PHILADELPHIA -- What happens when you take a random sample of 343 Americans -- with the same basic socioeconomic and geographical distribution as the country as a whole -- fly them to Philadelphia and have them hash out, in small group discussions over the course of three days, whether we should invade Iraq?
Two weeks ago, we found out. A decade ago, University of Texas political scientist James Fishkin invented a technique called "deliberative polling" in which researchers bring together a random sample of Americans to debate the political issues of the day. The most famous of these polls took place in 1996, when the Public Broadcasting System's MacNeil-Lehrer Productions brought together a sample of Americans to quiz presidential candidates. Other polls have focused on everything from what type of energy Texas electric utilities should buy to crime-fighting strategies in Bulgaria. The idea is to find out what the public would think about political issues if it had a chance to learn about them fully and to talk about them with others -- in other words, what democracy would look like in a perfect world.
The results are measured by posing a set of questions to participants prior to their arrival, then asking the same set of questions at the end of the event. For this poll, because the initial questions had been asked months ago and the public mood on Iraq seems to shift continually, a recent random telephone survey of non-participants in the conference provided an additional control.
The overwhelming outcome of the Philadelphia conference? Most Americans -- given the chance to hear from experts, reflect on the topic and argue with one another -- would choose a nuanced, moderate position on Iraq. And the answers they would come up with, while perhaps offending the rigid ideologies of both Bush administration hawks and anti-war zealots, actually make a lot of sense.
Eighty-seven percent of delegates called Iraq a threat, compared with 74 percent of the non-participant control group. Only 46 percent wanted the administration to shift its focus from Iraq to terrorism, compared with 57 percent of the control group. And only 14 percent of delegates agreed with the statement, "This country would be better off if we just stayed home and did not concern ourselves with problems in other areas of the world" -- compared with 37 percent of the delegates before the conference.
Those are numbers that might hearten the Bush administration -- but they are only half the story. Support for unilateral U.S. action to stop the spread of weapons of mass destruction dropped from 58 percent before the conference to 44 percent after. Before the event, only 44 percent said that the United Nations should play the lead role in resolving conflicts; after the poll, 60 percent supported that organization taking the lead role.
"There was a general shift toward the middle from both sides," Bob McInnis, an Air Force employee from the Florida panhandle, said of his experience as a poll participant. Indeed, a dominant culture of the middle was in the air throughout the weekend. On the panels of experts, extremists on both sides came off as conspiracy theorists and nuts. Peace Action's Kevin Martin accused the government of not believing in basic American values, while Peter Brookes of The Heritage Foundation constructed a new theory of diplomacy that, it just so happened, would perfectly justify all the contradictory actions and positions the administration has taken on Iraq and North Korea.
Is the moderate view of Iraq as a threat -- but one that should only be addressed multilaterally -- nuanced or merely muddled? Is it a viable strategy or just fence-sitting for a group of people who, previously secure in their pro-war or anti-war positions, had to really consider opposite views for the first time?
American leaders too rarely understand that while some moderates are wafflers, many offer a genuinely different view of how the country can move forward. In the changing numbers of the poll, one finds such an alternate vision -- as opposed to mere mushy centrism. Among other things, one finds: a vision of a forceful and strong America -- fewer poll participants than control-group members were opposed to an invasion of Iraq under any circumstances -- but one in which that strength is only used in concert with other nations; a vision of an active foreign policy, but one that embraces interventions not only in cases of military necessity but also to deal with AIDS and global warming -- both of which the participants ranked as higher priorities after the poll than before; a decidedly pro-business spin -- 58 percent of participants called aiding the interests of U.S. business abroad "highly important," compared with 41 percent before the poll -- but with limits, as support for higher fuel-economy standards also increased during the conference.
Only a decade after a presidential campaign in which Ross Perot, a dubious candidate whose most memorable quote was about the "giant sucking sound" of jobs moving out of the country, got one-fifth of the popular vote, the moderate vision of a deliberative poll is actually quite radical. It's a vision of an America much more open -- perhaps even committed -- to a society that makes its military, social and economic decisions in a global context. In fact, the poll results may point the way toward a new American populism that -- quite unlike traditional American populism -- calls for less isolationism and recognizes the basic importance of economic growth. This new vision is the same moderate populism that the Democratic Leadership Council could have embodied before becoming a Bill Clinton promotion machine driven by large corporate donations. It's also the spark that many see in Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).
Bizarrely but not unsurprisingly, given the administration's record of cunning and dishonest political moves, George W. Bush's representative at the poll, the Department of State's Richard Haass, went all out to tap into this populist vein. In the final expert session, participants quizzed Haass and Zbigniew Brzezinski, the Carter administration national security adviser. First, Haass told a questioner that there was not really a proven direct link between Iraq and al-Qaeda. Then, a few questions later, he brought up the 1980s movement to pressure companies to divest from South Africa as a positive example of how citizens could correct global injustices, conveniently glossing over the fact that Bush's father lifted government sanctions on South Africa in 1991, a full two years before the final abolition of apartheid. In fact, far from being in lockstep with administration hawks, Haass sounded moderate themes of levelheaded international intervention for reasons related to pragmatic security concerns and human rights. In sending Haass to the conference, Bush strategists seem to have guessed that once Americans had a chance to reflect on what was going on in the Middle East, the same old fist-shaking "axis of evil" rhetoric would not fit the bill. And the strategists were right.
On the flip side, this spirit of broad acceptance of America's role in the world caught Brzezinski by surprise. In response to a question from an audience member about whether the body populace could be entrusted to make foreign-policy decisions, Brzezinski said that before observing the poll, he thought not. But, sounding quite genuine, he said he had learned that "in terms of making basic sound judgements that provide a point of departure for rational conduct . . . I think they can do it."
Perhaps they can, and perhaps they can force this administration to actually follow the views that Haass espoused. But a poll itself cannot overcome the voices of large corporations -- the "legal persons" that Fishkin's polls do not sample -- that stand to benefit from war, or the screams of hawks in the White House. One of Fishkin's hopes is that poll participants will go back to their hometowns and inspire others to get involved in the democratic process. With a divided nation on the brink of war, that hope has never been more important.
Adam Gordon is editor-in-chief of The Next American City, a new magazine covering the future of America's cities and suburbs.
