Mob Rule?

__"The Rising Hegemony of Mass Opinion" by Paul J. Quirk and Joseph Hinchliffe, in Journal of Policy History (1998, No. 1), 221 N. Grand Blvd., Saint Louis University, St. Louis, Mo. 63103.__

The Founding Fathers were given to dark worries about an "excess of democracy"— and now their worst fear has been realized. Mass public opinion has become "the dominant force in American politics," claim Quirk and Hinchliffe, a political scientist and a graduate student, respectively, at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Only occasionally in American history did the mass public influence the making of national policy to the extent it does today, Quirk and Hinchliffe assert. Usually, "elites" of one sort or another were in charge, even if responding at times to popular opinion. The big problem was seen as the undue influence of organized interest groups, business, and the wealthy.

Now, however, political scientists fret about the recent rise of a "plebiscitary presidency," in which the chief executive leads largely by making direct appeals to the public and needs immediate public approval to sustain his influence. Other political scientists worry that Congress, now more open and responsive than ever, can no longer legislate effectively.

Since the 1960s, Quirk and Hinchliffe argue, American political leaders have increasingly pandered to the "uninformed prejudices of the mass public" and slighted the counsel of "disinterested" policy experts. The authors’ long list of examples includes the failure to increase taxes or cut middleclass entitlement programs in order to reduce the large budget deficits of the 1980s and ’90s, and Washington’s high-profile but futile "war" against illegal drug traffic, waged despite evidence that efforts to prevent and treat drug abuse would be more effective.

In the 1950s, the authors explain, most citizens had little awareness of issues or ideologies, and voted largely on the basis of candidates’ personal qualities or party labels. By the late 1960s and early ’70s, however, voters had become more educated, more ideological, and more issue oriented. Citizens with well-defined liberal or conservative views in 1973 made up 44 percent of the populace, compared with only 25 percent in 1956. But the new voters were not necessarily better informed, the authors observe. "The proportion of people who can, for example, give the name of the vice president or identify the purpose of a major domestic program has hardly changed" from what it was 50 years ago. Today’s voters may know where candidates stand on a particular issue, but they still often don’t understand the issue itself.

Politicians have become more solicitous of voters’ policy prejudices than ever, using polls to determine what those views are, the authors say. "Issue-oriented appeals, although often negative and almost always highly superficial, have become the principal currency of campaign politics."

One plus to public opinion’s rising importance, the authors note, is that narrow special interests have lost clout. But the "downside," they warn, is that policymaking is now "more vulnerable to popular leaders advancing dubious claims of entitlement, offering emotional release, or promoting fantasy."