Living History by Unknown (best non fiction books of all time .txt) 📕

his support in Congress. When the economy is down, or other factors diminish the President’s popularity, the midterm losses can be greater.

Newt Gingrich and his cohort of self-described Republican “revolutionaries” appeared eager to capitalize on the trend. In September, Gingrich stood on the steps of the Capitol, surrounded by like-minded members, to unveil his game plan for midterm victory: a “Contract with America.” The Contract, which provided the basis for Republican proposals to abolish the Department of Education, make deep spending cuts in Medicare, Medicaid, education and the environment and slash tax credits for the working poor, came to be known around the White House as the “Contract on America” because of the damage it would cause our country. The numbers behind its contradictory agenda didn’t add up. You can’t increase military spending, decrease taxes and balance the federal budget unless you cut much of what the government does. Gingrich counted on voters to skip the arithmetic. The Contract was a strategy to nationalize local elections and turn congressional races into a referendum on Republican terms: negative on the Clinton Administration and positive on their Contract.

In American politics, candidates and public officials rely on polls to gauge opinion, but few want to admit it, because they fear that the media and the public will accuse them of pandering to voters. But polls are not supposed to tell politicians what to believe or which policies to pursue; they are diagnostic tools to help politicians make the most effective case for a certain course of action based on an understanding of voter response.

Doctors listen to your heart with a stethoscope; politicians listen to voters with a poll. In campaigns, polling helps candidates identify their strengths and weaknesses. Once elected officials are in office, judicious poll-taking can help them communicate effectively to achieve their goals. The best political polling is part statistical science, part psychology and part alchemy. The key is this: To get helpful answers, you must ask the right questions of a representative number of likely voters.

As we moved toward the midterm elections in November, Bill’s political advisers assured us that the Democrats were in relatively good shape. But I was worried. After weeks of flying all over the country campaigning for Democratic candidates, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the public polls commissioned by outside groups, as well as those taken by Democratic pollsters, were off base. I suspected that pollsters were not measuring, beneath the surface o£ American politics, the currents of vehement opposition on the Right and the demoralized indifference among our supporters. One of the secrets of understanding polls is to identify the intensity of voters’ feelings. A majority of voters may say they care about sensible gun safety measures, but they are not as adamant as the minority of voters who oppose any kind of gun control. The intense voters show up to vote for or against a candidate based on that one position, sometimes known as a wedge issue. The majority vote on a host of other issues or don’t vote at all. I knew that many of the Administration’s accomplishments could be framed as wedge issues. Most Republican voters were intensely opposed to the upper-income tax increase for deficit reduction, the Brady bill and the assault weapons ban, which had passed in 1994 and made it illegal to manufacture, sell or possess nineteen of the most dangerous semi-automatic weapons.

The National Rifle Association, the religious Right and anti-tax interest groups were more motivated than ever.

I also knew that some core Democratic supporters felt disillusioned by our failure to reform health care or betrayed by the Administration’s successful push for NAFTA, and I feared that their disappointment might overshadow all the positive accomplishments of the Administration and the Democratic leadership. There seemed little urgency among Democrats to get out the vote. And it was too early for many independent or swing voters to feel the improvement in the economy or see the salutary effects of a reduced deficit on interest rates and job growth.

In October I called Dick Morris for an outside opinion about our prospects. Bill and I considered Morris a creative pollster and a brilliant strategist, but he came with serious baggage. First of all, he had no compunction about working both sides of the aisle and all sides of an issue. Although he had helped Bill win five gubernatorial races, he also worked for conservative Republican Senators Trent Lott of Mississippi and Jesse Helms of North Carolina. Morris’s specialty was identifying the swing voters who seesawed between the two parties. His advice was sometimes off-the-wall; you had to sift through it to extract the useful insights and ideas. And he had the people skills of a porcupine.

Nonetheless, I thought Morris’s analysis might be instructive, if we could involve him carefully and quietly. With his skeptical views about politics and people, Morris served as a counterweight to the ever optimistic Bill Clinton. Where Bill saw a silver lining in every cloud, Morris saw thunderstorms.

Starting in 1978, Morris worked for Bill on all his gubernatorial campaigns except the one he lost in 1980. But by 1991, Morris had picked up more Republican candidates, and nobody in the Democratic power structure liked or trusted him. Bill’s advisers convinced him not to use Morris for his presidential campaign. I phoned him in October of 1994.

“Dick,” I said, “this election doesn’t seem right to me.” I told him I didn’t believe the positive polls and wanted to know what he thought. “If I can get Bill to call you, will you help?”

Morris was working for four Republican candidates, but that wasn’t the source of his reluctance.

“I don’t like the way I was treated, Hillary,” said Morris in his rapid-fire New York accent. “People were so mean to me.”

“I know, I know, Dick. But people find you difficult.” I assured him that he would just be talking to Bill and me and that we were trying to understand the mood of the voters and what Democrats wanted to do.