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| Jonah Goldberg: An Ode to Uncertainty |
| 2008-03-04 |
| . . . Politics, or at least the democratic kind of politics, are supposed to be hard, messy, chaotic. Herding cats is the essence of democratic politics. But for the past few decades, the bipartisan political establishment has been trying to rationalize the process, to reduce the electorate to a bunch of discrete, digitized elements reachable through targeted and tailored advertising. If they did a remake of The Graduate today, the one-word advice from a political consultant would be "microtargeting." Are you a 27-year-old male in Tallahassee who subscribes to Field & Stream, leaves the toilet seat up and thinks Bill O'Reilly should part his hair on the left? Well, you'll get an e-mail just for you! And, miraculously, the candidate writing you will agree with you on everything! Campaign-finance reform was part of this larger effort to take the mess out of politics. Many politicians think they have an absolute right to control the political conversation. . . . Similarly, self-important newspaper editors think they have a special license to opine on politics but are horrified when mere rubes with a checkbook want to do the same thing. Thus came the rush to regulate political speech during campaign season — the time of year when political speech is the most influential and, hence, the most important. . . . By now the argument against campaign-finance reform is familiar to anyone who cares and boring to everyone else. So let's leave that for another time and instead look at one of the main reasons this election season has been so exciting: The polls haven't mattered as much as they normally do. If the old rules of thumb about success in the polls held true, Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Clinton would have wrapped up the nomination long ago. Then again, if the pollsters had been right, Obama would have won New Hampshire handily and probably California, too, which means he would have been the nominee. In other words, uncertainty has been the order of the day, and uncertainty is good because, among other things, it gives people the sense that voting matters and that all these things aren't decided by a system that doesn't include them. So here's an old idea that might have new salience. Citizens should refuse to talk to pollsters, social surveyors and private census takers. What would happen? Well, fairly quickly the micro-targeting would get pretty macro. Rather than treating Americans like customers-who-are-always-right, politicians would increasingly have to state their convictions rather than restate what some focus group told them to say. Without knowing who was in the lead until votes were actually cast, candidates might actually campaign on conviction. Rather than telling people what they already believe, politicians might actually try to educate voters on what citizens should know first. Obviously, this would make our politics messier and annoy a political class that is desperate to take the uncertainty out of their career paths. But that's really not our problem. The uncertainty principle makes things more difficult for physicists. Uncertainty makes things difficult for politicians, too. But it might actually yield more principle. |
| Posted by:Mike |
| #6 I lie my ass off. Any Politician who relies on "polling" to decide an issue is almost as useless as a lawyer but most of them are anyway. I lie, lie, lie. My vote is my voice. If a politician needs my input they get it via FAX. |
| Posted by: Sock Puppet of Doom 2008-03-04 22:19 |
| #5 Remember the late, great Mike Royko, of various Chicago newspapers over 35 years, who advised his readers to always lie to exit pollsters, for the pleasure of watching all the returns projections "go crazy." |
| Posted by: mom 2008-03-04 21:59 |
| #4 I've always thought that the polls reflect whatever the person paying for them wants them to reflect. How else can you explain that they always favor the person whom the MSM pundits are telling us that we favor? That is they always do until about 48 hours before the actual election where they suddenly swing dramatically toward reality. |
| Posted by: Crease Poodle1618 2008-03-04 12:59 |
| #3 I agree, lying is the most effect tactic against them. |
| Posted by: Spanky Creatch3579 2008-03-04 12:23 |
| #2 Citizens should refuse to talk to pollsters I lie to them. |
| Posted by: DoDo 2008-03-04 11:24 |
| #1 Citizens should refuse to talk to pollsters. Election polling should be restricted through, at cost, the local county clerk's office. Anyone participating will be making full and open disclosure of their vote. Your choice - secret or public ballot. See how many participate then. That they called you or knocked on your door implies your identity is known, so this is not about privacy when you participate. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2008-03-04 10:06 |