Banish the pollsters.

The most serious problem in our political life today, in my view, is not the rise of the right or the demonization of the poor, or the squeezing of the middle class, or the growing gap between rich and poor, or the inordinate influence of special interests, but the colonization of the minds of leaders--actual and potential--by opinion research. This is the most serious problem because, without leaders who act out of deep convictions arrived at by independent thinking, none of our problems will be solved. One might say that in democratic politics there is no power without popularity and the ability to compromise, and that the problem of politicians who are enslaved to popular opinion is therefore endemic to democracy. I would say that's true, but that the scientific methodology of contemporary opinion research raises a form of enslavement that is restricting and soul-destroying. to degrees hitherto unknown. Before, politicians had to guess what people wanted: In that process, they may have been as ready to switch horses as any contemporary politician poring over the results of focus groups, but still--they would be guessing. There is a kind of thought in guessing. And there is uncertainty. That uncertainty creates an opening for taking a position closer to one's convictions; after all it might just be the right one politically as well. Under current conditions, however, there is almost no uncertainty. Or so it seems. Take this position and the majority of people will favor you. Take that one, and you will slip. The power of contemporary methodology is such that to resist it is to enter a race of Ferraris with a Model T.

Yet it is surely becoming clear that dependence upon this kind of research does not work in the long run because it erases the personhood of the decision-maker, in the eyes of the electorate. In the long run, the perception becomes that there is nobody home. The point here doesn't have to do with issues in themselves, but with a person projecting the ability to have an independent opinion. Why was Colin Powell, who told us practically nothing of his positions on issues, so popular? Was it much more than that he appeared to have a strong sense of who he was and an ability to think for himself--that he seemed mature, dignified, substantial; that he seemed unintimidated by the opinions of the electorate--though perhaps intimidated by the election process--and undistorted by the prospects of success or failure; that he seemed real? Here's a real person, whose bow does not take its shape from the water, and where you have a real person, there is hope.

Hope is exactly the point. Without thought, courage, and independence of mind in our leaders, there is no hope; indeed, there is no leader. As a campaign issue this is one that, by its very nature, can only be worn lightly. If it were felt with conviction, rather than presented as part of an image, it might actually contribute to a candidate's success. Or it might not. Certainly the predicament presented by opinion research would be a worthwhile and interesting topic to raise in the campaign as an issue of political culture. But the place where it should be raised with real urgency is in a candidate's inner circle. I know that if I were running for president, the dangers of this predicament, in which the iron vice of opinion research squeezes you until you are an ineffective ghost, would be uppermost in my mind. I would want to surround myself with people who viewed research of this kind as a far second to real thought and worked actively to help me keep its imperialistic tendencies at bay. I would want to make sure that I lived in an unprocessed world, so that I would stay real and therefore capable of wielding the power that I sought.

Suzannah Lessard's The Architect of Desire: Beauty and Danger in the Stanford White Family, will be published by Dial Press in September. She is currently working on a book about the conservative movement.