Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

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The worst part of all is that seemingly intelligent, rational people have succumbed to bouts of cursing, frantic arm waving and frothing at the mouth over this. Challengers of the adminstration are so caught up in these numbers that their umbrage has risen nearly to "That-asshole-drank-my-last

-beer" levels. The most tragic aspect of all is that when they try to prove that Bush is a moron and a bad president--which should be a very simple and easy thing to do--they only cite this ONE poll, when dozens have shown that Bush has never really had what one might call "the love of the people."

Let's inspect this poll, shall we? Walk with me. I'll have you back home at a reasonable time.

(CNN) -- Beset with an unpopular war and an American public increasingly less trusting, President Bush faces the lowest approval rating of his presidency, according to a national poll released Monday.

Bush also received his all-time worst marks in three other categories in the CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll. The categories were terrorism, Bush's trustworthiness and whether the Iraq war was worthwhile.

Bush's 37 percent overall approval rating was two percentage points below his ranking in an October survey. Both polls had a sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.

Wow! Two whole percentage points with a three-point margin of error? Yeah, that's totally huge. By the way, three girls once told me I was hot. Or maybe it was zero girls. Apparently, there's no difference.

In all seriousness, George Bush is not in "free fall mode" as many seem to think. He just sucks like he always did. The only time his approval was actually HIGH was when we just got attacked and he seemed like he would be strong about it. And he was strong. Unfortunately, he was also really stupid about it. I'm not arguing that Bush is actually approved of by most of the country. We all know he sucks. But I don't see how a 2% drop with a 3% margin of error is cause for busting out the champagne. It's really no different from last time.

Come on, people. Two points? Even without that margin of error quite possibly turning a two-point loss into a one-point gain, two points is not all that impressive when we look at the sample size this poll utilized:

"...the 1,006 adult Americans interviewed by telephone Friday through Sunday..."

Barely over 1000 people. Two percent of that is 20 people. Twenty people change their minds and suddenly Bush is in a death spiral? I guess I'm just too simple to understand. Then again, at work I routinely convince at least twenty people per day that they should order something other than what they want. It's not hard to change someone's mind, and once changed it's even easier to change it again.

By the way, I do understand statistics and I know that 1000 people is a large enough sample to accurately portray the opinions of a much larger number of people...if the poll is correctly done. Was THIS poll correctly done? What sort of sample was taken? How old were these people? Were they liberal or conservative? Democrat or Republican? How did they vote last time? What was their social class? Religion? Race? Sex? What's their geographical area? More importantly, how did people in various groups and stages of finance and geography respond? MOST importantly, did everyone get asked the same questions, same wording, same options?

In the new poll, 60 percent said it was not worth going to war in Iraq, while 38 percent said it was worthwhile. The question was asked of about half of those surveyed and had a margin of error of five percentage points.

So, only half of those polled were asked the above question. Which half? Did how they answer to previous questions dictate whether they were allowed to be asked this most holy of questions? These are important questions which will yield important answers. What if they only asked that question to those who mostly responded negatively to Bush? The fact that not everyone was asked that question should rasie some flags to the results of that question. Unless we know which people were asked the question and why only half were asked, there remains the possibility of skewed statistics, and in politics, often it only takes one tiny crack in the Foundation of an Argument to cause people to cease paying attention to that argument. We need people to listen, not to find one tiny POSSIBLE flaw and therefore discard the whole argument.

The fact is, we don't know who they asked those questions to, we don't know why they only asked half of the people certain questions, we DON'T KNOW.

With all of this missing knowledge, why are so many people up in arms about this poll? The level of "We're winning! This is great news!" posts I've seen is staggering in number and near-barren in their applicability to reality. That latter point is especially true for a comment I see more and more of: "If the 2004 election were to be held today, Bush would lose!"

...So? If Abe Lincoln ran for president today, he'd lose because he's dead. What does it matter if Bush would lose some fabled election today? That doesn't make him any less of a president now, nor does it remove or lessen civic responsibility to actually pay attention to what's going on in the government. It seems to simply be a feeble consolation to a group of people desperate for change, and it's about as useful.

"We're winning the country back"? Umm, not quite. You've won nothing. You gained some ground, you're making moves, you're causing a ruckus and making people think, but that finish line is still a ways away. Now is not the time to get cocky and start congratulating each other. Want to know when you've won something? When the Democrats or the Independents or the Republicans who aren't insane take control. THEN you've won (actually, then we've ALL won, though some may not be willing to concede that point). Until that point, all you're doing is talking about how cool it's going to be WHEN you win, and that sort of premature celebration is a bad idea. It's like a group of four losers sitting around and talking about how cool it's going to be at Mardi Gras and how they're going to get laid. Well, guess what? TALKING ABOUT IT DIDN'T GET US LAID!

Didn't get THEM laid, I mean...

COME ON! There are PLENTY of things to get RIGHTEOUSLY pissed about when it comes to this administration. The economy, the war in Iraq, civil liberties disappearing, the rich getting richer, scandals, lies...you don't need these polls. You don't need to be happy about random numbers and promises of future glory from your like-minded compatriots. It boggles my mind that with Bush and the government f**king up in so many different ways, polls like this are what generate the most general hatred and talking.

Prove you're smarter and better than that. Let go of meaningless and vague polls, or at least look at the WHOLE picture. Take ALL the polls and look for trends. Don't focus only on the latest poll? When you're sick, does the doctor look only at the most recent symptom?

Or does he look at the PROGRESSION of symptoms, form his opinion on all of them and THEN make his diagnosis?

This nation doesn't need people getting angry at one symptom; we need doctors.

So, please. Be doctors.