The Birth of the Political Consultant: Some Historical Insights into a Professional Culture

La naissance du consultant politique : un clairage historique sur une culture professionnelleMathilde Vdrines IntroductionThe aim of this research paper is to study political consultants' history in the United States to understand the process through which they became full-fledged professionals.This will be a first stage towards examining political consulting as a specialized milieu and as the source of a specialized discourse.The approach adopted in this research note lies at the crossroads between American civilization-more precisely political science-and English for Specific Purposes (ESP).The discourses specific to political science remain little explored, to date, in ESP, which leaves room for scientific discovery.Among several definitions of a political consultant, we may rely on Dulio's description.A consultant is an individual who provides campaign services on a fee-for-service basis (i.e., they are not permanent employees) during an election cycle for more than one candidate, political party, organized interest group, or initiative and referendum campaign for more than one election cycle (Dulio 2004, 44).Political consultants can perform a variety of tasks, such as writing speeches, conducting polls, preparing candidates for debates, conceiving digital strategies or designing advertisements, to name but a few.There were 250 political consulting companies in the 1990s.That number soared to over 3,000 firms in the 2000s.Political consultants' services represented more than $4 billion during the 2008 presidential elections (Lee Kaid and Holtz-Bacha 2008).Dulio explains that "modern campaign organizations at the federal and state-wide level are not unlike small business