Politics - or at least professional politics - might be very different now due to Trump's emergence on the scene. You don't seem to need high dollar consultants to win any more. At least you don't if you are Donald Trump.
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Donald J. Trump is a nightmare for the political consulting industry. Not only has he insulted, among many others, Mexicans, Muslims, women, veterans and members of the media — behavior that would make any consultant cringe — but Mr. Trump has succeeded, so far, without much help from the professionals on whom other candidates rely.
Jeb Bush, by contrast, is a political consultant’s dream — mostly because his campaign has deep pockets. To date, for the 2016 election, Bush has paid over $50 million to a handful of political consulting firms, most of it for a media barrage that exceeds the amount spent by all of the other Republican candidates combined.
But for all those millions, Mr. Bush’s spending has not translated into support in the polls — he currently stands at about 5 percent nationally, compared with 38 percent for the front-runner, Mr. Trump.
Mr. Bush’s difficulties show that giving voters a steady diet of television ads is great for the consulting industry, but it offers diminishing returns for the candidate and turns off some voters in the process. Political consultants are not entirely to blame for this state of affairs, but they do benefit from a flawed system that they helped create.
Political consultants earn fees and commissions by turning the billions of dollars given to candidates, political parties and “super PACs” — like Mr. Bush’s Right to Rise — into the products and services of contemporary campaigns, especially TV (and Internet) ads.
More money means more ads, and more ads means more money. However, media saturation makes it more difficult to grab our attention, requiring more ads, and more money and contributions, to reach the electorate.
Consultants want their clients to win, but they also need their businesses to survive. Despite mounting evidence that the effects of TV on the electorate can be uncertain and often short-lived, television remains the single largest expenditure in most campaigns because candidates think they need it to win — and because it is the most reliable source of revenue and the most lucrative part of the consulting business. The economic incentives of the consulting industry are driving up the cost of campaigns.
