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Take This Poll and ... John L. Perry It's a good time to lay a heavy wager that Americas will elect a Republican president in 2008 and retain control of Congress in 2006. Here's the secret to winning at the grand, old game of national politics: Bet on the country, not on the party or its candidates. But before you reach for your wallet, you'd better know your country inside and out, backward and forward. The late Curtis D. MacDougall, who was the greatest journalism instructor this land ever produced, told his students at Northwestern University that if they failed to gain an outstanding education in economics, geography, history, government, law, philosophy, literature, science, logic and just plain common sense they were going to flop as reporters and might as well take a job jerking sodas. He was absolutely right, and most of those who pass today as "journalists" belong behind the ice-cream counter at the drug store that rarely exists anymore. Story Continues Below
Polling Isn't Reporting The very last thing any genuine journalist needs is the crutch of a public-opinion poll, which Dr. Mac reviled with utter and appropriate professional disdain. Yet, it is the public-opinion poll that most masscomm purveyors of wisdom rely upon not unlike jihadists misquoting the Qur'an when they deign to instruct the voters on what the voters think and will do. If poll-peddlers, in this age of presumed enlightenment, seriously think it's worth knowing what a relatively few hundred assorted voters are prompted to say what's on their minds, they are only kidding themselves as well as those who bother to listen to them anymore. Take the latest hoot of a poll from the renowned reliable and unbiased CBS. You know, the poll that "shows" that "Americans" hold President Bush in all-time low esteem. Get Your Palm Read Instead Would you pay attention or a plugged nickel to a passel of "respondents" hand-picked by CBS to tell your fortune for you at a county fair sideshow? Would you take a second look if you knew CBS painstakingly "weights" its polls, as it does, with more Democrats than Republicans? Forget how badly the poll is stacked or how cunningly its questions are phrased. Assume for a moment it might actually be bang on the money? Broken clocks are accurate twice every 24 hours, a better record than CBS has. The point is: So what? Who cares? Creating Their Own Opinion-Environment Pollsters like CBS are in the business of working both sides of the street. They walk down one sidewalk with their clipboard, jotting down "random" responses to hokey questions. Down the other, they fill the air with the most vilely slanted "news" the American populace has had to wade its way through since Civil War days when slander sheets were depicting Abe Lincoln as an ape. The remarkable thing the wonderful thing is that now, as then, the American people have the good sense to recognize, and step around, horse hockey when they smell it. This is where knowing one's own countrymen and countrywomen comes in. What God gave everyone was not an iPod but a living, functioning brain. That, not the latest digital gadget or the probability-statistical analysis of owl entrails, is what's required to understand a nation. Ignore Those Windsock Politicians What's important is not which way this or that candidate is listing, not who's to the left or right of whom, not who's catering to a distinguishable, constant political base (incidentally, no such thing exists outside of theory). What's important is where the entire country is. Politically, this one is moving, and has been moving, for the past 40-50 years from center-left to center-right. It helps to know why, which is the reason Curtis MacDougall was so adamant that his journalism students obtained an honest-to-God liberal education. Myth of Public Opinion' It helps to know also that there is no such animal as "public opinion," for there is no single American public with a universally shared opinion. There are almost as many American publics and at times related, at other times unrelated opinions as there are Americans, and each is unique as are all Americans. Nor do Americans stay put in just one public. They move fluidly through any number of publics every day of their lives, sharing a common interest here, another there, with folks they may never meet again. And as they move in and out of those publics and sub-publics they acquire, retain, revise or abandon opinions. Very, very few Americans are stereotypical in their opinions. Confusing Some for All So, it is utter tripe to pronounce, as CBS did in issuing its latest poll-ish joke, that "Americans appear ...," "most say ...," "an overwhelming majority says ...," "one in five Americans says ...," "one-third of Americans believe ...," "two-thirds of Americans clearly want ...," "a third of all Americans say ... ." You may be thinking you are the only American who wasn't interviewed for that poll. No, you were merely not one of the 1,018 persons CBS says it actually polled. Since when are 1,018 Americans "all Americans"? It's been a bad week or so for George W. Bush and Republicans generally, if you believe the polls. Don't Forget Reality If you take the time to look closely at each of the events or issues about which pollsters have been asking loaded questions, two things are obvious. One is that Bush has been getting clobbered in the masscomm that is, for the most part, controlled by radical leftists, who are anything but representative of the direction in which this country is moving politically. Two, the things Bush stands for and persists in standing for despite the outrage and hatred manifest by the screaming left are what your common sense tells you the America you know and love still believes and appreciates in its leaders. That's what determines elections in this country. That and the reassuring fact that a happy number of people really do use the brains God gave them. Lottery Odds Are Better As an individual American who is part of the total United States population, the statistical odds of your being among the 1,018 respondents polled by CBS are one chance in 295,734,134. So, the next time you get a phone call at dinner time from CBS, you may wish to consider suggesting what, in your opinion, they can do with their dumb little poll. 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. Read John Perry's columns here. Editor's note: Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
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