It’s BAD, and That’s Not Good

A memorandum written by a consulting team, parts of which were printed in The Times this week, reeks with contempt for politicians. Imagine how the team, which labors under the acronym BAD, must think of the voters whom it is paid to deliver to the very same politicians.

The snatches of advice from Michael Berman and Carl D’Agostino to Los Angeles Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky about how to get elected mayor don’t break much new ground. They used the same brutal language that all politics speaks when its door is locked; it is the politics of ambush by slate-mailer, of egos the size of a Sumo wrestler’s tummy, and of money--lots and lots of money, without which, the memo implies, politicians can do nothing and with which they can do anything.

The BAD people did not invent the world they work in. It probably is no better or worse than they found it. The consultants say that they have written dozens of such memos over the years, different only in that they are still locked out of sight.

Still, the memo is a useful reminder that consultants habitually instruct politicians not to clutter up issues like slow growth by discussing it, but to keep harping on the virtues of one view.

There may be a lesson here for politicians, too. At one point the memorandum says that some people enjoy voting for Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, a black, because they “feel less guilty about how little they used to pay their household help.” Nothing racist there, say the consultants. But a politician should wonder whether, in the frantic scramble to deliver dumb voters, a consultant can always tell what is racist and what is not.