|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| An Idea for Gary Hart |
|---|
| The Senator Eases Up To The Plate....Again |
|
This is Dark Cloud on Monday, January 06, 1986. Gary Hart has announced he won't run for the Senate and is interested in running for President yet again. One can only hope that his plans are not based upon any polls, be they scientific or exit polls at bars. Politics has become too utterly dependent upon polls and pollsters, of that cliche there can be no argument. And yet the disease of polling is spreading, insidiously, into every aspect of our life, and I - for one - hate it, resent it, wish it death. It has usurped the purpose of our Republic. The idea is that we listen to those who want office, select the one who comes closest to our views, and send him off to do his or her job as they see fit. In practice, we are to choose between opinionless, spineless, neuroids, devoid of courage and personality, who seem to feel that job security is to be achieved by instantaneious reflection of a fickle electorate. There is logical possibility to this, except that the polling is done on the fly, the questions are biased and designed to channel answers, and the whole thing has the same amount of scientific value as alchemy. The first myth about pollsters is that they are objective. Hah. They are paid by someone who wants to know something. Ergo, if the question cannot be answered by a yes or a no, the pollster will cover his soft underside by framing questions whose answers can be subjected to endless interpretation. Therefore, they are never actually wrong, it’s just that the data - sacred, holy, out of thin air data - was misinterpreted or subject to erroneous conclusion by a justifiably perplexed public. Belief in polling is, in many ways, similar to patriotism, in that the latter is the last refuge of scoundrels and the first of idiots, and the former is the refuge of those who want scientific equations for love, a sort of anal-retentive personality made profitable. The basis with polling is the problem with Democracy, that the public is not informed, doesn't wish to be informed and will vote according to the stars, or color coordination, or the rhyme of certain names - not on the issues. The spate of clowns interviewing Coloradans on Libya are not really eliciting information; probably half the people interviewed have their half baked views formed by seeing other equally lazy journalism on another channel, and in any case, know nothing abut Libya. Or, for that matter, much beyond the ranking of their favorite teams. It is a sickly joke, asking opinions of the uninformed rather than providing actual information to the few members of the public interested in obtaining it. If Hart wants a new idea, he should get up and say "I'm really not interested in your opinions unless you're running for an office that will affect my life. It is your job to ask what my views are and to reject or accept them. In other words, you elect me to work my will, and not to act as a mere conduit for every burp and flatulence of an emotional and ignorant public. You don't like it? Vote for the liar who says he's at your beck and fickle call.” Hart won't of course. But it would be new, and it would be honest. |
| Post your views and reviews on The Boulder Lout Forum. |