Back when president Bush was still candidate Bush, harping on the needto restore honor and integrity to the Oval Office, one of his most reliableapplause lines was his pledge to govern "not by polls and focus groups, but byprinciple" -- an obvious shot at the poll-driven presidency of Bill Clinton. Duringone stump speech, Bush challenged voters to "ask my Texans whether I stand onprinciple or on polls and focus groups."
So it was no small embarrassment when the April issue of The WashingtonMonthly revealed that, contrary to his public assurances, Bush was spending an awful lot of money on polling. It turned out that the Republican National Committee (RNC), which pays the White House polling bill, had forked over nearly $350,000 to Bush's principal pollsters -- Matthew Dowd, Fred Steeper, and Jan van Lohuizen -- and had spent close to $1 million overall on polls and focus groups in 2001. True to current form, the Bushies couldn't seem to get their message straight, alternately claiming that the actual number spent on polling was $731,000, or $336,000, or even ... nothing. (In an April 18 Roll Call article, then-presidential adviser Karen Hughes suggested that Republican pollsters such as Frank Luntz submitted polling voluntarily. "He's doing it for himself," Hughes said.)
But a recent Washington Post headline ("Bush Turns More Partisan With Coming of Elections") got us thinking: If Bush spent so much money in an off year like 2001, what's his polling bill for a midterm election year? A trip to the Federal Elections Commission to examine RNC disbursement filings confirms that Bush is well ahead of last year's pace. In the first three months of 2002, Bush's three principal pollsters collected more than $236,000. Extrapolate that figure across the rest of the year and they can expect to collect more than $944,000.
And that's not all. As one Republican pollster told us, the Bush White Houseprefers to spread its polling work across multiple firms. So far this year, theRNC has spent $317,100 on polling, which would project to about $1.3 million -- andbecause polling will only intensify as the November elections heat up, the actualnumbers are certain to be much higher.
A couple of years ago, on Meet the Press, Bush confessed to Tim Russert, "I've been, frankly, amazed at the amount of polling that goes on to determine the behavior in the White House." To which we can now reply: So are we.
