How Consultants (like me) Harm Democracy

The New York Times today again tackles one of the great perennial news stories, and one of my personal favorites:  why political consultants cost too much.I've been writing about this since this practically verbatim account of a meeting I held in a Senate candidate's living room.  Then there was the time I proposed an end to the "consultant's protection act," in which consultants made money on the TV buy. The mainstream media picks up on this theme every election cycle, in between the stories about the front runner collapsing and the possibility of an "open" convention.  (Watch for it, it will come)

Now according to the Times, more and more campaigns are limiting these fees and it's no longer routine, as I wrote here, for consultants to take an additional ten or fifteen percent off the top merely for making phone calls, sending copies of commercials to TV stations (in my day, we actually had to rush envelopes of bulky videotapes to airport mail facilities) and having lunch with media reps in fancy restaurants.

But I'd bet on Mike Huckabee's bible that the consultants are finding other ways to profit from the process, from more focus groups, better lunches for the crew and lots of sudden changes in plan that require boatloads of expensive new commercials.  Joe Trippi isn't partners this election cycle in the firm that was handling the media buy for his candidate, but there's plenty of other folks, in the immortal words of Bob Shrum in this article, making " a career out of something I love to do."

I've long advocated a "one consultant, one candidate" policy.  Most politicians only run for one office at a time, and they should expect the same standard from their consultants. I believe Mark Penn is giving good advice to Hillary Clinton but I'd hate to be the Senate candidate who signed up with him thinking he was going to get any of the great man's attention while Hillary's campaign was going on. 

The Times article concluded with a great quote from Tony Coelho, who knows something about raising money. 

Tony Coelho, who managed part of Mr. Gore’s bid, said he had “a huge fight” with Mr. Shrum and Mr. Devine shortly after the Democratic primary season over how to divide the campaign’s tight cash reserve between television ads and field organizing.

Mr. Coelho said he thought the consultants had “a real conflict” in that they were “setting up the media buy, and they were getting a commission on the media buy on top of that.”

“And to a great degree,” he added, “the media consultants won the battle, but we lost the war. If you had put more into the political operations in Ohio or one of two other states, Gore would be president.”

As I've said many times before, it's not the cost of campaigns that's out of control, it's the mark-up.

 

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