Consultants and Conflicts

Why is it front page news that two of Al Gore's top consultants aren't talking to each other? The rift between the vice president's media adviser, Bob Squier, and his former protégé Carter Eskew is one of the hottest topics in Washington, right up there with George W. Bush's bank account.

Squier and others are criticizing Mr. Eskew, who was hired to advise the Gore campaign on its "message," for similar work that he did for the tobacco industry. But it was his effort for another great killer that caught my eye last month, when it was reported that Mr. Eskew had been hired by the Pentagon to review the military's recruitment ads.

Undersecretary of Defense Rudy F. deLeon, the article said, had earmarked $500,000 of taxpayers' money for consultants to do focus groups and surveys. "In a nutshell," a Pentagon official was quoted, "they are looking at the effectiveness of the recruiting advertising efforts." Mr. Eskew still has some time left on his contract, but I'll go out on a limb and predict he doesn't report that everything is just fine with all those commercials. Why, he may even recommend that the Pentagon give more work to people like him!

Not to worry, our canny military leaders are, as ever, eternally vigilant. Eskew, the report said, will not be reviewing Air Force ads because they are produced by Foote Cone & Belding, which is controlled by True North Communications, the same company that runs Mr. Eskew's firm, Bozell-Eskew. It would be a conflict, the Pentagon says, for Eskew to critique work done by a corporate sibling, so instead, he'll just criticize the agencies where all his friends work. Another consultant, Republican Mike Murphy, vice president of Murphy Pintak Gautier Hudome, will get the Air Force contract.

Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to launch an IPO. When I was starting out as a consultant, few of us had "firms" or "parent companies." But now there are brand name consultants, and like McDonald's, K-Mart and every other successful brand, their mission is to convince the public that we couldn't live without them. It's working -- just count how many consultants are quoted in this newspaper. Then see how many of the same ones are quoted tomorrow.

When starring roles are awarded not to politicians, but to self-interested profiteers, democracy suffers. Am I being too harsh on my colleagues? I hear them protesting that they're not motivated by profits or visions of country estates, but by devotion to a cause. Fine. They should choose one and stick to it. Let me put forward a modest proposal for political consultants -- work for one client at a time. OK, two or three, tops. Our clients, after all, are working on just one thing -- getting elected -- 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Shouldn't we do the same?

The law of competing agendas often dictates that the most selfish impulse wins. In politics today, this can mean a consultant will tell all her clients the same thing because it's less work for more money. When a consultant is advising would-be Presidents while simultaneously trying to run a growing business, guess what? Business decisions often come first. And so, rather than spend a lot of personal time with those would-be Presidents, the mogul/consultant delegates a lot of important work to 25 year olds. (Actually, that's not true. The Presidential candidates do get a lot of the consultants' time. It's the would-be Senators who get short shrift.)

Call me idealistic, call me unemployed, but I believe we're better off when true believers are calling the shots in politics, not day traders. Too many consultants are finding ways to make democracy more expensive and less representative. It's not the cost of campaigns that's out of control, it's the mark up.