Politicians Don T Pander Summary

In the excerpt from Politicians Don’t Pander, Lawrence Jacobs and Robert Shapiro argue that politicians do not cater to what the public wants, but rather ignore the preferences of the American people to mold a version of public opinion that is harmonious with the politicians’ own views. The two recognize different patterns in contemporary American politics. First, politicians disregard public opinion in order to avoid compromising their policy goals and use the strategy of crafted talk to change public opinion to avoid facing the consequences of not voters’ preferences. Jacobs and Shapiro continue to argue that politicians respond to public opinion by either assembling information on public opinion to design government policy or by using research

However, I think it is important to acknowledge that there is no such thing as “bad press”. Even after it was revealed that Bill Clinton had an affair with a White House employee half his age, nearly two-thirds of Americans approved of his job performance and opposed his impeachment and removal from office. When a poll is revealed to be in a politician’s favor, he or she will take it and run with it. However, poll numbers are not in a politician’s favor, politicians could twist the results of the poll and use these numbers to their advantage. If poll numbers are not in a politician’s favor, they may either say that the poll numbers are inaccurate and utilize the Media, as Jacobs and Shapiro suggests, to gain more support. Even when the poll numbers are not in a politician’s favor, they can and will still target the politician whose numbers were better and focus the spotlight not on their better numbers, but on why those numbers should change and how “wrong” the politician