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The New Prince

St. Martin's Press

The Transition from Madisonian to Jeffersonian Democracy

The fundamental paradigm that dominates our politics is the shift from representational (Madisonian) to direct (Jeffersonian) democracy. Voters want to run the show directly and are impatient with all forms of intermediaries between their opinions and public policy. This basic shift stems from a profusion of information on the one hand, and a determined distrust of institutions and politicians on the other.

While the media has noted decreasing voter turnout, the corollary is that those who do vote are becoming better and better informed. Americans are now an electorate of information junkies. Through the CNN, Fox News Channel, CNBC, CFN, MSNBC, and C-SPAN TV networks, talk radio, all-news radio, news magazines, the Internet, prime-time TV shows like 60 Minutes and 20/20, and the nightly news on the major TV networks, voters are fed an overwhelming diet of information about the political process. Even entertainment shows focus on public-sector issues, as the cops-and-robbers programs explore the subtleties of the exclusionary rule and attorney-client privilege. Taxi drivers who watch congressional hearings on C-SPAN are better informed about public policy than they have ever been.

With this level of information has come a certitude about political opinions. Where once voters were inclined to subordinate their own views to those of wiser heads, they now feel capable of analyzing public-policy issues themselves. In the 1960s, it was common to hear people say that their leaders had access to more information, that it was wrong to judge them without knowing all the facts. Now, we would laugh at anyone who said that on television.

Impatient with representative assemblies, voters take lawmaking into their own hands when the politicians let them. For example, ever since referenda became popular in California, the state legislature has increasingly become a ministerial body, executing the broad policy decisions made by voters themselves, through the ten or twelve ballot issues they decide each election day.

As the electorate has become more opinionated and self- confident, its distrust of politicians, parties, and all institutions has become more profound. Watergate was the original scandal of modern American political life. But since then, each institution has had its own scandal: doctors have had malpractice scandals; evangelicals have had the Bakker and Swaggert scandals; the intelligence community has had the Aldrich Ames scandal; journalists have had plagiarism scandals; labor unions have had corruption and mob scandals; lawyers have had malpractice scandals; churches have had child sex-abuse scandals; the military has had the Pentagon procurement scandals; police departments have had local corruption scandals and the Rodney King beating. No institution remains unscathed. Voters trust themselves ... and nobody else.

This underlying shift in our electorate's mood, away from blind faith and toward self-reliance, is combining with a new technology which empowers voters as never before. Political polling now rates politicians every day of their term and broadcasts the findings for all to see. Referenda, initiatives, and even recalls of elected officials increasingly dominate policy-making. The proliferation of TV channels and the growth of talk radio offer forums for political debate never before available in such length or depth. Soon, interactive TV-computers will allow national town meetings with direct balloting by tens of millions of people — the very core of the Jeffersonian vision of small-town democracy at work.

One by-product of this shift in power from politicians to voters is the decline of ideology. Voters want to think for themselves and will not buy the prefabricated, predictable opinions of either left- or right-wing ideologues. Men of affairs who respond to each new situation with practical, specific ideas unfettered by ideological constructs increasingly dominate our political process.

Felix Rohayten described the difference between French and American politics when he said, "The French respect ideas over facts. Americans respect facts over ideas."

Once, American voters didn't really have access to the facts. News information was sharply limited and controlled by the three networks. Without an impressive array of facts at their disposal, voters had no choice but to rely on ideologies or "ideas." It was easier to learn one point of view which provided a formula for analysis of all issues than it was to gather data about each question and think it through on its own merits.

But now that the information is practically force-fed to the voters, ideology becomes an unnecessary guide. Rather than try to fit the facts into preconceived opinions, voters would rather change their preconceptions as they learn new facts. As Winston Churchill once told a woman who criticized him for changing his position on an issue: "When the facts change, I change my opinions. What is it, madam, that you do?" Ideas, the preconceived formulas of the ideologies, matter less to Americans than do the facts of each specific situation. Voters want what works, no matter whose ideological label it bears.

Americans are more and more independent politically. A plurality — 40 percent of the electorate — now does not profess allegiance to either political party or vote a party line. Increasingly unwilling to trust Democrats or Republicans, they believe that the executive branch and the Congress should be controlled by different political parties. These independent voters do not care about party labels. They insist on examining each candidate on his or her own merits, irrespective of party. Even when the public opinion shifts support from one party to another, it is voters who were once loyal to one of the parties who switch to the other. Independents remain independent.

The trend from Madisonian to Jeffersonian governance is changing all the rules. Few realize how fundamentally the rules have changed. In most cases, a pessimism stops them from celebrating the transformation which is underway. In the next ten chapters, we will explore how this transition to direct democracy is changing everything.

The right wing liked to say, years ago, that America was a republic, not a democracy. Now it is a democracy.

Message over Money

former speaker of the house Tip O'Neill said that money is "the mother's milk of politics." When he said it, he was right. Now he's wrong. Money in politics is not nearly as important as everybody thinks it is. Message is vastly more important. Candidates need sufficient funds to carry their case to the voters, but financial superiority is not crucial. More money helps. But its importance is universally overrated. A richer candidate with a weaker message will generally lose to a poorer candidate with a stronger message as long as the candidate with more limited money has enough funds to get his or her message out.

Consider the epitaphs in the graveyard of failed but wellfunded candidacies: Perot for president, Forbes for president, Huffington for senator in California, Stein and Lauder for mayor in New York City, Bredeson for governor in Tennessee, Milner for governor in Georgia, Williams for governor in Texas, Romney for senator in Massachusetts, Lehrman for governor in New York State, Shavonni for senator in Connecticut, Eckert for governor in Florida, and Short for senator in Minnesota. Each marks a candidate who lost despite having virtually unlimited money. They died with their boots on and their wallets depleted. Of the twenty-four victorious candidates I have handled in races for senator or governor, thirteen had less money than their opponents. Some had a lot less. Even though Bob Dole outspent Bill Clinton in 1996 by 2- to-1, he still lost.

The increasing importance of message over money is part of the shift from representative to direct democracy. In a representative democracy, voters worry deeply about what kind of man or woman will represent them in Congress or as governor. They carefully weigh character in evaluating whom to trust with their vote. But as voters become more certain of their own opinions, they worry less about to whom they will delegate their power, and more about whether or not their representative will echo their own points of view. Thus, character counts for less and message counts for more.

If anyone doubts this proposition, we have only to examine the continuing popularity of Bill Clinton in the face of the Lewinsky scandal. With the right message, the character and image of the candidate is a lot less important.

Message is much cheaper to project than character. To get someone to agree with you costs less than to try to get him to like you. As a candidate's views and ideas come to matter more than his personality or character, campaigns cost less. While the typical wealthy candidate is hiring top image-makers to design gorgeous ads showing his roots in the soil and his family values, the poorer candidate is running ads about issues — and overcoming the financial disadvantage by having something to say.

To win, a candidate does not need the kind of money most politicians, media, fund-raisers, and donors think is necessary. The key to running a campaign on the cheap is to avoid spending money on anything other than projecting a message. Rich candidates squander millions on headquarters, staff, duplicative consultants, and the like. A candidate needs enough money to get his or her message across.

How much is enough?

In a typical television advertising campaign, it takes about one thousand gross rating points (GRPs) to pound a message home. One GRP means that 1 percent of the households in a media market are watching your ad. One thousand GRPs means that most voters see your ad about seven to nine times during the campaign, and some see it much more frequently.

The cost-per-GRP ranges widely depending on the size of the market and on whether or not the ad is to run in prime time. In New York City, where media costs an average of $600 per GRP for a political candidate for a thirty-second ad, it would cost about $600,000 to punch a message through. In Jackson, Mississippi, where it costs $25 per GRP, you'd need only $25,000. In the average media market in a medium-sized city, it costs about $125 per GRP, or about $125,000, to get a single message across. In a statewide race, with many different media markets, the cost will be proportionately more.

A successful candidate usually needs to project eight to ten messages per campaign. That's eight to ten thousand GRPs or, in a typical media market, a total price tag of $800,000 to $1 million. In a midsize typical state, the price tag will run to about $2.5 million.

That's what "enough" is.

Exorbitant? Not in the real world. Any serious contender for senator or governor in a typical state should be able to raise this sum. To raise $2.5 million, you need 1,250 families to give $2,000 each. While this may be a prohibitive cost for a fringe candidate, it is well within the capacity of almost any viable contender.

Republicans, in particular, overestimate the impact of money on politics. Often GOP political strategy seems like the human-wave theory of the Chinese military translated to politics. Where Beijing uses masses of soldiers to overwhelm their adversaries, the GOP uses huge campaign budgets as a substitute for strategy, thought, or issues. But just as technology and advanced weaponry can defeat the Red Army, so enough money, spent on the right message, will defeat gigantic campaign spending.

In their mad pursuit of funds, many candidates foolishly ignore the need to develop a good message. They don't spend the hours they need thinking about what all this money will be spent to say. Millionaires run for office expecting to buy their way to victory without the least thought for the content of their campaigns. Sometimes pure financial advantage works, as it did for Heinz in Pennsylvania, Lautenberg in New Jersey, Bennett in Utah, and Brown in Kentucky. But the failures are far more common.

The arrogant failure to think out a message is the concomitant of campaigns that stress image over substance. In both cases, the politician is hoping to win by manipulation rather than by persuasion. But both approaches ignore rapidly increasing educational levels and galloping informational levels, among the American voters. The American electorate will accept only substance, not glitz, as a campaign message.

Candidates often focus on matching or exceeding the money their adversaries have raised, rather than pausing to calculate rationally how much it costs to get a message across. For all the obsessive focus on fund-raising in American politics today, it is the supreme irony that much of the time politicians spend raising money is wasted because they have not thought out the message they want that money to bring to the voters. Like bidders at an auction, they vie for the lead in fund-raising and seek sums that are out of all proportion to what is really required to win. Of such delusions are the sweet dreams of political consultants made.

Politics is not a mechanical process; it is dominated by ideas. Money doesn't talk. Indeed, without a message, it has nothing to say.

Issues Over Image

Image reigns supreme in our politics. It shouldn't. Media experts rely too heavily on thematic, emotional, or visual appeals in political campaigning. Shaped by the norms of commercial advertising, where the image is all, they fall in love with their own cameras as they try to capture — or, when necessary, create — their candidate's personality on film. They make Bill Clinton look young and vibrant; President Bush, grandfatherly and kind; Reagan, avuncular and empathetic.

But the basic premise of image campaigns is outdated. Elections used to be the time to decide who will make the decisions for our government, to whom the voters should delegate their power. But the modern electorate doesn't want to cede its direct role in determining policy to any party or anyone.

One of the reasons politicians like Clinton have proven less vulnerable than one might expect to constant attacks on their characters, is that voters don't want to have to trust a candidate to make decisions for them. They want their elected officials on a shorter leash. Voters now insist that a candidate spell out his program, his vision, his ideas, and then they will elect him to fulfill that specific mandate. As Tina Turner sang, "What's love got to do with it?"

In our age of direct Jeffersonian democracy, the surest way to capture a voter is to educate him. Just as programs like 60 Minutes or 20/20 do well in ratings because they entertain by informing, so campaigns do best when their ideas move the electorate's thinking one step ahead. Campaigns are the time to help the electorate grow intellectually; the candidates whose media message catalyzes that process will win the voters' strong support.

Image advertisements pushing "feel-good" themes don't create lasting voter support. At most, they can carry momentum after issues have generated it.

Voters are well aware that the young men and women who carry storyboards through the carpeted corridors of advertising agencies have the creative ability to seduce them with images and appearances. The Darwinian adaptive trait of our time is the ability to figure out when we are being lied to on television. Lest we change beer brands with each new ad or buy a different car each month, we have learned since birth to view all advertising with the greatest of skepticism.

Image ads may satiate a focus group for a few hours, but they don't do well over the long campaign. Voters demand specifics and want content. Image ads too often resemble bank commercials — long on style and short on substance — because there is too little real difference in the products being offered. Elections are won by verbs — proposals for action — not by adjectives which flatter a candidate.

Sometimes the power of issues is obvious, as when a great question like abortion, the Vietnam War, Watergate, or Social Security has such power that, by itself, it moves voters; then it really doesn't matter who's running. Voters in effect treat the election as a ballot referendum on a gut-wrenching issue. The author of the best set of issue positions wins, whether he has acne or not.

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Excerpted from The New Prince by Dick Morris. Copyright © 1999 Dick Morris. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
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