The Fayette Citizen-Opinion Page
Wednesday, January 27, 1999
Trial's legacy: poll-driven public policy

By DAVE HAMRICK
Editor-at-large

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It's winding down, and I'm sure I speak for just about everyone when I say, "Not a moment too soon."

No one wanted the president's perjury trial to go on for this long. In fact, no one wanted it at all, though some of us have acknowledged the necessity of it and others insisted the whole thing was a witch hunt from the beginning and totally unnecessary.

Probably by week's end, possibly even before you read these words, the Senate will either vote to acquit the president or will wriggle out of its responsibility entirely by voting for dismissal.

After all is said and done after the Congress has gone back to "doing the people's business," and after the networks have stopped ticking off the masses by interrupting their soap operas with annoying news about Bill and Monica what will be the lasting effect of all the noise and fury?

Those who have repeatedly referred to the whole scandal as an investigation into the president's "personal life" will probably say the lasting effect is that politicians' peccadillos have become fair game for unprincipled opponents and marauding reporters.

But some may say the opposite, that the experience has been so painful that no politician would touch a juicy sex scandal about his opponent with a ten-foot pole from now on.

I would say the second scenario is more likely, but I don't rate it very high on the significance scale.

The most significant lasing effect, I think, is linked to the most significant hallmark of the Clinton presidency, and that is the degree to which he has written the book on poll-driven policy.

As I write, CNN is reciting yet another poll. Sixty-seven percent think the Senate should dismiss the case. Twenty-eight percent think they should hear witnesses, and 53 percent think Hillary should get a new hairdo.

As I mentioned earlier, I've watched much of the proceedings in the Clinton trial. Thanks to a convenient working arrangement, I am able to keep the TV on while I work.

Why? For one thing, I've been producing commentary on this issue, and I want to know as much as I can about any subject I broach on in this space. For another, regardless of how disgusting you may think the whole matter is, it still will occupy a place in history, and for that it warrants some attention.

As I have watched, I have been amazed at the frequency with which the pollsters churn out data on how "the American people" feel about the most minute facets of the trial. I can't believe that 10 percent of the people being polled have a thimble full of information to base their opinions on, yet we get their opinions on motions to dismiss, whether to call witnesses, which witnesses to call, what they should wear, who should question whom and for how long, whether information should be released or kept private, ad infinitum.

To each of these polls, my answer has been a universal "So what?" They have no relevance. Zero, zip, nada. The Senate is engaged in a constitutional process and they are supposed to make all of these decisions based on procedural and historic precedent.

Maybe we should do away with jury trials and simply use polling data to decide guilt or innocence. Those polling data, of course, would be based on the same kinds of useless sound bites that are driving polls in the president's trial. People aren't taking the time to understand the details.

People never have had the time to understand all the details, and even if they did, all of the news media combined can't possibly get all of those details into everyone's hands, and if they could they wouldn't because it would interfere with profits.

That's why we elect representatives. We choose people to write laws and develop public policy and we expect them to take the time to understand the details. We pay them for this attention to the details, and we evaluate their performance periodically to make sure they are using principles we approve of as they make those decisions.

Bill Clinton has changed all that, and this trial brings that change into sharp focus. From the beginning of his presidency, Clinton has carefully followed the polls and, with rare exceptions that may be the subject of a future column, has molded his legislative agenda and his executive decisions to mirror those polls.

Example: He fought welfare reform with great ferocity until polls showed that people favored Republican welfare reform proposals. He then signed the Republican proposals into law and promptly took credit for them.

Example: His state-of-the-union addresses have been filled to the brim with fuzzy, nonspecific promises to spend money on every issue where polls have revealed that people have concerns.

Example: Health care reform was his number one campaign issue, but he dropped it like a hot potato when Hillary's proposals started eating into his popularity ratings. There isn't enough space to scratch the surface.

We have entered an era in which character does not matter. The people no longer want leaders who will do what is right regardless of the political consequences.

They want real good, feel-good, sound bite-driven, poll-based public policy.

Methinks the USSR gave up too soon. Give us 20 more years and we may bury ourselves.


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