Politics & Power Quote by Donna Shalala

Shalala is doing something subtle here: she’s conceding the cynic’s premise while refusing the cynic’s conclusion. Yes, presidents watch polls. Everyone knows it, and pretending otherwise sounds naive. But she pivots from the reactive image of leadership-as-focus-group to a more muscular idea: leadership as an engine that can move public opinion, not just mirror it.

The phrase “stepping up” matters. It’s plainspoken, almost managerial, but it signals risk and escalation. You don’t “step up” when the numbers are safe; you step up when the fight is costly. In the late 1990s, tobacco wasn’t a sanitized public-health villain yet. It was a politically wired industry with lobbying muscle, state economies tied to it, and a cultural aura of personal choice. By pointing to Clinton “stepp[ing] up on tobacco,” Shalala is defending an administration often caricatured as poll-driven triangulators. The subtext: don’t confuse strategy with cowardice.

Her sharpest move is the claim that Clinton “shaped the polls.” That reverses the usual cause-and-effect of modern politics. Polls become not an external constraint but a terrain presidents can work on through agenda-setting, framing, and sustained pressure. It’s also a defense of institutional power: the presidency isn’t just a weather vane; it can be a loudspeaker.

There’s an implicit message to critics and successors alike: if you’re always “following the numbers,” you’re abdicating the job. The numbers can be led. The public can be persuaded. That’s the bet.