end up with a campaign finance reform package that ends soft money or greatly curtails its use, what impact would that have on the ability for this process, not so much these inside offices, but the outside use, to occur? And maybe either of you or both of you can address that.

MS. TENPAS: Well, I would say even before the explosion in soft money, you know, President Nixon, the RNC paid for Bob Teeter. They vie this as a priority. And when the President is--the party of the President is in office, the RNC does whatever the President wants. And they place such a premium on polling and consulting that if soft money went away, they would simply find another way to finance it because it's too important to them.

MR. ORNSTEIN: How would they finance it, Tony?

MR. CORRADO: [Inaudible.]

MR. ORNSTEIN: You know, it's an interesting process here because if you didn't have the soft money to pay for this, it would be very tricky to find another resource to do so. If, if some individual outside gave money for the production of a proprietary survey, that's a gift. And it's not allowed under the circumstances. It would either have to be made public at the same time you gave it to the White House or the Congressional leaders, or not given at all.

So, in fact, you can make a case that back in the Nixon era before you had huge amounts of soft money, these things didn't cost as much. Now they cost a fortune. And it would create a huge dilemma for, among other things, political consultants who have managed to move from a campaign into a governing situation and still make enough money to buy multiple Mercedes and very large houses while playing their role inside without having to take the pay cut that people inside the White House have had to take. And that would go away. So there may be multiple benefits to the elimination of soft money.

I think we will open things up to the audience as a whole. I would like you to identify yourself as you ask your question? Mike?

MR. MANEVAN: Michael Manevan [ph.], from the Campaign Finance Institute. And my question is not about campaign finance. I want to ask Katie a question.

MR. ORNSTEIN: Yes.

MR. MANEVAN: Because I detect something in your remarks that I would like to go back to in response to, circle back to after this question about soft money.

Let's, let's take a hypothetical, not so hypothetical. But let's assume a person is elected to the Presidency after having articulated a set of issues in running a campaign that are not exactly the same as those previously articulated in this city by the major interest groups and by Congressional committee leaders. And let's make that assumption and, and let's realize that the city has changed and the resources available to all of the other players in the city are quite a bit larger than they were 25 years ago. I would like you to go back to your statement and sort of amplify it about how this is not something that can be avoided.

I think one can hypothetically argue that if the President were not engaged in campaigning of some mode that the President, in fact, would be giving up agenda control. And that agenda control in some way does require these kinds of methods. But I'd like your comments.

MS. TENPAS: Oh, I absolutely agree.

I mean, at this point they're really forced to engage themselves in the permanent campaign factors. And they are forced to acquire the resources that enable them to do that. So if it's staff-wise or if it's hiring external consultants, you know, not to talk too much about federalist papers or get back to the founding era, but, you know, these are institutions that are competing for power. And there's a limited amount of power. And so Congress and the President will do whatever it takes to sort of outsmart the other branch of the government. And, you know, make no mistake, part of the reason for the President doing that is not simply to enhance his own personal popularity or his legacy, but it's they sort of want to outsmart Congress and sort of dominate the agenda to the degree that they can.

MR. : [Inaudible.] Karlyn, in a survey of campaign consultants that I've done through a The Pew Charitable Trusts, which we all appreciate, we found a merging, a merging of media specialists and pollsters doing campaign work and also doing work for specialized interests like the AMA, AFL-CIO, etcetera. Have you found the same? And what is the impact of this on governing?

MS. BOWMAN: I didn't address that in the book and my evidence on it would be largely anecdotal. But I certainly believe that that is happening. And it's another one of those trends within the polling world that I worry about. I don't think that this is a very self-critical business. And I don't think that they've taken much time to advance some of the possible conflicts of interest in these kinds of roles.

There's so much competition in the polling world right now that it's driving that urge to get the extra client, to get the new account. And I, I think some serious thinking should go on about the implications of it in terms of governing. It's hard to quantify because a lot of this you never hear about in terms of the work that's going on for interest groups. And only by happenstance will you hear that one of the big Republican or Democratic pollsters is working for a particular campaign on a particular issue. But I think it's worth spending some time examining because I think there are a lot of problems inherent in it.

MR. : [Inaudible.]

MS. BOWMAN: That's right.

MR. : [Inaudible.]

MS. BOWMAN: I think we'll see a little bit more of that. Sometimes we're seeing bipartisan polling firms working on these issue campaigns together. And I think that helps solve the problem of the blurring of lines between their work for campaigns and candidates. And so I don't know whether other firms will split their businesses, but I suspect some of them will.

MR. ORNSTEIN: By the way, one of the--

MR. : Emanuel Seller, remember used to have two doors on his law--he was the chairman of the House Judiciary had two doors on his law firm, but they all went into the same office but they had differences.

MR. ORNSTEIN: You know, one of the more interesting, and I suspect consequential phenomena of this time, is the rise of the hotline which has only 700 paid subscribers, although a lot more readers. But the opinion leaders and the journalistic community especially in this town devour it every day. And every day they give the results of dozens and dozens of surveys without making any distinction among them. And one of the things you see is, you know, wild fluctuations in results. If you look carefully, you can see that it's a campaign driven or a partisan poll. And those results are often radically at odds with some of the other surveys. But as you're reading these, you don't know which is which unless you look very carefully. And it's, it's in some ways dragging the entire--I'll use the term "profession" loosely--down to a level because you can't, there are no distinctions made between those that are good and those that are not so good. And oftentimes they don't make much of a distinction between whether it's a sample of registered voters, likely voters, or anything else. So it's also a big problem.

MR. MANN: Thanks, Norm. I'm Paul Mann. A question for Ms. Tenpas.

I was fascinated by your reference to the fact that some of these phenomena, at least, date back well before soft money to at least the Nixon Administration. Although I suppose you could argue that some of these phenomena go back as far as ancient Rome when emperors used to compete for public opinion by building the next biggest palace. But in what you had to say about the offices that have been added to the White House, to what extent is soft money less the cause of all this than the whole phenomenon of mass marketing, mass advertising? Is the miniature totalitarianism of polling really a reflection of all these other little totalitarianisms we're seeing where every particle of clothing has to have a commercial name on it? Everywhere you go there has to be a television monitor. You can't read in the airport anymore because you've got to listen to CNN. Do you see what I'm driving at?

MS. TENPAS: Yes.

MR. MANN: But there are larger cultural factors here that may be even much more important than soft money or that soft money itself may be the effect of those little totalitarianisms rather than the cause.

MS. TENPAS: Yeah. No, I absolutely agree with you. I think that there seems to be a lag time between what happens on Madison Avenue and what happens at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. And that over time you see the White House it occurs to them, you know, maybe this makes sense to sort of adopt these kinds of marketing techniques that have worked so well in business. Maybe they'll work in governing. And, you know, obviously there's not a--they're not equal, but some of those attempts are made to try to utilize similar techniques in governing.

MR. : [Inaudible.]

MS. TENPAS: That's a good question. I think I would invoke the Chuck Jones I don't know right now. I'm not sure. I don't know either.

But it is interesting that, I think it's correct, Steve, that the Eisenhower campaign, the ad agency working for Eisenhower was the first focus groups. It's now migrated to the campaign world, but these things do start on Madison Avenue. You're absolutely correct. The pulse meters, the people meter, or the meters that you use to test people's reactions to campaign candidate speeches are used in the commercial world much more often.

I have a sense of what little polling I see from the commercial world that it is much more sophisticated than what we're seeing in the political world and much more advanced in many different aspects.

MR. HESS: Can I just make a slight statement in defense of Richard Nixon since I think I'm the only person on the panel who served on his White House staff, who was born then even?

And so I was, I was there at the birth of the office of communications, and so forth. But there was a real difference between then and now and it was this. I was Deputy Assistant to the President for Urban Affairs. Basically I was Chief of Staff for Pat Moynihan. And we had a competing group headed by Arthur Burns, my counterpart was Marty Anderson. And we fought like cats and dogs over every piece of proposed legislation. But never, under any circumstances, did anybody from all of those other little offices ever have input in what we were doing. When we were finished our fight and the President had agreed on the winners and the losers, then you can turn it over to Bill Safire or Herb Klein and so forth and so on. But just as the difference between church and state or editorial board and newsroom, there really was a distinction in that time between--I can't imagine Arthur Burns ever standing for a minute for anybody coming to him and saying, I'm sorry, but I'm in the Office of Public Liaison and I want to tell you that those folks out in Nebraska are very upset at what you're doing. That's just not the way it happened. And the merging came over time. And that was too bad.

MR. ORNSTEIN: Steve, next you'll be telling us you babysat for Strom Thurmond. I don't know.

[Laughter.]

MR. ORNSTEIN: You sure do look young.

MR. : Just picking up on the comment that the next President will have no choice but to bring the permanent campaign into the White House and going back to what I asked earlier, given that, given the experience with issue ads during the Clinton Administration and during the campaign, given what has gone before, how will the next President sell us his initiatives, Bush sell us private accounts for Social Security or Gore sell us more efficient motor vehicles, or whatever. Ms. Bowman or Ms. Tenpas, do you have any thoughts on that?

MS. BOWMAN: Well, interestingly, I think my little part of this, the proliferation of the polls may actually allow for greater Presidential--a greater role for Presidential leadership in the past. In part because we have so many conflicting polls and people are beginning to say, well, you can find anything you want in the polls. You can believe anything. They fluctuate all the time. And it may give the President more of an opportunity to set the stage for a new--policy discussions of a new issue like private savings accounts. And--but the polls will, of course, be used by both sides in that debate to shape both of these, the announcement and the response to it by the Democrats if Bush is President or vice-versa.

MS. TENPAS: We agree. I think you'll see similar techniques. Structurally the institution of the White House of the Presidency is prepared to respond to these different outreach groups. They've got the Office of Political Affairs, the Office of Public liaison, the Communications Office. Presidents--or candidates, I should say, Presidential candidates like to pledge that they're going to cut the staff by 15 percent because they think that sounds good. But they've all learned that that's a horrible mistake because there's a reason these offices are in the White House. And there's a function that they perform that is extremely valuable. And so I, I--when I say that there's no turning back, I really believe that Presidents couldn't all of the sudden divorce themselves of some of these resources that they have. I think there will still be pollsters. You know, probably Fred Steeper will be Bush's pollster, I would imagine, at this point. And they'll still maintain relations with the White House.

And in terms of tactics, I think you probably might see less of the war room mentality that you saw during the Clinton years. But, you know, that might also be dependent on what happens with Congress and sort of the President's position once he sort of, after the first few months, and how they see their role. But I think you're going to, you know, you'll by and large see the same thing. I think the only choice is the degree to which the Presidents will choose to engage in the permanent campaign techniques.

MR. ORNSTEIN: Although you also have to say here that you look at the issue like private accounts and Social Security during the campaign, and it's a massive struggle on the part of both campaigns to define the narrative, as Bird said, and the agenda. Is it saving Social Security? Is it destroying Social Security? That doesn't change now when you move us into the policy arena. If anything it intensifies, even if you get some bipartisan group that decides they want to work together on this, you will have outside groups putting in their own massive sums of money into public relations and advertising campaigns defining this as saving and/or destroying Social Security.

And getting back to what we were talking about earlie