Today we publish an interview we conducted yesterday with political strategist Arnold Steinberg. He has served as a campaign strategist and adviser for countless campaigns. He has created hundreds of campaign advertising materials for print, television and radio media and conducted more than 1800 polling and focus group projects. The author of two graduate textbooks on campaign management and media, Steinberg is a court-recognized expert witness who has testified repeatedly on public opinion and attitudinal formation, demographics and voting patterns, media and advertising, and elections and ballot issues, and other aspects of political campaigns. He has been on several foundation boards as well as Federal boards in the Reagan and Bush Administrations. He also served on the California Coastal Commission. He also represented the United States on diplomatic and military delegations to countries in the Mideast, Asia, Europe and South America.
The Interview…
FLEISCHMAN (JF): Arnie, thanks for agreeing to participate in yet another interview with the FlashReport. We received such positive feedback from your last interviews, so I am really excited to dig right in…
I recently saw Gov. Mike Huckabee on his show reference Clinton’s stewardship of a good economy, during an interview with actor Jon Voight, who was sharply critical of Obama but didn’t really challenge Huckabee’s characterization of Clinton. What’s going on with that?
STEINBERG (AS): Jon Voight is a great guy, and like many, he is focused on Obama and his policies. What you’ve raised reflects the need for Governor Huckabee and others to do their homework. The main reasons for economic prosperity in the Clinton years pertain to the cyclical nature of the American economy – we were in a recovery mode, having zero to do with Clinton, and also because of the economic growth related to technology, more a product of the Reagan years. This implied praise of Clinton is sort of like giving Clinton credit for foreign policy success. In fact, he entered office after the fall of the Soviet Union and other communist regimes, and after the defeat of Saddam, and the disintegration of Yassir Arafat and the PLO. These good things are not solely, but primarily, the result of Ronald Reagan and his policies. At that time, in 1993, when we could have reached some understanding in the Mideast, with Arafat discredited, what happened? Clinton inexplicably resurrected Arafat and brought him to the White House. This shows his exceedingly poor judgment. Who knows how Clinton would have fared if the Soviets were still around, and he had to cope with them?
JF: What does this big picture thinking have to do with elections?
AS: A lot. The political environment affects elections. An undercurrent of why many opposed President Clinton’s impeachment was the feeling that the perjury charge – seen by many as merely an impetuous sexual indiscretion — was a stretch, as measured against the overriding, simplistic perception that Clinton was the president of peace and prosperity, when he had, in fact, inherited the trajectory to both. If the 501c3 nonprofit organizations on our side had – without endorsing any candidate — merely disabused people of those misperceptions, he may or may not have been convicted of the impeachment, but at least much of the mythology that affected later elections would have been gone.
JF: But Clinton wasn’t that bad on deficits.
AS: That’s because Republicans in Congress do best in fighting the excesses of a Democratic President. Look how Republicans legislators in California initially caved to Gov. Schwarzenegger. That’s one of the reasons why a Chuck DeVore is so refreshing. If we had more DeVores during Schwarzenegger’s first 90 days, they might have saved Schwarzenegger from himself…or from his wife.
JF: What do you think about the Poizner ads that are negative on Schwarzenegger.
AS: Well, he’s trying to capitalize on a widespread disillusionment with the governor. It’s a tough sell, because he’s running against Whitman, and she’s running an independent message. Although she really didn’t need extensive polling at all to push the obvious of creating jobs, cutting spending, and fixing schools.
JF: Do you feel that she is spending so much money that it could be characterized that she is virtually buying the election?
AS: She understands the primacy of a simple message, and the need for repetition. She is a marketing person. But she doesn’t want increased market share, she wants victory. She understands that the candidate is the product. But if voters believe they are being sold a candidate, they will rebel. There is a subtlety here. She needs to be seen as frugal. You can expect Jerry Brown, especially if she is the nominee, to reprise his old image of sleep-on-the-mattress, not-in-the-governors-mansion, and drive-the-Plymouth. He’ll try – rhetorically, especially in a debate – to suggest that he is the more fiscally responsible, because she overspent on her campaign. The reality is that Jerry is a smart, glib guy, but he is not as lightning fast in a debate as he used to be.
JF: Why would she overspend if she is such a good CEO?
AS: She follows a Bayesian formulation of using probability against a favorable outcome (winning) as against an unfavorable outcome (losing). She probably could have been the first chairwoman of the joint chiefs of staff. She is totally focused on her objective, she is win-oriented. Thus, for her to increase the probability of winning, even marginally, seems rational, even if the marginal cost is enormous . It is her money, and she has every right to spend it. But in government, we Republicans would say, why spend another hundred billion dollars to increase water quality by a statistically insignificant amount. At the same time, what she is doing, in terms of overkill, makes sense because it pumps up her general election polling numbers.
JF: If she’s a tough CEO, what governs her budgeting?
AS: Well, perhaps she does not see the connection between showing she is a tough budget-conscious CEO and is therefore able to take charge of the state budget. The challenge is what I just said. For example – and I’m just making up the numbers for illustration – suppose for the primary, a Whitman budget of $40 million would yield an 87-percent probability of winning, a $50-million budget would yield a 90% probability of winning, $60 million would be 92% probability, $70 million 93%, and $80 million 93.5%. She could end up at $80 million. The point is that successive marginal inputs of dollars are less efficient in terms of increasing the probability of victory, but her need for certainty, given her resources, may trump that calculus. But, as I just said, then you have to note that the general election probability is not an independent variable, so that massive spending in the primary positively affects her chances in the general election.
JF: What about Steve Poizner?
AS: Like Meg Whitman, Steve Poizner is impressive. Oddly, both of them and Jerry Brown are elitists in different ways. Jerry is really an introvert who is a policy wonk, as is Steve Poizner, who is like the brilliant engineer who makes things work but is not as skillful at communicating his achievements. I mean, Steve Poizner has never told his story, and if he became the nominee, he would be seen as the underdog who prevailed – a wonderful result for him, since it would inoculate him from the charge of buying the election. Meg Whitman is a proven and talented quintessential manager, but she is frustrated that reporters who don’t earn all that much and are barely holding on to their jobs in an economy of declining journalism businesses, have the potential to take her down. Even some of the liberal reporters unhappy with Poizner’s move to the right, seem to lean toward him. But with the ever declining coverage of politics, she has the resources to define political reality. Of course, she had a baptism under fire with the non-voting narrative, or, rather, absence of a plausible narrative early-on. That entire problem could have been largely preempted with an op-ed long ago on how she realized the error of her nonvoting ways and decided to become a political activist. That, of course, would have required her campaign team to have done the requisite op-research on her early-on, so that she was fully vetted internally, then inoculated, and certainly up for quick response, here’s-my-story-and-I’m-sticking-to-it self-defense. Instead, she let it become a credibility problem. In any event, the voting trends favor Republicans this year, and Jerry Brown is far from the ideal candidate for an electorate whose nostalgia does not necessarily include him. So, if it’s Whitman, she can expect Brown to try to impeach her credibility.
JF: What about the independent expenditures?
AS: The independent campaign against her could backfire if it’s seen as a conspiracy by unions. But, then again, look at the stupid Chamber of Commerce so-called educational campaign that was clearly a campaign against Jerry Brown. It was gratuitous. And, you know, I would never underestimate him. I was an advertising consultant to his Republican opponent Evelle Younger in 1978, and I urged Ev not to go to vacation in Hawaii right after winning the primary , but party elders and other senior Republicans, as they are called, blessed his departure from reality. Jerry came off the primary, where he had championed the campaign against Proposition 13, and, while Ev was in Hawaii, Jerry was kissing up to Howard Jarvis and became the champion of implementing Proposition 13. By the time the November campaign was over, Republican Younger, who early-on had backed Proposition 13 over, say, his Republican primary opponent, Pete Wilson, who had opposed it, was not seen – by November — as nearly as supportive of 13 as Democrat Jerry Brown, who actually had opposed it. Brown is totally capable of running to the right on some issues and still keeping his base.
JF: Won’t this be a Republican year, nationally?
AS: The turnout scenario looks very good. Also, intensity favors Republicans, who have the momentum, and Republicans have effectively capitalized, in last year’s off-year elections, on the buyers’ remorse on Obama.
JF: Well, with all the victories on Michael Steele’s watch, isn’t this so-called RNC scandal a bit overblown.
AS: Sure. This uproar about the West Hollywood club is odd. The amount of money wasted there is trivial compared to what the RNC wastes in forever reinventing the wheel. No one has seriously suggested the RNC is run any more efficiently than the Federal government. The RNC is being run no more incompetently than in the past. Business as usual. This is really a battle among vendors. Steele simply exchanged one group of beltway vendors with another group. The disaffected vendors now want to cannibalize RNC fundraising with competing groups. But perhaps the groups will still be helpful, who knows. But this is not, as Mao said, “Let a thousand flowers bloom.” It is, let a thousand bank accounts bloom.
JF: How important is the RNC?
AS: In some ways, less important than the Senate and House committees. But none of them functions in a void. The Republicans have erred in bad-mouthing the economy and lowered expectations. The fact is we probably are in a cyclical recovery, inadequate as it is. And, yes, a terrible terrorist attack, or an attack on Iran and related blockade on oil, or a dramatic rise in interest rates – these are all economic downsides. But Republicans – politically — are better off, raising expectations to a level unlikely to be met, because perception is largely related to expectations. Republicans should be saying we went into debt for stupid boondoggle giveaway cronyism bailouts had little effect, and the economy is recovering, slowly, anyway, not because of, but despite, Obama’s massive debt-ridden policies. Republicans need to be in a place where, if economic numbers are looking better in October, that Republicans still win.
JF: Don’t Democrats make mistakes, too?
AS: Sure. Look at the awful campaign against Proposition 8, where a bunch of white, liberal homosexuals failed to reach out, in an appropriate way, to the significant number of heterosexual, socially moderate African American voters in the 2008 election. Indeed, the No on Prop 8 team was so out of touch, it actually offended black voters with comparisons of ‘gay rights’ to ‘civil rights.’
JF: And the yes campaign?
AS: Did almost everything right. They seemed moderate, so that the No on 8 folks seemed off the mark. As you know, I strongly believed the Prop 8 people should have gone for a June election with a nearly certain victory, with an older, reliably supportive of traditional marriage electorate. Instead, they gambled on November and won, but only partly because they ran a thoughtful, disciplined campaign focusing on the excesses of the opposition and on the indoctrination of kids on gay lifestyles. The yes side was, in a word, believable and not overstated. And – this is more important that the fact the “yes” side ran a comparative more effective campaign: the “yes” side had the perfect storm. After all, when they first set-up to gather signatures, the conventional wisdom was Hillary would be the nominee, against McCain. Instead, it’s Obama, which led to the substantial African-American November turnout, which often responds to African-American endorsers from central casting who push bloc voting on propositions, such as No on 8. But Obama’s November team was risk-averse and, though California was a certain victory for him, he wanted to avoid Prop 8 here, for fear it might hurt him nationally, so there was effective outreach from the “No” side to African-Americans. McCain ended up as the nominee, but some of the energized, but post-nomination disenchanted, former Romney supporters looked to a new cause – Prop 8, which, also, perhaps for additional reasons, ended up raising way more money than anticipated. But, make no mistake, the Prop 8 team deserves credit for running a campaign that stayed on message.
JF: Are Republicans on message?
AS: The message is anti-Obama, which is necessary, and resonating nicely, but not enough. We’re still talking jargon, like “cap-n-trade.” And, while we energize the base by calling Obama a socialist, it sounds like name calling to others. What is encouraging is finally some of the Republicans in the House are getting off entitlements. What we really need to do is get away from knee-jerk support of big business, and instead we should support small business and entrepreneurs. We may not feel the government has any business in what a CEO gets paid, and I strongly oppose the czars and the way the Feds are intruding in business, but there is no reason to defend some of these incompetent CEOs, or the bumbling heads of these banks, who used government-supplied or government stimulated low-cost money to lend out to bad credit risks. And, sorry to my big business Republican friends, but many of these CEOs are way overpaid, and their pay is not really being determined by the free market.
JF: Is this getting back full circle to what you said earlier about the macro-message, the big picture political environment.
AS: Exactly. Republicans did not consistently make the case that the main culprit for the economic collapse was government excess, not the free market. Wall Street cronyism was a product of the way banking worked, precisely because government encouraged risky loans on a massive basis. Now, that doesn’t excuse some of these bankers who did not exercise due diligence, and too many Republicans want to pretend these banking executives were just innocent bystanders, as they encouraged loan officers to fudge loan documents and make loans to people who could not possibly pay them back. But –this is important – we failed to make the big case against bailouts, and that’s why there is still confusion among the electorate that could come back to hurt Republicans in what should be a good year.
JF: How so?
AS: We should be positioning Democrat incumbents as having supported bailouts to the politically connected, whose excesses were initially caused and encouraged by Federal government policies, and, when these politically-connected business-and-banking hacks acted imprudently, if not dishonestly, they were bailed out. Instead, some of our people look like their mission in life is to defend multiple, excessive overdraft charges or defend golden parachutes for bumbling CEOs. Republicans should be for Main Street over Wall Street. Wall Street has probably become a symbol for unethical and illegal manipulations, and no longer is seen as fulfilling the desirable, historic role of investment banking and risk allocation. And Obama and his people should be tied to Goldman, Sachs and various firms which were bailed out, with their executives and stockholders not sharing adequately in the pain. I think one reason for the vigorous prosecution of Goldman –which may indeed be guilty – is demagogic distraction from Obama’s policies. Republicans should be arguing that many of the bailed-out firms should have gone bankrupt and restructured, just as, for example, the City of Los Angeles, should go bankrupt and restructure its pensions. Republicans should be out front on all this stuff, and consistent.
JF: Do you still do surveys? Do you still feel that Republican surveys are less accurate than the opposition surveys?
AS: I still do projects, of course, though not as many. But we do see – more on the Republican side – that the person responsible for providing quantitative and qualitative research – -that is, polling and focus groups – does not seem to feel a fiduciary responsibility to provide independent strategic counsel to the candidate. Rather, he or she is beholden to campaign consultants, rather than to the candidate or the ballot measure. And we’re continuing to see too many surveys and focus groups coming to obvious conclusions as they reinvent the wheel. Better to do one survey right for $25,000, than do two inferior surveys for $20,000 each. Get it right the first time. You can’t spend your life testing and using stale themes and verbiage, like attacking “tax-and-spend” Democrats. It’s tired rhetoric.
JF: What’s wrong with opposing high taxes?
AS: Look, I’m a free market guy. I read Milton Friedman in high school. I never dreamed a few years later I’d get to know him. I’m into cutting taxes. But, when you go outside the true believers, cutting taxes is simply not a priority to most of the electorate, including Republicans. They don’t want taxes raised – that’s for sure, and they would be happy if we could prevent more tax hikes. When Steve Poizner campaigns for a 10-percent tax cut, it may not sound plausible to some Republicans. People – especially Republicans – are deeply concerned about massive Federal and state government borrowing, the deficits, the debt. Although I concede that to a segment of conservative Republican voters, the tax cut telegraphs that he probably is okay on other issues.
JF: What do you think about Steve Poizner’s chances to pull off an upset?
AS: It’s easy to criticize someone who has been way down in the polls. His last spot is compelling. I would imagine they are tracking the effects of his ad campaign, so you would infer the spots are working, and really well, otherwise why spend so much to keep them on the air? But if they are working that well, then they should spend more, lots more. Otherwise, I don’t know why he is continuing. There is no middle-ground here. This ad campaign may not win it for him, but if it might, then he should be showing significant movement by now in the polls, or even after his first week on say, the immigration ads he should have moved. If the race has been closing significantly, he’s viable. If it has not, then, I don’t get it. Steve Poizner is an intelligent man. I can’t see him going more than a week with an ad unless polling is showing significant movement. Going back, he basically let Whitman usurp the high-tech mantra early-on. Steve needed to make it fashionable being a nerd. He has quite an impressive story to tell. I think that he and Meg Whitman both are enormously bright and maybe even visionary. She needs to be seen as a creative, high-tech entrepreneur, not a traditional big business Republican. And Steve, who really is technology-oriented, has come across as dull. If it’s just charge-and-countercharge, and Republican voters say “they’re both throwing the mud” and are confused, then Whitman wins. But, in the end, he wins the primary only if Republicans find him more somewhat more believable than Whitman, whose substantial support is, nonetheless, probably soft. One would have expected her to use more third-party credibility from her endorsers, and would have expected him to leverage her voting record.
JF: What do you mean?
AS: It’s sort of like impeaching a witness in a cross-examination in a case. Take your best shot, so that the jury will disbelieve the witness, even when the witness is telling the truth. She had less of a challenge, since she formulated a substantial and growing lead. But she went more into quantity of attacks, rather than believability. So, of voters don’t know who supported Gore or Boxer or who the conservative is, or whatever the charge is, they defer to the high ID candidate.
JF: Are they hurting each other for the general?
AS: Not yet. But if the races closes, the attacks could degenerate, with implications for the general. But, right now, they are just seen as politics-as-usual. Indeed, Poizner’s attacks are moderating Whitman for the general.
JF: And the U.S. Senate race?
AS: I find all three candidates impressive, in different ways. When you look at Chuck DeVore, you see the real thing. Here is an honest, thoughtful, serious guy who knows policy and really knows where his head is at, and it’s in a good place. Fiorina, very capable and articulate, has not really defined herself, and she is indirectly eclipsed by Whitman, even in a different race. But she is a gutsy lady. And Tom Campbell is a brainy guy who has a real handle on economics. I worked with him on what became Proposition 209, and he was very helpful. I don’t know what the polling is showing – it’s a battle more involving name ID and ballot designation, because many voters don’t really know the differences between the candidates, and we have not yet seen much money spent, although I think Campbell is just starting with a small buy.
JF: What do you make of the Tea Party Movement?
AS: While it is primarily conservative Republican, it clearly is populist and it has both very knowledgeable, thoughtful people and others that are merely reactionary. Certainly, you’ll find people more conservative on the social issues, but others all over the map. It reminds me of the Ross Perot movement, where some of his supporters were shocked when he said he would not appoint a homosexual to his cabinet. But he had an office in West Hollywood, where diehard Perot supporters were disbelieving. They just assumed he was in sync with them.
JF: Are you saying that you think the Tea Party movement is a mixed bag?
AS: Well, it wouldn’t be necessary if the Republican party were more independent. What most upsets so many Americans is that the bailout was a code word for helping cronies who had political influence, and plenty of these cronies are Republicans, and Republican donors. That’s what is essential – and it’s not easy to do – to depict Obama as both a radical outside the mainstream and yet someone who pursues politics as usual. This can be done, but it requires the strategy of a trapeze artist, but most so-called Republican strategists are too busy having three-martini lunches in their companion career as lobbyists.
JF: How about the race for Attorney General?
AS: Right now, this is largely about name identification and ballot designation. Slate cards may help a bit. It looks like very little media coverage of the race. A very low turnout could help Eastman.
JF: Are Republicans making any progress among Jewish voters?
AS: Very limited. Republicans do very well among more religious observant Jews, especially Orthodox. But among the far larger number of Jews who are not religious or even secular, they continue to have a tough time, because, for these Jews, if there is a religion, it is, for involved and sometimes complex sociological reasons, as Dennis Prager has said, liberalism. There are many Christian churches where you would find more support for Israel than in a reform Jewish congregation. And that’s why you have so many secular, but born-Jewish. senior advisers who work for Obama who are not that keen on Israel, because why would they look at Israel as an expression of Western values, when these same liberal Jewish advisers don’t really understand or endorse American Exceptionalism?.
JF: What happens in November, here in California?
AS: For Brown to be viable, he has to do a Nixon-goes-to-China with the government unions. That he tells them, we can’t have people retiring at 80 and 90 percent of their last year’s pay, sometimes inflated with overtime, and indexed by inflation, and they live for another 30 or 40 years or, pretty soon, nearly a half century after some in public safety, who retire at age 50. And for the Republican to win for governor, that candidate has to somehow almost pretend Schwarzenegger does not exist. Brown will probably suggest that Schwarzenegger’s inexperience was the problem.
JF: And Senate?
AS: The Republican nominee needs a solid turnout of the base, and to do well among independents. Boxer will probably lose enough Democrats – on the natural – who like her colleague, Dianne Feinstein, but feel Boxer, especially by comparison, is temperamentally off the mark. But, in that race, as in the governor’s race, we’re fighting a well-organized, well-funded registration and turnout machine geared to particular constituencies, such as Latino and African-American. We can only reach so many of those voters. We need to hope turnout scenarios trump the demographic composition of the state. And there’s one other thing…
JF: What’s that?
AS: The collapse of traditional print journalism. For years, what the L.A. Times and other newspaper did, would determine how television and radio covered campaign politics. Now, the papers barely make it to press, don’t have lots of political news, do little in depth, and the stations do less. So, advertising can play a greater role. But, in advertising, like certain kinds of vitamins, more is not always better. The most difficult ads to create in politics are those built almost entirely about the candidate who emotionally connects – on camera — with the viewer, not sophisticated computer graphics. So far this year, we haven’t seen any original writing in the advertising, just clichés.
JF: What do you think about the Democratic convention just held?
AS: Jerry does not have the warmth of his father, and in that sense, he’s vulnerable. But so far, we haven’t seen anything in the Whitman or Poizner campaign to move toward a more personal, emotional connection for either candidate with voters. We need candidates to stay on message, but we cannot have them come across as robotic, especially to draw a contrast with Jerry. Thinking clinically, again, anything that helps Jerry Brown look moderate is good for him. And his debate gambit generated some press, though it points up that free, earned media just isn’t as important, with the decline in political coverage. And, getting back to the Senate race, I’m not sure Obama’s appearance for Boxer today is helpful politically, though it might help her financially.
JF: Thanks for sitting down for this chat. It’s always insightful to hear your perspective!
AS: My pleasure, Jon.
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