Letters to the Editor
Scientician
Published Letters: 523 Editor's Choice: 1
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Glenn, found your poll
[Read the article: The warped reality of our media stars]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]At least I think this is what you're looking for:
http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/CBSNews_polls/april_iraq.pdf
QUOTE:
q8 Do you approve or disapprove of the way Congress is handling its job?
ALL:
Approve: 34
Disapprove: 54
Unsure: 12
GOP:
A: 24
D: 66
U: 10
DEM:
A: 43
D: 42
U: 15
Ind:
A: 33
D: 57
U: 10
So in that April 9-12 poll, 42% of Democrats disapprove of the job "congress" as a whole is doing. Couple that with questions like q58 which asks about Iraq withdrawl timelines (supported by 75% of Democrats) and you start to see a picture of Democrats doing as glenn suggested: Disapproving of congress for not resisting the president strongly enough.
It is nothing but biased for journalists to report on Congressional job approval figures and merely presume that the American people disapprove of Congress telling the president what to do in Iraq. There's strong case to be made they disapprove of not bossing him around enough.
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Glenn:
[Read the article: The warped reality of our media stars]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Agreed. Ideology is an even better indicator of war position than party affiliation.
Of course, these polls would have been easier to find if our beltway elites had actually discussed them in any detail, and accurately gleaned the real meaning of them, instead of simply buying into the 2002 conventional wisdom intepretation, and assuming disapproval of congress was due to the attempt to stop the war.
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Lack of expert commentary
[Read the article: Anatomy of Beltway conventional wisdom]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]In line with Glenn's thoughts on this issue, recently I noticed something troubling: The dearth of political science academic qualifications for political commentators.
We're more than advanced to know that experience is not the only, and frequently not the best teacher, and it troubles me that so many of the supposed thought leaders on politics lack any formal training into the theory and actual research done in the subject.
For any other discipline, the media never fails to get actual qualified experts to comment, climatologists on global warming, doctors for various medical stories. Even then the media will often interpret their statements incorrectly, but at least they spoke to actual experts in the field.
Yet with analyzing polls, public opinion, political movements, we never see anyone with a PhD in the subject giving expert commentary.
And it really would make a difference. Having minored as an undergrad in PoliSci there really is a lot more to the discipline than reading lots of newspapers/blogs and keeping up with current events. There are peer reviewed journals and a growing body of formal analysis.
Every asshole has political opinions, and sure, some of the pundits are themselves ex political operatives or formerly elected officials (Scarborough say) and are in some sense "experts" - but why ignore the people who spend their lives studying these issues in a more rigorous and non-partisan way? Someone like say Karl Rove might make a great pundit in some sense because of his vast experience in the field, and his relative success at what he does. But even he will be subject to a lot of fallacy. Sure he might have won election X where his tactic was to do Y, but can he really be sure Y caused X?
Glenn's post yesterday complaining about how the media are ignoring the obvious conclusions of the polling data showing the voters do like Pelosi/Reid and do want the President shut out of setting Iraq policy is exactly the kind of thing a Poli Sci prof would like. Real data. Reasonable conclusions from it. Valid historical comparisons. Signs to watch out for.
Political Science isn't like physics or mathematics, so it has limits to how certain it can be in its conclusions, but a lot of the dreck and nonsense we must refute would not survive the withering analysis of such experts. It is at least scientific enough that the problems of persistently wrong "conventional wisdom" has little play in the field.
Small example: Henry Champ with CBC has been discussing in light of the Virginia shootings how many politicians are afraid to take action on gun control. Apparently Al Gore had promised action on it, and the NRA now claims they defeated him, a "lesson" which many pols have internalized, even though the evidence for the claim is pretty indirect. That would be the perfect opportunity for a PoliSci Phd to step in and opine in an informed way about the likelihood of this cause. Did the exit polls in 2000 show enough voters motivated to vote against Gore solely over guns? Did areas where the NRA organized see higher turnout? Etc. That kind of analysis from a qualified academic would be far better than having a "gun nut" crossfire against a "gun grabber" or whatever the media normally does when they have two non-experts on opposite sides of an issue shout at each other for 5 minutes and assume something useful will come of it.
So if you're skimming this excessive comment here's the gist: Political science is a real discipline and the lack of these bona fide experts on TV and in media commentary is a problem.