John L. Perry
Tuesday, Oct. 26, 2004

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  The validity of probability statistics extends not much further than predicting how many black beans and how many white beans will come out – on average in each cupful – as you scoop out a jar filled with equal numbers of black beans and white beans.

The Long Count

Even then, the 50-50 statistical probability is reliable only if you, theoretically, keep on dipping out cupfuls ad infinitum, which assumes you will live for eternity, scooping beans.

Those social scientists may know their beans, but the statistical probability is they don’t know beans about human beings. They have labored with scant success for decades to get their “soft” sciences accorded the same academic acceptability as quantifiable “hard” sciences such as physics and chemistry.

They would like nothing better than for their academically wobbly opinion polls to be believed with the same credibility as two plus two equals four. The odds of that ever happening are pretty slim.

Mass Befuddlement

Yet, those pseudo-intellectuals have managed to hornswoggle most of the media of mass communication – and hence a large gullible slug of the audience – into believing that opinion polls really do emit revealed truth.

Week by week, and of late day by day, the media have obsessed themselves with how George W. Bush and John Kerry are “doing in the polls.”

And when a poll doesn’t come out close to the results that pollsters have convinced themselves their “scientifically” drawn samples of “likely” voters should (by conventional wisdom) reflect, the “findings” are “adjusted” accordingly. That’s not even two plus two.

Surveys Don’t Elect

The truth is: It matters not one whit whether Bush or Kerry is “ahead” in the opinion polls or by how many percentage points.

Nor does it matter whether opinion polls, regarded individually or on average, are off by a country mile or right on the nose.

What does matter – if the lawyers and the judges will let it matter – is the presidential election on Tuesday, Nov. 2, 2004.

On that day it will not have meant a cotton-picking thing how Bush or Kerry did in the opinion polls.

Those Really Being Tested

On that day all that will matter is how the American people are doing.

No longer will Bush and Kerry be tested. It will be the American people being tested.

This presidential election will not be about either Bush or Kerry. It will be about the American people.

Accountability Time

Will they step up and accept their responsibility under the Constitution for protecting the future of this blessed nation, this last great hope of the world?

So ask not for whom the latest opinion poll tolls.

Instead, ring for yourself the bell of liberty – and make it heard around the world. That is what tolls for America.

John L. Perry, a prize-winning newspaper editor and writer who served on White House staffs of two presidents, is a regular columnist for NewsMax.com.

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