Politics Lost: Has the U.S. political system been hijacked by the pros?
While Time Magazine's Joe Klein assured a packed audience that some of his "best friends" are political consultants, he bemoaned a shortage of politicians who have faith in the public - and in themselves - and are willing to buck these advisers. And he denounced opinion polls as the "crack cocaine" of politicians (and of political reporters, his panel-mates offered).

Likewise, US News editor-at-large David Gergen complained that today’s "leadership class is failing us… pushing a lot of problems down the road" - in contrast to the World War II generation of leaders who were willing to cross party lines to solve problems.

That left Bush media guru Mark McKinnon and Clinton pollster Mark Penn to defend themselves - and the impact of their professions on a system that nearly everyone agrees has become polarized and short-sighted.

McKinnon dismissed Klein's thesis, noting examples of leaders who acted on core beliefs rather than polls - like Bush's pursuit of social security reform - and weren't applauded for it.

Penn argued that public opinion polls actually enable political leaders to see beyond the biases of small staffs/advisers, providing a window to the concerns of the broad public. Polls, he said, act as a "public desk" that break through the elitist noise of interest groups and advisers to examine the concerns of real people. Posted by Nina Easton
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Most stock quote data provided by BATS. Market indices are shown in real time, except for the DJIA, which is delayed by two minutes. All times are ET. Disclaimer. Morningstar: © 2018 Morningstar, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Factset: FactSet Research Systems Inc. 2018. All rights reserved. Chicago Mercantile Association: Certain market data is the property of Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. and its licensors. All rights reserved. Dow Jones: The Dow Jones branded indices are proprietary to and are calculated, distributed and marketed by DJI Opco, a subsidiary of S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC and have been licensed for use to S&P Opco, LLC and CNN. Standard & Poor's and S&P are registered trademarks of Standard & Poor's Financial Services LLC and Dow Jones is a registered trademark of Dow Jones Trademark Holdings LLC. All content of the Dow Jones branded indices © S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC 2018 and/or its affiliates.