June 16, 2004

Teeter saw politics change

Just as those of us in the Republican political community were adjusting to the loss of Ronald Reagan, another tragedy struck Monday with the death of our party’s most experienced pollster and political strategist, Robert Teeter.

During his illustrious career, avid weekend sailor Bob Teeter successfully navigated the turbulent waters of four key transitions in his professional life. First, like many first-generation pollsters, he had to learn the business from scratch. In Teeter’s case, he transitioned to politics from the unlikely position of assistant football coach at his alma mater, Albion College.

His second challenging transition grew out of changes in his Republican Party. Most of his early clients were Midwestern good-government moderates, men like Michigan’s George Romney and Ohio’s James Rhodes. But as the party moved to the right and the Sunbelt, Teeter made the transition, helping Nixon and Reagan while still serving moderates like Gerald Ford and George Bush. (Had the GOP power center not shifted south and west, Teeter might well have exercised even more influence over Republican politics.)

Teeter also made the transition from pollster to campaign manager, something truly unique. On Dec. 5, 1991, the first President Bush announced that Teeter would serve as chairman of his re-election campaign and its chief strategist. No pollster before or since has held such a high position in any presidential campaign.

Perhaps the biggest transition faced by Teeter was in the nature of political consulting itself. What was once a gentlemen’s vocation became a street fighter’s during Teeter’s times. This was obviously on his mind earlier this month on the occasion of his receiving a lifetime achievement award from American University’s Campaign Management Institute. Teeter’s illness prevented him from traveling to Washington to receive the honor, so he had longtime friend and fellow pollster Peter Hart read his prepared remarks. Said Teeter:

“I had the great fortune of starting in the business in the 1960s when the smartest people wanted to be a part of political campaigns and work in government. Our profession was in its infancy. Watergate drove the smart people out and had a lasting negative effect on the system. The press became more cynical, the candidates became more synthetic, and the political consultants became consumed with fame and fortune.”

Teeter became both famous and wealthy, but his success was never cynical or synthetic.

Teeter’s contributions to the profession were innumerable. He was one of the first pollsters to master the focus group, and he pioneered the use of moment-to-moment polling systems to gauge and graph reactions to televised debates. In setting up the polling operation for Nixon’s 1972 re-election effort, Teeter established a model of central control with decentralized field-work, spread over several polling firms, that would survive for decades.

Teeter also excelled at going beyond the traditional cross-tab. Not satisfied to think of voters in simple discrete categories of party or age, he developed analytical categories based on lifestyle. As Jim Pinkerton once said of Teeter, “He’s at his most interesting when he’s sort of verbally riffing on an anecdote about some hypothetical citizen, 48 years old, with three kids, lives in the suburbs, wife works part time, worried about healthcare. He has the visualization capacity for what life is like for the average person.”

Perhaps Teeter’s excellence in visualizing “real life” grew out of the fact that he lived it. Always the outsider, Teeter never formally moved to Washington, even when managing Bush’s 1992 campaign. Helping his wife, Betsy, finish raising their two children in Michigan was more important.

He also nourished his friendships with longtime political associates such as John Deardourff and Doug Bailey and employees such as Mary Lukens. His American University address confessed, “The things that make me the proudest in my career are the people who have ended up my best and oldest friends in the business.” That’s the kind of insight that made Teeter a man whose advice was sought far and wide.

Hill is director of Hill Research Consultants, a Texas-based firm that has polled for Republican candidates and causes since 1988.