Essay about Behind the Scenes of Politics

The very first thing Matthews wants us to know is how important personal relationships are in Washington. “Retail politics,” a method by which a politician wins people over one at a time, plays a huge role in this chapter. According to Matthews, retail politics is a very important and useful strategy in Washington politics. Lyndon Baines Johnson was a master of retail politics. Matthews describes in

Best starts out the chapter explaining how public opinion is measured, Best specifically uses public polling as a means to measure public opinion (166-167). Best mentions that a small amount of people in a specific population, known as a sample, have their opinions taken in a poll format. Those polls’ results are then used to generalize the whole population (167).

Mayhew examines the congressmen activity in Washington that is useful to engage in for the purpose of reelection. The first activity is advertising, defined by making a conscious effort to disseminate one’s name in a positive light among constituents to gain a favorable view. They emphasize personal qualities such as:

Abramowitz’s argument that the American electorate have become more polarized and that the moderate center is disappearing is more of a quantitative argument than a qualitative one. Based on election studies and exit polls, Abramowitz’ observations include the correlation between engagement, party identification, religious and social groups, ideological realignment, and education on the idealization and polarization of the public. Contrary to Fiorina, “there is no disconnect between the political elite and the American people. Polarization in Washington reflects polarization within the public, especially within the politically engaged segment of the public” (Abramowitz 2010, x). According to the ANES (American National Election Studies), the

Although campaigns have always had the intention of helping democratic governance, it intention is not always followed through. A deeper study is needed in order to fully understand the pros and cons of campaigns and if they truly help or hurt democratic governance. Upon closer look, one would find that campaigns, in fact, typically lean in the direction of negative influence. This is because of the lack of information found within the campaigns, the influence of campaign donations, and the media’s insufficient coverage of campaigns.

Hired guns are consultants that devise strategies and tactics for political campaigns. Brabender Cox is an example of a hired gun is committed to a 360 degree strategy, and offers what they deem as a “broad variety” of voter contact services to its clients. They offer assistance regarding advertising and marketing strategy, message development, account planning/consumer insights, media relations/crisis communications, comprehensive graphic design, new media/online, broadcast production and post-production, and media planning and placement. To show that they know how to get someone elected, they have a section on their website titled “Our Work”, where clients can view a slide show of pictures and videos of examples of television/radio and print/media

Campaign assistance is the form of group members are able to work for the political campaigns, including precinct workers to get out the vote. volunteers to put up posters, and pass out literature. staff the phone banks at the campaign headquarters (Schmidt, S., et al., 2011, p.152).

Benjamin Katz came up 5 steps on “How to Run a Political Campaign” which could be very useful for those who aren’t sure where to start. Step 1: Get the Right Tools for your Political Campaign: it’s pretty straight forward, you look at today’s society and see what people are looking at and using the most. So with the technology we have today is what everyone uses so it is a great way to put yourself out there to be heard, whether it is through social media, the internet news websites or the television it is what our society looks at the most. Step 2: Hiring Your Campaign Staff: any successful business associate they have a great team standing behind them helping them every step of the way from budgeting what needs to be done to promoting what that individual is running for. The campaign staff also doubles as their mobilizer, again, getting them heard. Going door to door, putting up election signs. Step 3: The Campaign Budget: The first part of this is having to sit down and set a budget for yourself to make sure everything goes smoothly. Katz includes that they should have three different budgets built: “Must have, Like to have and Luxury.” I agree with how important these truly are because in life in general you should break things down into these three very important categories so you don’t have an excessive amount of things or things you simply don’t need. Step 4: Determining

The implications of these impacts are likely to be widespread and influence many areas related to the American political system. At this point I will turn to examining research strategies to examine the potential implications of each of these three shifts in four areas, public participation at local levels, interest group control over information, media frames regarding polarization, and policy feedback in the absence of policy actions.

1. Explain the role of polls in understanding public opinion. Do you think polls are helpful for explaining public opinion? Why or why not?

Dulio and Garrett wrote about the connections between campaign consultants and party organizational strength at state level. They found that these campaign consultants do not weaken a political party. However, they provide help of where parties are not very effective. Consultants are used for polling, fundraising, direct mailing or press relations. The authors explain that some scholars believe that consultants are viewed in a negative way to a party organization. This is called the adversarial view. Some believe the opposite and see consultants having a relationship with a party, which is called a allied view. The authors wrote about two data sets. The first data set was in 1999 and it was a mail survey. It received sixty-five

Campaign advisor’s have excellent structural skills, good interpersonal skills, and aren’t afraid of raising money. They supervise all the positions of the campaign on a day-to-day basis. They are the people who hire

By discussing some of the advantages and disadvantages of administration and politics dichotomy, an opinion of whether it is useful or impossible will be made. Wilson’s politics administration dichotomy refers to the idea that administrative decisions need to be made without political influence. One argument to this is that politics has transformed, let’s say, the role of a city manager from a neutral expert to a problem solver and dichotomy should be replaced with an expanded base of professional values for them.

Politics. It is possibly the most hated word in the English language. Most people hate politics and government without really knowing what they are. Many different definitions of politics exist. One definition defines politics as the conflict between groups over something they both want. Another similar definition calls politics the "who gets what, when, and how." Government is defined as the institution that has the enforceable right to control people’s behavior. But why do people hate politics and politicians? Is it because politicians cannot be trusted, or maybe because they spend too much money? Whatever the reasons are for hating politics and government, both are needed as a mechanism for people to protect themselves. Possibly, if

Political corruption has existed throughout the ages. It believed to be most prominent in positions of power, because of the role money plays in getting people power. However, over the centuries, corruption has changed so much so as to not match a particular definition of corruption, perpetually growing deceptively harder to find (Ebbe).