By Jonathan Lindberg

Nowadays, a moment can define an election. Take for instance the famous Reagan line during his 1984 Presidential debate, “I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.” Any race that was left to be had was finished from that point on.

Or Michael Dukakis. Remember him riding that tank in Michigan, the words Mike Dukakis taped to his helmet. The image seemed to capture the utter ineptitude of the campaign he was running.

And then in 2004, two moments seemed to define an entire election. There was the Howard Dean scream-fest after his primary loss in Iowa, a verbal declaration of a once-promising campaign falling apart. And then we had John Kerry explaining his utterly perplexing vote to veto eighty-seven billion dollars for our soldiers overseas, “I actually did vote for the 87 billion before I voted against it.” Both moments defined a frustrating year for Democrats at the polls.

Over the past forty-five years, something has happened to American politics. Somewhere between Nixon-Kennedy and Moveon.org, campaigns have become less about what is said and more about how what is said is spun. The candidate has been replaced by the consultant, and the result is anything but positive. “Rather than make the game more interesting, they have drained a good deal from our democracy. They have become specialists in caution, literal reactionaries – they react to the results of their polling and focus groups, they fear anything they haven’t tested.” That, according to Time columnist Joe Klein, who’s new book, Politics Lost: How American Democracy was Trivialized by People Who Think You’re Stupid (Doubleday, 241 pages) documents the conquering American politics by pollsters and consultants.

Beginning with eccentric pollsters like Pat Caddell, who helped define the ways to effectively gauge the voter, thereby helping Jimmy Cater ascend to the White House and along-the-way becoming a political celebrity in his own right, Klein charts the rise of the consultant, from Joe Trippi to Karl Rove, to Bob Shrum. “Some of my best friends are consultants,” Klein begins, and then systematically deconstructs their art, laying the burden of passionless politics at their feet.

But what has really changed over the past fifty years? What has made campaigns like Dwight D. Eisenhower different than those of George W. Bush? One word, television. “Television has ruined every single thing it has touched.” Not the words of Joe Klein, but rather Adam Walinsky, who worked on the ill-fated Presidential campaign of Robert Kennedy. However, the words might as well be Klein’s. Politics Lost offers one reoccurring theme, the always-present political consultant constantly throwing television advertising dollars at sagging polls. Who thinks we’re stupid? According to Klein, the answer is apparent – the political handler equates the thirty-second-spot as the modern day version of political dialogue, the one sure-fire shot-in-the-arm for a voter unsure of a candidate.

Politics Lost is about the consultant; however, it does not ignore the candidate, or rather, the diminishing role of the candidate. From Jimmy Cater to Howard Dean, George H.W. Bush to John Kerry, Klein does what few reporters are experienced enough to do, that is, tell us where we have been and tell us where we are going. Where we are going and where we are now. In two candid chapters, Klein looks inside the Gore and Kerry campaigns respectively, painting a disheartening picture of two candidates completely overrun by political handlers, unable to decide the fate of their own race. “The consultants were insistent on running the campaign they wanted to run. If the candidate disagree with them, or wanted to do something else, they sandbagged it.” This unfortunately, is where are.

Where we are going remains to be seen. The impression one gets from Politics Lost is that politics has been sterilized and there is no turning back. Nowadays, unscripted moments like the Al and Tipper kiss at the 2000 Democratic National Convention have little to do with policy and much more to do with poll numbers. Presidents are entrenched in the permanent-campaign, decisions affecting either their reelection numbers or their legacy.

Still, Klein is hopeful that an alternative will one day emerge. Like Robert Redford in the movie The Candidate, the image might be hard to place. Klein offers some help. “A politician who refuses to be a performer. Who never holds a press conference in front of an aircraft carrier or a flag factory. Who believes in one idea that has less than forty-percent support in the polls. Who can tell a joke – at his or her own expense, if possible. Who abides by the sign that graced Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Oval Office: Let Unconquerable Gladness Dwell.” No matter what your politics may be, that is something to which we can all agree.