ABSTRACT
What would the American people say to one another when a representative sample of them collected in the same living room for a weekend? Stalwart that he is, James Fishkin proposed to find out. He could not afford to bring all of the American people to Austin, Texas, for the weekend of January 18, 1996, but he did coax 466 of them into deliberating about foreign policy, the national economy, and family relations, and then formalizing their opinions via surveys. Ultimately, the American people left Austin (although recent demographic trends suggest the contrary) but they left behind something valuable: a record of what they said during the National Issues Convention (NIC). For the most part during the convention they behaved admirably-inspiringly, even-and their words deserve careful study.
