Arianna Huffington
http://www.jewishworldreview.com --
IT'S BAD ENOUGH that so much of our political discourse is shaped by the never-ending stream of
media-generated polls -- Time/CNN, ABC News/Washington Post, Wall Street Journal/NBC
News, etc., etc. -- but we now have the growing trend of polls commissioned by specific interest
groups to prove that their agendas carry popular support. And thanks to the pollsters' manipulative
mastery of their pseudo-science, favorable polling results are just 800 phone calls -- and a check --
away.
"When a group with an agenda releases a poll,'' says Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institution, "you should not take it too seriously. There's ample opportunity in the design of questions to produce findings that are consistent with a group's general orientation.'' Simply by asking, for instance, "Given the choice, would you rather read this column or have a tooth drilled?'' I could produce a result whereby 75 percent of you will "strongly or somewhat agree'' that this is a great column.
Polls have in fact become an extension of public relations. Sometimes the target audience is the voting public, sometimes it's the chattering classes, and sometimes it's just one man -- the president of the United States.
That was the case when defense contractor Lockheed Martin commissioned Democratic pollster Mark Mellman to conduct a poll that concluded 56 percent of registered voters would support $2 billion being spent on "tracking planes to be flown in drug-producing areas.'' (I'm surprised the poll didn't also conclude that 82 percent of those 56 percent would be especially overjoyed if those planes were "Lockheed Martin P-3 tracking planes.'') Lockheed's smart bomb was aimed directly at the White House, and it certainly hit its mark. Five months after this manufactured mandate was presented to the president, he proposed $1.3 billion in drug-war funding for Colombia.
(Oh well, it wasn't the full $2 billion, but the Republicans sweetened the pot and a $1.7 billion package flew through the House last month.)
Another Mellman poll (he aims to please), this one released on April 3, was commissioned by Public Campaign. It showed that "two-thirds of the public favors comprehensive reform of the campaign finance system offering full public financing to candidates.'' Now I love Public Campaign and am delighted with these findings, but I give them no more credence than an NRA-commissioned poll "proving'' that two-thirds of the public favor a gun under every pillow or a National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League poll "proving'' that two-thirds of the public favor abortion on demand.
The bottom line is that when it comes to commissioned polls, whoever pays the piper calls the tune. Paging Mr. Mellman. "There are certain code words, red-button words that will generate certain results, even tiny little differences,'' says Matthew Robinson of the Claremont Institute.
"If you ask a tax question,'' continues Robinson, "and stress tax cuts vs. spending programs, people support tax cuts. If you focus on spending on education, the environment, Social Security and defense, you're going to get the opposite results. You go from 60 percent for tax cuts to 67 percent for spending programs.'' Hence my proof of your overwhelming support for this column. And for tax cuts. And for spending programs.
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And when asked by YROCK to choose, an overwhelming 84 percent believe "greater involvement by parents in the lives of their children'' would have a greater impact on reducing gun violence in schools, while only 14 percent believe "more gun control legislation'' would have the greater impact. But why are we being asked to choose? Because the poll was conducted to make a point, not to mine the public's wisdom.
An "American Values'' poll released by John Zogby last month turns out to have been half-underwritten by an anonymous donor. "I can't say who it is,'' Zogby told me, "but he publishes a newsletter in which he prints the poll's results.'' It's a safe bet that the newsletter would approve of the poll, according to which close to half of Americans chose "the breakdown of the family institution'' as "the most important problem facing the nation in the next few years.'' That's a pretty impressive result until you look at the other choices respondents were offered: "Terrorism on U.S. soil,'' "Availability of guns'' and "Possible Chinese aggression in Taiwan and the Panama Canal.'' Chinese aggression in the Panama Canal? Not exactly Topic A around the water cooler. They might as well have listed "bad TV reception'' or "availability of quality guacamole'' as options.
So next time you read a story trumpeting the latest stats on the will of the people, remember one
more reason to discount the findings: who bought them. And it wouldn't be a bad idea if the media
-- often fed PR polls as "exclusives'' -- began to question the results instead of just lazily reprinting
04/18/00: For sale: America's students
04/14/00: Elian and China
04/10/00: Spring fever: dreaming of John McCain
04/07/00: Dot-com bites man
04/04/00: Al Gore: A profile in pandering
04/03/00: Tarnish on a new gilded age
03/29/00:The political Oscars
03/27/00: It's gonna take a movement
03/23/00: `P' is for preschoolers ... and for Prozac
03/21/00: The passion of St. Al
03/14/00: Colombia: The drug war's latest perverse priority
03/13/00: John McCain's dilemma: Loyalty to what?
03/07/00: Good-bye, reform; Hello, compassion
03/03/00: Campaign 2000: Who's your daddy?
02/29/00: Prop. 21: Hard to tell the poison from the cure
02/25/00: John McCain: A reformer with a red-meat strategy
02/18/00: The debates debate
02/16/00: South Carolina: The vanishing voter reappears?
02/14/00: The endorsement two-step
02/09/00: Turning Campaign 2000 inside out
02/04/00: AlGore is a big, fit liar
02/01/00: New Hampshire 2000: The battle for the independents
01/31/00: Ross to the rescue?
01/25/00: Mr. Kerrey gets the heck out of Washington
01/21/00: Debates 2000: Jokers wild
01/18/00: Cheap talk at the U.N.
01/13/00: The buying of the president 2000
01/07/00: Nailing the new millennium
01/05/00: Promises 2K
12/30/99: The year that was: They partied like it was 1999
12/28/99: The legal drugging of America: A status report
12/21/99: The political Y2K bug
12/17/99: New handshake in New Hampshire
12/14/99: The Kosovo kiss-off
12/07/99: Clueless in Seattle
11/30/99: The new callousness
11/23/99: Campaign 2000: We'll be back after these messages
11/17/99: Democracy denied
11/12/99: Our Economy's House Of Cards
11/09/99: Why Johnny and Georgie can't lead
11/05/99: Could a Kennedy be just the ticket for Al?
11/02/99: And the winner is ... Citizen McCain
10/28/99: Crime, cash and campaign 2000
10/26/99: Car bombs and character assassins
10/21/99: Money talks, Granny D walks
10/19/99: World's greatest democracy?
10/15/99: What are we looking for in a president?
10/12/99: The media's Trump l'oeil or Citizen Trump's 90-story ego
10/07/99: Grass-roots Gore and K-street Coelho
10/05/99: Summers' time, and the livin' is easy
09/27/99: The third-person way
09/27/99: How long can Americans stand Pat?
09/23/99: Fundraise-Aholics In The Senate
09/21/99: The machine to beat the machine
09/14/99: The Prosperity Parade
09/10/99: Child poverty and the working poor: the horror story we missed
09/03/99:Politicians' 'extended family' values
09/01/99: Campaign indictments: A harbinger of things to come?
08/30/99: For 2000, a race to define the race issue
08/25/99: Bush's cocaine question and the drug war
08/20/99: Hungry lobbyists gnawing away at democracy
08/18/99:Media grasping at straws
08/13/99: George W. and the corporate gravy train
08/11/99: Does Bulworth Have A Future In The White House?
08/06/99: As the White House turns