Season of Humility

By Hugh Sidey

What if the CIA or the USIA had issued a forecast about, say, an election in Ecuador that was as badly botched and misleading as the predictions doled out by much of the American political industry before the New Hampshire primary? Surely the congressional Pecksniffs would be braying for an accounting and the editorialists would be near exhaustion from their labors of excoriation.

This is a season of humility for many of us in the business of measuring the progress of the men battling their way toward the White House. Gary Hart was not supposed to win in New Hampshire because the creators of the modern political spectacle-- the consultants, the pollsters and the media -- wrote the script, as signed the parts and hailed the preordained result before the vote. The people were told what was going to happen, but they were never properly consulted.

Technical arguments are now being made that the great rush to Hart occurred in the last hours before the balloting. But somehow those elaborate rationalizations of wholesale hesitation and mind changing never quite seem right. Something was there the voters that was never heard or understood. And not even the possibility of such a dramatic change in preference was given much consideration in the new rites of caravan politics, which answers are flashed on screens and front pages before the questions are posed to the people.

Too many of us have glorified process over purpose, confused assumption with fact, were awed by money and organization instead of meaning. The American presidential political industry is now a thing involving hundreds of millions of dollars, jets, computers, stage sets, packaged ideas, academic theories, bloated egos and brass bands. It forms an immense inverted pyramid whose point comes to bear on the mind of each voter, where the thing often breaks down -- as it did in New Hampshire.

Feelings cannot be captured in a box score, intuition cannot be put in a data bank, whim cannot be predicted. The decision-making process is everyman's secret ritual, forever hidden from cameras, tape recorders and pollsters' printouts. Indeed, it is often obscure even to the decision maker himself.

Richard Scammon, who may have studied more elections than any other political student in Washington, issued one of his warnings about the New Hampshire primary and favored Contender Walter Mondale, who had triumphed so dramatically in Iowa the week before. But most of us did not hear what Scammon said, or did not fully appreciate it. The Iowa system of caucus voting for presidential candidates is radical, explained Scammon. The lowans attending their caucuses gather in groups according to candidate preference. Theirs is an open vote, easy prey for zealous organizers and subject to a wide range of human pressures and enticements right on the spot. The secret ballot, which is the very heart of our democratic procedure, was designed to prevent such distortions. The polling booth is everyman's temple, unassailable by blandishments from the outside world if the person so chooses. In there voters can be giant killers. In New Hampshire they were.

There still is much evidence that Mondale's meticulous preparation for this campaign, his bulging war chest and his preprimary positioning by the political industry may make him the inevitable Democratic choice, but New Hampshire has denied the gaudy certainty of those of us in this year's political cavalcade. We might now begin to listen more to what people are saying rather than being so anxious to tell them what they are expected to do. We might study more closely what has already happened and be more cautious about profiling the future according to our prejudices.