Public Opinion: Vaulting over Political Polls

By WALTER SHAPIRO

Since the turmoil of the 1968 Democratic Convention, American democracy has been stymied by what should be a simple question: What is the fairest way to nominate candidates for President?

Nearly a quarter-century of well-intentioned reforms have demonstrated the law of unintended consequences. Until 1968, party leaders controlled the process, spicing up their back-room bargaining with a handful of hotly contested presidential primaries. This elitist tradition has been replaced in both parties by the shallowest form of mass democracy: a gauntlet of party primaries (36 states in 1988) that give an almost unbeatable edge to the candidate who can raise the most money. Rather than bring presidential contenders closer to the voters, the current system virtually walls the candidates off behind a TV barrier of sound bites, slogans and slick 30-second spots.

Presidential politics has grown so dispiriting that most Americans are inured to the impossibility of change. The op-ed pages and opinion magazines have long been littered with high-minded reform proposals, but every four years the system repeats itself, a little more cynically manipulative than the time before.

Enter the man who may have finally invented a better mousetrap: political scientist James Fishkin, chairman of the government department at the University of Texas. He calls his innovative method for bridging the chasm between electors and the elected "a deliberative opinion poll." The voters will get a chance to see how it works on national public television next January.

Fishkin begins with a telling critique of political polling, the main tool that the candidates and their handlers use to divine the will of the voters. As he argues in his forthcoming book, Democracy and Deliberation (Yale University Press; $17.95), "On many issues, about four out of five citizens do not have stable . . . opinions; they have what the political psychologists call 'non-attitudes' or 'pseudo-opinions.' " Fishkin's point is that traditional sampling does not allow those polled to discuss the issues, nor do the polltakers provide more than cursory information. The result, all too often, is a statistically impeccable snapshot of public ignorance and apathy. Presidential candidates then respond to the polls not by striving to present the electorate with worthy policies but by tailoring their appeals to the lowest common denominator of voter sentiment.

Fishkin proposes a bold antidote: flying a random sample of the entire electorate to a single place, where they would meet face-to-face with the presidential candidates and debate the issues. Then, and only then, would the group be polled on its preferences. Such a reform, if effected, would combine the democracy of the modern primary system with the firsthand knowledge of candidates that old-time party leaders brought to the nominating process.

Sound farfetched, the kind of Rube Goldberg scheme an armchair academic would concoct, oblivious to political realities? Not at all. The Public Broadcasting Service has quietly embraced Fishkin's idea and plans to televise six to eight hours of excerpts of the exercise during the weekend of Jan. 17-19, a month before the 1992 campaign formally begins with the Iowa caucuses. Named the National Issues Convention, the three-day, $3.5 million conclave in Austin holds the potential to shape the late-starting, who's-running-anyway Democratic race and provide a forum for the Bush Administration to field-test its campaign themes. As Edward Fouhy, executive producer of the PBS broadcast, puts it, "This is the only thing that holds the hope of breaking out of the mold that we -- both journalists and politicians -- have been caught in."

Many of the details are still hazy, but the broad elements of this unprecedented John and Jane Doe convention are in place. The pivotal moment will come in December, when about 600 randomly selected adult Americans will be told they have won the political lottery and are delegates to the National Issues Convention. Will they agree to put aside their normal lives for a weekend and fly all-expenses-paid to Austin? Fishkin is optimistic. "What you're offering these people is three days on national TV, a chance to meet the candidates, a chance to make history, a sunny climate and a reasonable per diem allowance," he says. "For a lot of these people, this will be the most important thing that has ever happened to them."

For the Democratic contenders, whoever they prove to be, the lure will be free TV time and the possibility of gaining credibility by winning the delegates' endorsement. Although Fishkin and the other convention organizers hope the President will make an appearance, they will be satisfied if several Cabinet members attend as Administration surrogates.

What is so beguiling about the National Issues Convention is that no one -- absolutely no one -- has any idea how it will play out. But whatever happens in Austin, the novel event itself will be an affirmation that grass- roots democracy can still flourish in a television age.