Letters by a modern St. Ferdinand III about cults

Leaders should adopt the slogan ‘if they hate me I must be doing something right’. Should you really care what uninformed people say to badly worded poll questions? The liberal media wants you to believe that leaders can’t govern unless opinion polls are cheery and high. So the obvious conclusion as a politician is to keep most of the people happy all the time. Formulas to do this are legion in man’s historical development, usually centering on populism, egalitarianism, and various strains of fascism. According to today’s fascination with polls, various tyrants from Hitler, to Che, to Castro, to Chavez, to Mao, to Idi Amin, to Khomenei, can be declared ‘popular and effective leaders’, since they enjoy or enjoyed high poll numbers. Even the leadership at the United or Useless Nations Organization enjoys widespread support and is very ‘popular’ even in spite of inutility and corruption. [ See UNO Corruption - everywhere at the highest levels] How silly.

So now after an unrelenting 4 year media barrage, the Bushies finally have low poll numbers. Endless left wing propaganda issuing forth informs the average Joe that the US economy is a mess, Iraq is a disaster, Cathy Sheehan and the moronic anti-war group are paragons of virture, and that tax cuts and supply side economics only benefit the rich. All of the above are wrong, but the imbalance in media and poll reporting would lead you to believe that the US, the world’s freest and most mobile and richest society, is not as attractive as Chavez’s Venezuela or the socialist utopia of EU-nuch land. It is not surprising that Bush has low poll numbers. It is hard to imagine any politician or regime undergoing 4 plus years of unrelenting media negativity and surviving. It is even better when the media manipulate poll numbers to prove that their attacks are warranted.

The media loves to distort poll numbers and report selectively, to very vague questions, certain results. The manipulation of poll results has a long pedigree of abuse by the socialist left. Jean-Jacques Rousseau in 1744 invented the term ‘public opinion’ when as France's foreign affairs secretary he canvassed Parisien’s thoughts on various issues to help formulate policy. Lindsay Rogers, an American political scientist, later coined the term "pollster" in 1949 to evoke the word of a fraud or huckster. In the modern era poll questions are usually not questions but statements to which people respond with a ranking of preferred options or a simple yes and no reply. Throughout history polling has been famous for abuse, and disinformation.

Most polls ‘cluster’ information, do not randomly select a broad cross section of the population, ask inane or leading questions [‘The war in Iraq must be bad since killing young men is terrible, do you agree or disagree?’], or skew conclusions through extrapolations of poll results that have no bearing on people or society’s real attitudes. Worst of all, they are used to justify positions when the polls are favorable to that position. Hence for politicians and the media, the polls are used to justify their policies. In this sense they are quite interested in getting the results they desire through ‘managed’ polls and closed processes. Sam Husseini in his book ‘The Problems with Public Opinion Polls’ states that polls are not transparent and therefore open to abuse:

If polls are so useful then why doesn’t the media report on the public’s supposed support for:
-Traditional Marriage
-Repealing or stopping Gay marriage
-Rejecting Partial Birth Abortions
-Privatizing Social Security and Pensions
-Giving parents more control over Education
-Rejection of bilingual education
-More military and security support and spending
-Reform of the immigration system
-Lowering taxes
-Reducing government size

All of the above in recent polls received overwhelming majority support. But they don’t fit in with the idea of the leftists – big government, big socialism, and the ninny state. Polls are dangerous things and the worst that can happen is that real leaders, leading from principle, resolve, common sense and national priorities listen to the chattering pin heads on CNN and elsewhere about nonsensical polls and bad polling data. Leading from inane poll results are not what we elect real leaders and politicians to do. If that was the case we could automate all public service jobs with software systems that are fed poll results, that then generate public policy choice and implementation. The human element could be removed entirely. We could offshore this to Bangalore to save money as well.

Polls are largely insipid. After all in 1938 polls revealed that Hitler had the support of 95 % of the German population. Obviously an intelligent poll inferring that Hitler must be a great leader and that Nazi policy redounds with popular support and success. The fact that only a malformed idiot would make such a conclusion is obvious. So why the obsession with polls ?

You lead from the front, not from the back. Let’s hope on foreign policy and tax cuts that Bush ignores the polls and does what has to be done.

Some info on polls: