Obama Governs the United States Through Polling Trends

This is just plain dumb!  You don’t run a company, a state, a city, a town or the U.S. by polling and popularity – it will bite you in the A$$.

The problem I see with polling so often as the article actually indicates is that you will flip-flop on way too many issues and will never stand by principles.  People’s minds change all the time depending on the times and whatever it is they may be going through.  For example, I had a friend sign up for E-harmony, and he took that survey they require you to fill out; he took it twice.  Each survey result was incredibly different because, he had a different mindset and mood each time he took the survey.  Same thing goes for these polls that are conducted by Rasmussen, Zogby etc. 

It’s good to know what the public is thinking but how can you ever be trusted by anyone if you never stand strong on your principles and always change your mind depending on other people’s moods.  That seems pretty empty and shallow to me. 

As President Barack Obama works to sell the American people on a sweeping agenda of domestic spending and policy changes, he’s relying on three men who have gone through neither Senate confirmation nor cable news spin cycles.

Data from pollsters Joel Benenson and Paul Harstad has become increasingly important to shaping the White House’s message as the crucial battle over the president’s budget intensifies.

“The pace [of polling] is picking up,” said one source familiar with the data.

In addition, David Binder, a San Francisco-based focus group expert, also has been traveling the country taking the national temperature on issues like energy and health care, others close to the White House said.

Most people I know, Democrat or otherwise, are not keen on the energy push and health care push at this point in time when there are still so many uknowns with the economy.  Most Republicans are against those agenda items so you almost have to have more than 50% not fond of that idea currently… however, Obama is still pushing this as an agenda item so how can this be the true temperature of the country?

Presidents have long pooh-poohed polls while privately conducting them. Jimmy Carter had Patrick Caddell, Reagan had Dick Wirthlin, and Bill Clinton relied on Mark Penn for weekly, personal briefings on the numbers.

Polling worked so well for Jimmy Carter didn’t it?

George W. Bush, reacting against Clinton’s perceived reliance on polls, sharply cut back the practice, according to spending tallies. His main pollster was the no-profile Jan van Lohuizen, but Karl Rove still conducted six major surveys a year, a senior Bush White House staffer said, and employed an aide to pore over the growing pile of publicly available data.

Obama, too, has denounced polling, promising in one high-profile Iowa speech to lead “not by polls, but by principle,” even though he employed six campaign pollsters.

Kinda like I was saying above…

Obama, early indications suggest, combines elements of the Clinton and Bush models. He is polling more than Bush – a bit less than once a week for most of his young term, two people involved said.

 So now it’s ok to implement old Bush models?  What about the change?  All he has done is tweaked the way in which Bush polled and the frequency of the polling.

Elements of Obama’s approach bear the hallmarks of message testing, like the introduction of the words “recovery” and “reinvestment” to rebrand the “stimulus” package, and aides said the polling has focused almost entirely on selling policy, not on measuring the president’s personal appeal.

A source familiar with the data said a central insight of more recent polling had been that Americans see no distinction between the budget and the popular spending measures that preceded it, and that the key to selling the budget has been to portray it as part of the “recovery” measures.

I’m sorry but if you really believe that a budget is part of the nation’s recovery you have a lot to learn and can find your picture next to the word gullible in the dictionary.  Obama’s strategy, however, is clever, by polling hot button words – I will give him that.  But again, actions speak louder than words.

And here is where I see the problem.  Does a good manager delegate and not micromanage?  Yes, of course, but it’s one thing to delegate and meet and discuss the details or at worst at the top level,  than not review the work of your subordinate and trust that they instinctively know what is best. 

But Obama, though polling regularly, is no Clinton either. The 42nd president studied the polls from Penn and his partners Doug Schoenpolls with “hypnotic intensity,” the Washington Post once wrote. Obama leaves political guru David Axelrod to sift through the results.

Indeed, the polling arrangement offers a glimpse into the power dynamics of the Obama White House. Axelrod convenes a Wednesday political meeting and is in regular contact with the pollsters, but the pollsters don’t brief Obama directly.

Internally, they bolster Axelrod’s power rather than challenging it.

“Axelrod digests all the polling,” said another Democrat who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity because the White House doesn’t want to call attention to its polling.

That’s giving Axelrod a whole lot of power and do we know if he is competent enough to actually follow through on the poll results?  Campaign polling is completely different than on-the-job polling based on actions and real-life work experience. 

The White House doesn’t want to call attention to its polling, much like it doesn’t want to call attention to Obama’s dire need for a teleprompter.

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