STAFFING THE WHITE-HOUSE PUBLIC-OPINION APPARATUS - 1969-1988

A public opinion apparatus is not officially part of the formal White House organizational structure. However, since 1969 public opinion inf ormation has routinely been purchased for use in White House activitie s. This article examines the efforts to incorporate public opinion int o White House decision making by exploring staff communication pattern s. Exploring archival documents from four administrations, I found dif ferent staffing mechanisms developed to coordinate disbursal of public opinion information throughout the Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Reagan Wh ite Houses. Presidents and senior staff members reviewed and utilized public opinion data. Moreover, staffers involved in efforts to court p ublic support and to facilitate the president's agenda relied on poll data more than others. Few things are more important to the modern Whi te House than public opinion. Presidents need public support to create a favorable legislative environment to pass the presidential agenda, to win reelection, and to be judged favorably by history. As a consequ ence, modern presidents spend millions of dollars annually (through th e national party organizations), monitoring the ups and downs of citiz en sentiments. Despite the importance of public opinion, little is und erstood about the presidential polling apparatus. No organizational ch art of any White House highlights formal structures or guidelines that govern the use of public opinion in presidential activities. To date, scholarly accounts have examined the infancy of presidential polling (Eisinger 1994; Geer 1996; Heith 1995; Jacobs and Shapiro 1994, 1995). Most notable, Jacobs and Shapiro illustrated how public opinion polli ng became ''an integral part of the institution of the presidency'' du ring the Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administrations (1995, p. 164). B uilding on these prior efforts, this article examines how the Nixon, F ord, Carter, and Reagan administrations routinized the incorporation o f public opinion data and analysis into the office of the presidency.