Statistical Sense

Whoever runs the Commerce Department, the U.S. needs a census people will believe in.

PRESIDENT OBAMA'S nomination of Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) as commerce secretary was intended as a noble gesture of bipartisanship. But apparently neither the White House nor Mr. Gregg thought enough about the fact that one of the consequential functions of the Commerce Department -- not all of whose functions we would deem essential -- is the once-a-decade census. For both parties, this is critical. The population count determines not only the distribution of congressional seats among the states but also the distribution of legislative seats within them and the allocation of billions of federal dollars. And, for most of the past two decades, Republicans and Democrats have been accusing each other of trying to cheat on it.

The nub of the matter is the Democrats' belief that the "actual enumeration" called for in the Constitution inevitably undercounts minorities and the poor, who tend to be harder to find and count -- and who also tend to vote Democratic. Republicans, charging chicanery, reject Democratic calls for the use of modern statistical estimation methods to correct for the undercount. Over the years, one of the Republican skeptics has been none other than Judd Gregg, who formerly chaired a Senate subcommittee in charge of census funding.

When black and Latino officeholders caught wind of his appointment, they complained bitterly to the White House, which attempted to finesse the problem by suggesting that Mr. Obama's staff would help Mr. Gregg keep an eye on the Census Bureau. That triggered an uproar among Republicans that the White House planned to politicize the count -- followed by Mr. Gregg's withdrawal.

The argument over census methodology is both arcane and, on the merits, a closer question than the zero-sum protestations of either party. For what it's worth, the Supreme Court ruled in 1999 that federal law bars statistical sampling for apportioning congressional seats but not for setting legislative districts or allocating federal money.

The important thing now is to prevent the Gregg flap from growing into a wider partisan dispute that could undermine the credibility of the census when the survey should be gathering momentum for 2010. The fact is that the Census Bureau is staffed by experts with a well-earned reputation for integrity and political independence. Mr. Obama has reportedly been considering former Census Bureau director Kenneth Prewitt, who has enjoyed the respect of both parties, for a return to that job. In considering a replacement for Mr. Gregg, the president would do well to seek a similar figure. It doesn't matter that much whether the next commerce secretary is a Republican or a Democrat. But after the events of the past few days, it matters more than ever that he can command the confidence of both.