Word: pollster
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...President met with his close friend Paul Laxalt, former Senator from Nevada. Laxalt himself had been considered, but he is still mulling a run for the presidency in 1988, and told Reagan he was not available; instead he recommended Baker. Two other key advisers, Attorney General Edwin Meese and Pollster Richard Wirthlin, agreed with the suggestion. Reagan phoned Baker that afternoon. Less than 24 hours later, Baker arrived at the White House. "We sneaked him in," chortled a presidential aide. "Not a $ soul knew." After conferring with both the President and the First Lady, Baker...
...personal and political heartbeat of the Reagan presidency is now in the hands of five people besides the President himself: his wife Nancy, Chief of Staff Don Regan and his deputy Dennis Thomas, the new press spokesman Marlin Fitzwater and Pollster Richard Wirthlin. They regulate Reagan's energies, shape his moods, provide his information, schedule his forays beyond the comforting tranquillity of the Oval Office. They are not a formal body. Mostly they cluster in twos or threes, but they are always linked minute by minute through the phones. It is a singular power mechanism, twisted by its own internal...
Robert Strauss, once Democratic chairman and now Washington's senior soothsayer, argues, "The confluence of these political circumstances opens the nominating process wide in both parties." Pollster Peter Hart carries that idea further, predicting that those running well behind in today's opinion surveys will have the best chance to win the nomination. "Some of the candidates little known today will fulfill what voters will be looking for," he says. "Voters will prefer a fresh start to continuation of the stable present...
Surveys by Pollster Richard Wirthlin show the President's popularity inching up again, giving Reagan some cause for holiday cheer. The polls seem to have persuaded the President's strategists that the further away their boss is kept from the controversy, the sooner it will die. Perhaps to that end, the President last week appointed David Abshire, U.S. Ambassador to NATO, to a new Cabinet-level post: coordinator of White House responses to the congressional investigations and other probes into the U.S. weapons sales to Iran and the diversion of profits to the Nicaraguan contras...
...experts are pondering this lack of ideological fervor now that the tallies are all in. Pollster Louis Harris is up in Pound Ridge, N.Y., watching the leaves fall and writing a book on the new political climate. What he sees is a transitional time from the shortcomings of Ronald Reagan's crusade. It boils down to a "battle over the center." By definition, that means moderation, caution, reasoned argument about what is on this hand and what is on the other hand...