GALLUP AWAY

Notes of Concern…

   …Jack Blair

GALLUP AWAY

Have you been watching the science of polling lately?  There have been some major mistakes and in calls into question whether our traditional methods of guessing ahead of time who will win an election are being erased by all the changes we are seeing in the world.

I knew George Gallup and was a founding trustee of the Gallup Institute. I didn’t know much about polling techniques or history but I was just one of a group of executives he would invite to conferences to pick their brain and share any new developments. Gallup and others of equal note were pretty good at guessing the outcome of an election and they got better when they kept polling, monthly or weekly, so readers could see trends.

Television and the internet changed the way people saw candidates. A news story could break and whatever they told the pollster who called the day before might not be what they would say today.

This brought about the advent of “exit polls.” These were really the brainstorm if news organizations like CBS, NBC, etc. They seemed to think that you and I could not wait until late in the night to know the actual results so they stood outside polling places and asked people how they voted, then they would extrapolate this small sample and tell you what was going to happen.

This caused all sorts of problems because the networks were announcing winners as a result of east coast exit polling before the west coast folks had even gone to vote because of the time difference. There was more than a little worry that some west coast voters just stayed home and had an extra dessert since the talking heads out East had already told them their vote wouldn’t matter.

Jumping forward a bit there were recent polls on the election in Great Britain with headlines that the Prime Minister was in BIG trouble, doubtless would lose the election and the entire nation would be embarking on new things.

Guess what. The Prime Minister won and he won BIG.

The campaigns of Barack Obama and Romney spent gazillions of dollars on polling. Given the current nature of polling I would say they should have saved their money.

Now comes the new presidential election season. There seems to be only one really strong democrat in the race but there are dozens of republicans. So the debates will begin, the news cycles will start, the spinning of what was said will get underway, and none of it will mean a thing because our world has changed.

There was a time when a man didn't even know he had been elected for three or four days until a rider on horseback could get to his home to let him know.

I for one place no value on polls in this day and age. We turn a knob on a television in our house and we know what happened that day, typically we are actually watching it happen in real time. I don’t need anyone to tell me what it means because all that is important is what it means to me.

And as the trite saying goes: the only poll that really matters occurs on election day. Are we so up tight we cannot wait, turn on the TV or the computer, and see the results.

I for one would like to see pollsters GALLUP off into the sunset.

White House Correspondents-Drones-Embeded Reporters

NOTES OF CONCERN…

  …Jack Blair

                                     VARIOUS

I watched The White House Correspondents’ Dinner last night and couldn’t help but think how much better the country would be if these people could get along that way all the time.

There were jokes about everyone important and everyone seemed to take it all in their stride. People who don’t speak to one another during office hours (the President, the Senators, the Representatives, the Governors, etc) seemed to be having a jolly time.

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From party talk to drone talk. Lots of folks are upset that an American prisoner and an Italian prisoner were killed by an American drone whose target was a gang of Al Qaida terrorists. Let me begin by saying I have sympathy for the families of the innocents. But I also know they made decisions to go into war torn countries, countries known to take hostages and keep them for years, so they made an up front decision that their work, which I understand was humanitarian in nature, would place them at risk. 

To have failed to bring down a large number of acknowledged murderers, perhaps men who murder innocents multiple times a week, would not have been a proper decision in war time. Two good men were lost but we have to keep in mind that hundreds of good people may have been saved by this drone strike.

We discovered terrorists. We knew they murdered innocents. They were in our sights. They will murder no more.

The whole idea of embedding reporters with troops during the Iraq war was foolish. Trained soldiers have to worry about reporters crawling around distracting them from their work. Is it so important that those of us sitting at home actually see an enemy shot right when it happens or could we wait for the morning paper?

As a government I do not think we should encourage, or make the path easy, for our citizens to place themselves as well as our troops in harms way during military activities.

I recall when President Reagan invaded a small country to rescue Americans being held at a medical school. Do you remember? His first order was “not one reporter.” No coverage. When the work is finished they can go over in droves and interview anyone they want. 

They are in the newspaper business. We are in the business of conducting an invasion. No distractions. None.

When President Truman ended the war in the far east by dropping not one but two atomic bombs there was collateral damage everywhere. But when the numbers were added the report was that had he not dropped those bombs and the war had gone on for months a great many more lives would have been lost. 

He reminded reporters then that he was the “American” president and it was his duty to protect “American” lives. And I think he might have thrown in a little reminder of Pearl Harbor.

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Last topic for this column this week is the devastation that mother nature has brought on the little nation of Nepal. As of the date I am writing this column over 2000 people have died. By the time you are reading the column I am sure the number will be greater. You cannot guard against these acts of nature other than through strong building codes, decisions on where to site your structures, and have in place quick emergency responses. And of course, count on the people of the world to come to your aid. We as people of this world are at our best when we gather together and to help one another and at our worst when our goal is to harm others.