Ah, the Consultants

It sometimes seems like the political consultants who run the Democratic Party are unbelievably stupid. When you bore down into the details, though, it looks less like the problem is that they're too dumb then that they're too smart. As Brad Plumer notes here their contracts are structured in such a way as to create massive inherent conflicts of interest between developing a smart campaign strategy and making money. And, of course, having your candidates do poorly is no obstacle to continuing to be employed since any candidate who declines to hire the same tiny circle of corrupt, ineffective political strategy firms will be locked out of DSCC/DCCC funds which, in turn, sends a negative signal to big money donors, etc.

See this 2005 article from Amy Sullivan for more. In one of its "doesn't actually have anything to do with blogs" moments, Crashing the Gates also has an insightful discussion of this issue. And, yes, the GOP operates differently and, not coincidentally, get better results.

Comments

"In one of its "doesn't actually have anything to do with blogs" moments, Crashing the Gates also has an insightful discussion of this issue."

I'd strongly dispute the "doesn't actually have anything to do with blogs" characterization there.

Markos came to Jesus on this issue because he wanted advertising dollars and saw the current system as preferential to TV.

Posted by Petey | March 27, 2007 11:56 AM

Both with the Democratic consultants and with the big media, beyond describing what's happening and grumbling about each particular episode as it happens, it's worth looking at it institutionally and asking what makes it happen that way.

In the case of the media, I think that the wonership and high management wants what they're getting. Except for Fox, Scaife, and Moon, management doesn't explicitly prescribe political slant, but insiders looking at hiring, firing, and promotions (and nuances of body language, enigmatic little expressions, etc.) can figure out which side their bread is buttered on. So if Katie Couric hammered Elizabeth Edwards, you can conclude that she believed that that was what the boss wanted.

As for the Democrats, there seem to be a lot of people whose agendas (e.g. moving the Democrats to the right) work better if the party is weak. Staving off the populists and the left wing of the party comes first, and winning comes second. They will always say "The Voters Won't Vote for a Dove", but they don't care what the voters want. THEY don't want a "dove".

And beyond that there also seems to be some kind of cartel within the party, with the normal political backscratching, logrolling, and pork barrel.

Sounds like conspiracy theories, right? But management manages.

Posted by John Emerson | March 27, 2007 12:15 PM

This problem has nothing to do with Democrats per se. It has to do with people being able to bill more hours.

Someone's gotta pay for the mortgage; the kid's braces and her college education also aren't free.

Posted by Mrster Monkey | March 27, 2007 12:21 PM

Oh jeebus. Markos wasn't advancing an argument to get campaign dollars for himself. I know that both of us, when asked (usually we're not), suggest that congressional campaigns either don't advertise on blogs or do so by targeting smaller and cheaper blogs.

Posted by Atrios | March 27, 2007 12:39 PM

"Oh jeebus. Markos wasn't advancing an argument to get campaign dollars for himself."

For whatever it's worth, I agree with Markos about the problems of commission-based consultants, even if I think he got to the right answer for the wrong reasons.

But prior to CTG coming out, Markos had a pretty large number of posts saying that campaigns should spend more on blogs and less on TV, usually blaming commission-based consultants as the reason for why they didn't. (I disagree with him about the need for a huge expansion in blog advertising by campaigns, FWIW.)

All I was trying to say is that Matt was incorrect in saying it wasn't a blog issue for Markos.

Posted by Petey | March 27, 2007 12:48 PM

All I was trying to say is that Matt was incorrect in saying it wasn't a blog issue for Markos.

All I was trying to say is that that portion of the book doesn't discuss blogs, or the netroots, or anything else. It's just a discussion of consultant commission structures and the hiring process for consultants.

Posted by Matthew Yglesias | March 27, 2007 12:54 PM

What?? You mean democratic consultants will choose personal income over selflessly focusing on the divine right of Complete Liberal Control of Government? That they have financial goals and needs that transcend the true righteousness of selfless liberalism?

Are you saying that, in the end, systems designed around the belief that people are not motivated by personal gain are demonstrably inferior to systems designed around the belief that people are motivated by personal gain?

What is the world coming to?

In the end, the reality-based community is realistic about every science, except Economics. There, you are just as shamanistic and fact-challenged as the Republican religious zealots you despise.

Posted by jb | March 27, 2007 12:56 PM

I don't despite Republican religious zealots.

I'm also interested what element of my political views you think is contradicted by belief that people are motivated by personal gain?

Posted by Matthew Yglesias | March 27, 2007 12:57 PM

Perhaps the massive patronage shop set up by the Bush Administration will convince these consultants that the real money is in winning and then looting the public coffers.

Posted by Aaron S. Veenstra | March 27, 2007 1:18 PM

This is really, really true. I worked on a campaign in 2006 that suffered from this a great deal. Our media strategy was initially going to focus on cable and radio, since we could reach more voters in our district per dollar spent than network TV (which had a large broadcast area outside our district). We were also going to start early to define our candidate early, and see what our money looked like before buying late October ads.

Then a consultant came in for media advisory. She convinced our candidate that donors and the DCCC would only take them seriously if we aired ads during network news, and we needed that buzz. She also convinced us to spend nearly every dollar we had at reserving spots for the last week of media. And yes she got a 10% cut of the ads (btw it’s much more work-intensive to buy cable ad slots for various cable channels in various zones than to: throw money at network TV). The whole time we knew we weren’t doing this to maximize votes, but to appeal to donors and the national networks that influence them.

I’ve also met some consultants who work very hard and have a lot of rough lessons for a candidate. These sorts of candidates really do help, but are looked down on by the insider crowd in DC.

Lastly, I wouldn’t blame the media ownership for this problem. The political commercial thing is so complex that networks don’t make much money off of them. They can’t raise rates for political commercials because of high-demand in October, and at the same time these commercials only want traditionally low-desirability time slots (network news, and older viewers). Heck, cable has a limit that a particular commercial can only be played twice every 6 hour period. This really isn’t a cash cow for TV.

Posted by Anon | March 27, 2007 1:32 PM

Hi Matt,

Well, in general, every time you advocate centralizing decision making and control in the hands of a few elite, instead of in the hands of the great unwashed. Universal Health Care, for instance. Or your comments on the Tyler Cowen FDA concept and Regulation vs. Litigation. There are others as well, but they are farther back in the past.

Having said that, I was definitely writing this more towards your other commentators than towards you. You are not nearly the reactionary that they are (in general). Mea Culpa for not making that more clear.

Posted by jb | March 27, 2007 1:48 PM

JB is a moron, is that the message here?

Whether or not the networks make a lot of money off politics (I think they do), the Democrats always end up serving as a conduit relaying tens or hundreds of millions of dollars from the big money people to the big media people. Big media is not friendly to Democrats, so we're fattening up an enemy. Not a good situation, and we should be trying to figure out something better to do.

That 10% cut is just criminal. The Democratic leadership are idiots.

Posted by John Emerson | March 27, 2007 3:07 PM

Is jb just stupid, or is he in fact incredibly stupid?

No one in the world things that incentives can or should be eliminated, not even the most wide-eyed utopian anarchist. It's about the (1) goals and (2) realism of the incentives under consideration.

People will do things to benefit themselves. You make a crazy jump, though, and claim that the only incentives worth considering are those associated with an untrammeled free market. Which has a lot more to do with your particular (self-interested) goals and the non-rich getting screwed than it does about any honest discussion of incentives.

Posted by Zephyrus | March 27, 2007 3:29 PM

I know all you HBO-subscribing yuppies watch the Wire as it comes out, but I just watched the third season episode where Theresa D'Agostino and McNulty are watching some politics chat show after having sex. She pooh-poohs whatever analysis the pundits say about the 2004 election and asserts something like: "the economy is what mattered in the red states."

Even our fictitious consultants are bone-headed? I guess she ends up winning a mayoral election for a white guy in Baltimore, so we're supposed to believe she's a genius, but I haven't gotten that far yet.

Posted by Marshall | March 27, 2007 3:30 PM

D'Agostino is the epitome of those consultants, and the 3rd season scenes of her really annoyed me. A real world politician like Carcetti wouldn't value her hotshot advice, they value her as a connection to national networks in DC.

Posted by Tony V | March 27, 2007 3:41 PM

Clinton pays a flat fee for media, so fewer perverse incentives. TV, especially Network TV, will be the primary voter communication channel for the 2008 campaign because it is still the most effective, despite what the Rolling Stone article claims.

Posted by tib | March 27, 2007 3:47 PM

Oh, and I’d like to dispel the constant “if you are a bad consultant nothing happens to you, unlike the regular world.” WHAT regular world? Obviously politicians themselves stay in office even when wrong a lot. And any good liberal knows very well how over-compensated some CEO’s are despite years of falling company stock – or if they do get fired, they get a golden parachute and membership on some other company’s board.

The fact is efficient mechanisms for judging the effectiveness of decision-makers and dealing with them are few and far between. This is especially true in scenarios where the health of your client is dependent on a thousand variables, and you can always blame the failure on something else.

The Democratic consultant world is not particularly democratic or accountable, but I really don’t know better systems to judge it against.

Posted by Tony V | March 27, 2007 4:19 PM

The Republican system? They seem to get better value out of their people.

A lot of the consultants double-dip in other political work, and some of them work for both parties. The 10% cut is a fairly classic bad management practice. In management of big companies, non-profits or government organizations, it's fairly common to find that some branch or category of the company has established itself as an impregnable fiefdom serving its own ends at the company's expense, and the consultants seem to have succeeded in doing that.

Posted by John Emerson | March 27, 2007 6:55 PM

Check out the addresses of leading Washington-based political consultants. Democrats get themselves overpriced DC addresses. Republicans are satisfied to be in expensive Alexandria, just that little bit more businesslike than the Dems. Spread that same relative eye to keeping costs down across all their respective operations, and you can see why Republicans are satisfied to do the right thing and get paid a healthy fee for their services, while Democratic consultants sometimes go all batshit and run up ridiculous bills.

Posted by Anonymous | March 28, 2007 11:07 PM