Television and civil service reform brought an end to political machines and bosses but political professionals themselves never went away. Starting in 1960s a new group of professionals called campaign consultants rose to replace the bosses who died off or went to jail.  In place of the machine came whole companies involved in either public relations work, legal work, consulting or polling and either worked on political campaigns or for corporate clients or did lobbying work as well. They are the building blocks of major campaigns these days and those candidates who can sign up the best firms are usually the ones taken most seriously by the media and the ones most seen as electable by well-heeled donors. 

The animosity between the professionals and amateurs has existed as long as the categories have existed. Former New York City Congressman and Mayor Ed Koch, who began his political career as amateur Democrat inspired by Stevenson and was a member of a Greenwich Village reform club, recalls the reaction he got when he tried to work in one of Tammany Hall’s old neighborhood sachems back in 1957 in his biography Mayor. 

“ ….The problem was I was the only person in the club wearing a three-button Brooks Brothers suit. The club officers wouldn’t talk to me and they wouldn’t let me do anything. They thought I was a spy. Most of the others were old-line politicians. They didn’t trust me. It was a simple as that. So I left.”  

Today, it’s no different. Watch a You Tube video of Ron Paul supporters confronting professional pollster Frank Luntz in New Hampshire of 2008 and you’ll see the same thing, contention between passionate civic involvement and the cool detachment of the permanent campaign. Indeed it was this animosity did much top fuel the campaigns of Ross Perot, Howard Dean, and Ron Paul and to a lesser extent the 2008 campaign of Barak Obama. 

The amateurs thought they had gotten the upper hand on the professionals over the last decade. Grassroots campaigns have used the internet and its entire social media potential to organize campaigns literally from scratch. From Meetup to Facebook to You Tube to Pay Pal to Twitter, everything one person or a group of people needs to organize meetings, produce media, keep followers informed and interactive with the campaign and pay for it as well is there at the click of a mouse. Who needs to pay the Luntzs of the world millions when a politically savvy housewife could theoretically do the same thing from her kitchen table? 

But as with all new technology, eventually everyone learns (or almost everyone as VCR clocks in basements or landfills remain unprogrammed). Thus, every campaign now has its own internet site, its own You Tube channel, its own Facebook page and Twitter followers (which campaigns can actually buy by the bulkload). The campaigns pay the tech. geeks to handle these sorts of things and can pay handsomely because their TV ad budgets can now be subsidized by either one man or several different groups thanks to the Supreme Court’s Citizen’s United decision. And that same court decision means that in the future political campaigns taking on either incumbents or front runners  or the establishment’s designated choice will have to be bankrolled by single individuals like a Sheldon Adelson or Foster Freiss, or they’ll be have to be supported by political groups funded by billionaires or corporations, hardly campaigns one would call “grassroots”. 

Plus, one can wonder whether such support is really all it’s cracked up to be. Rick Santorum’s campaign in Iowa this past election cycle consisted largely of his family members traveling from one small town to the next. But when Santorum was endorsed by an influential religious Right figure in that state, overnight his poll ratings shot up and soon after his campaign was being aided by Religious Right voters who helped him eke out and upset victory. It didn’t matter that Santorum had very little grassroots support or campaign infrastructure in the state, all that mattered is that he got the right support from the right people at the right time. No doubt Ron Paul had far more intense grassroots support than Mitt Romney ever did in the primaries (Outside New Hampshire, ever see a lot of Romney signs around until this past fall?) but all it got Paul was some convention delegates and 10 percent of the GOP primary vote while Romney got the nomination. Newt Gingrich didn’t have much of a campaign in South Carolina but he didn’t need one after one great debate performance threw the state’s Republican activists in his corner. And it isn’t long before said grassroots groups are usually absorbed into the party structure itself. Obama’s grassroots groups from 2008 played no real independent role in 2012 while the Tea Partiers of 2010 are pretty much did the Romney campaign’s bidding.  

Not to mention the fact some volunteers can cause campaigns headaches. Rand Paul had to disavow a supporter who reportedly stomped on the head of protester outside of debate during his Senate campaign of 2010. The Ron Paul presidential campaign had to do the same to supporters who chased and threw snowballs at Sean Hannity in New Hampshire back in 2008.  Indeed, infighting between Ron Paul’s grassroots supporters and those working for the official campaign has occurred since 2008. By 2012 it had reached a point of bitter acrimony as grassroots supporters attacked Rand for his endorsement of Mitt Romney along with campaign manager and Paul son-in-law Jesse Benton, fellow campaign manager John Tate and the campaign’s official blogger (and TAC contributor) Jack Hunter for various reasons. It also produced an open split during the Republican National Convention where the official campaign held its own rally in the Sun Coast Dome in Tampa while grassroots supporters held their own at the Florida State Fairgrounds (in 2008 there was just one end-of-the-campaign rally). It’s doubtful either Rand or Benton or Tate or Hunter enjoy reading the names they’re being called on various Paul grassroots websites (Daily Paul or Ron Paul Forums) and one wonders if any potential Rand for President campaign will have much of a grassroots component at all or be top-down structure with coal company money replacing chip-ins, automated robo-calls replacing sign wavers and plenty of slick TV ads replacing blimps. 

And the burdens for campaign volunteers, never easy ones, have only gotten harder as the years have gone by. It’s more expensive to feed, house and clothe said volunteers. It’s more expensive to drive to Congressional District or state conventions or find lodging for an overnight stay. It’s certainly harder if said volunteers who have young children and need to leave said kids with a baby-sitter or relatives to attend meetings (Paul grassroots supporters had to organize Chip-In or Pay-Pal accounts to help delegates defray the costs of attending conventions.) It’s harder now after Citizens United to help keep such campaigns competitive with just “moneybombs” when the Great Recession has robbed volunteers of even the pocket change or beer money they once sent in.  

This is not to say there won’t citizens actively engaged in politics anymore but if so, it may well be as a part independent groups or other for causes than campaigns that are less expensive and perhaps would make them feel more wanted.

"Published originally at EtherZone.com : republication allowed with this notice and hyperlink intact."