Reading a book that germinated from conferences is a bit like eating at a recommended restaurant in an unfamiliar city. Tasting untried food [for thought] is heightened by the novelty of the locale. Chapters serve as courses; some are better than others, and in the end, one often is pleased by the experience, even if the parts of the experience were in need of refinement. Polls and Politics emanates from a 2002 Loyola Marymount University conference on the topic. The book unites leading scholars in the field, as they examine questions about the role of polls in American democracy, and it is entertaining, provocative, and at times flawed. The flaws, however, are not in a particular author's argument, but rather in what is omitted in the collected volume. It highlights the dilemmas associated with public opinion polling in the twenty-first century, but does little to aid the authors in seeking ways of measuring or mitigating those flaws.

This book concentrates on presidential and media polls, and arguably justifiably so. Presidential campaigns are America's greatest political theater, and quadrennial election day exit polls are voraciously consumed by experts and laypersons alike. However, because of the omission of analyses of how governors, prime ministers, or even members of Congress employ polls, readers are left with a noticeable theoretical void: Are presidents unique in their gauging of public opinion, or are they the norm? Do other chief executives have the resources and polling apparatuses available to them? How does parliamentary democracy shape leaders' pursuit or abandonment of Burkean democracy? One hopes that future conferences pursue these questions, as their answers will shed light on the role of polls and representative democratic politics.

Arguably the book's strongest chapter, “Presidential Leadership and the Threat to Popular Sovereignty,” is a case study of the Nixon administration's polling operation. Lawrence Jacobs and Melinda Jackson methodically show that Nixon and his advisers were more than casual poll consumers. Rather, the president and multiple key advisers immersed themselves in wording specific poll questions, evaluating academic journals, and wooing or discrediting certain pollsters. This systematic effort at gauging and influencing public opinion provides the groundwork for presidential power to include the “ability to launch laserguided public relations campaigns” (p. 48).

Chapter 5 provides a solid historical foundation that underlies the legitimacy of polls. Michael Traugott notes that the public pays attention to media poll data, even if they are ignorant of polling methods. The concomitant interest in, and rise of, polling may fuel polling of dubious quality. Do polls give the public a voice in democracy? Traugott responds, “The potential for polling to fulfill this role is clearly there…. [P]olls provide the public with an independent voice that can act as an antidote to elites' interests and frames of issues and policy” (p. 91).

Chapter 6, coauthored by Matthew Streb and Susan Pinkus, concerns the “devious, fraudulent and popular” (p. 95) push polls that are proliferating the political landscape. Largely descriptive in nature, this chapter outlines various examples of push polls, names who has promoted them, and concludes that unscientific and unethical gauges of public opinion ultimately “undermine the public's faith in legitimate polling” (p. 112). It is here where one yearns to read the conversation among Traugott, Streb, and Pinkus. How threatened is polling as a legitimate enterprise? Do people not trust polls or pollsters because of the rise of garbage polls? What would these authors have thought of the 2004 election polls? Might the September and October discrepancies, albeit small, among media poll answers about presidential preference suggest that citizens perceive polls as legitimate gauges of the public's mood, or do people discard polls as illegitimate because different polls yield mildly different answers?

James Fishkin makes a compelling case for deliberative polls in Chapter 8. Citing Madison among others, Fishkin argues that genuine deliberation enervates the tyranny of the majority, and that citizens who participate in deliberative polling show “a willingness to make at least modest sacrifices of self-interest for the public good” (p. 154).

One small disappointment in the book is the citation format. It is regrettable to read any text ideally suited for undergraduates that contains such sentences as “Critics assert …” and “Others claim …” (e.g., pp. 2–3) without appropriate footnotes to let the readers know precisely who is claiming and asserting. Similarly, sometimes the casual nature of a conference boosts the desire to choose sexy examples over scholarly ones. While Clinton adviser Dick Morris is surely a person who can articulate why leaders should poll, his arguments cited in this book were made earlier and with greater precision by Archibald Crossley, George Gallup, and Elmer Cornwell. Christopher Hitchens and Benjamin Ginsberg are not given enough space, nor is Herbert Blumer; their cogent arguments deserve development if only to expose students to the history that underlies and surrounds the debate about how politicians assess, and should assess, the public's mood.

Why did not the authors include others' ruminations on the topic? Only so much can be included in a compendium, and this book is no exception. That written, scholars of the presidency and public opinion are still searching for theories to guide us. Samuel Kernell's “going public” argument notwithstanding, we need to question our methods and models if we are to explain how polls are used and what implications they have for democratic governance. While it is easy to criticize a volume of collected essays for what it excludes, this book is a fine complement to an undergraduate course in American politics. Individual chapters make for excellent homework assignments and are grist for the essay mill. The students will find readable, provocative questions. Polls and Politics will guide interested students in locating many of the major questions surrounding polls and democracy, and it may assist those same students in locating parsimonious answers for future scholars to debate and ponder.