Who knew a crayon could be so perilous an instrument? Like the rest of us, WH Press Secretary Robert Gibbs is learning many lessons lately. The hazards of a sharp tongue married to a dull wit were foremost Friday. In the ongoing display of stupidity and incompetence that is the Obama Administration, Gibbs is a real stand-out. He laments that these numbers from that fly-by-night Gallup organization are too volatile, why, just days ago it was eleven points in the other direction! Only, that is untrue. Apparently, like Al Gore and the others who claim the globe is warming, Mr. Gibbs feels himself entitled to a friendlier set of facts. And who would not? I would take the crayon to my drivers license and academic transcripts in a minute, if I could, but Gibbs is behind the curve a bit here. He forgets perhaps that the words of the Press Secretary are, on alternating weekends, subject to press scrutiny. Bad luck or poor planning there. He acts too brazenly and in open fora. If he does not like the numbers on offer the more subtle tack is to look for others more favorable and emphasize those. We know this as “cherry-picking”. The only problem is, like with so much of the Obama Experience (and the Gore Medicine Show), they have already done that. Gallup is generally more favorable to things Lefty and Democratic than the competition. As such, they were the favored source as a gauge of public support until lately. Other sources one might desperately look to either validate the trend or see it as even worse.

But whatever. Of what use is polling anyhow? One might ask. There is no Constitutional basis for polling although there was some interest in a remedy to that a few years ago. And, as Katherine the Great put it so well, what would a cobbler know of the affairs of state? (More, perhaps, than a Queen knows of the affairs of cobblers.) And of what use is all this congregating and milling about in Washington uninvited, where one has no legitimate business? Of course when it is a gaggle of ill-washed but well-paid Marxists burning Bush in effigy and flags in reality declaring War is NOT the Answer! the question never is asked but we live in times of great upheaval. When the scrum are folks who actually pay taxes it is important to ask, just who gives them the right to peaceably assemble and petition the government?

Well, all this nitpickery is distracting to our devoted President and his staff and therefore is probably treasonous so enough. It is pretty standard political practice to ignore or malign polls you do not like and elevate those you do. For once we honestly can say yes, they ALL do it; so no moral opprobrium need adhere to Gibbs or his boss but there are, um, some practical problems. Few seem to recall now that it was the tactical manipulation of media and polls that made the Obama Experience a possibility. At the time, raising a half-term Senator (and with the Leftmost voting record, even at that brief span) to the highest office required not triangulation, as bad as that is, but a polygonal holographic eruption of blahblah tailored to whatever persuadable audience existed in whateverforum and the fact that any close observer could see this is what was happening was taken by the faithful alternately as a sign of either titanic political genius or sincerity of greater purity… the sincerity of a transparent lie. This is how we got the belligerent peacenik Obama, the free-spending deficit hawk Obama, the pensive intellectual break-dancing Obama, the grudge-holding Affirmative Action race-healer Obama and other oxymora too numerous and nauseating to recount. But, sadly for him and us, to govern is to choose and to choose is to alienate some previously pacified demographic. Bush was roundly derided among Obama’s homies when he described himself, in the Executive, as “The Decider”. Now, we have instead The Denier and the argument, Hey, things couldn’t be any worse! that wrought so much destruction on the Bushies has through hard experience shown itself as flatly untrue.

Hope may spring eternal but Change must be a material improvement or some other Change will come along to displace it. Already a majority Hope that time will come shortly. Only it will not.

Sorry folks, there is no Constitutional foundation for your misgivings, gripes, fears and temerities any more than there is for the approbation, however enthusiastic, of a dwindling crowd. We are stuck with Obama as, friends and foes, he is stuck with us. The only poll that matters comes on the first Tuesday in November in even numbered years. But does Hope mean no more than electing someone with a different party label affixed? Ah, no. Not by a long shot. The problems are in our own hearts and minds; in our own expectations of gub which are simultaneously too grasping materially and too lax as regards our Rights.

It has long been a truism that government is a more or less necessary evil. Politicians of BOTH parties have emphasized its necessity which after all, validates their OWN indispensability. It is now time however for we non-politicians to look to the second, equally true element of that statement… the evil. Not Evil!!!  but evil. As the drafters and ratifiers of our Constitution would tell you, gub is force above all. It is a monopoly on force. That is not all it is but it is what it ALWAYS is. It is coercion. It is not asking, it is telling. And some people need to be told some things, no doubt. As Jefferson said, if men were angels no gub would be necessary. But we don’t ALL need to be told EVERYthing, do we? I aver that we do not. But forget the Constitution and you forget the restraints that prevent gub, the all-devouring entity that it is by nature from becoming your constant, watchful companion.

Of course, the Constitution does not poll well. Today (if polled anonymously) it would fail as a charter of anarchy. At the time of its ratification we know it also would not have polled well; dismissed as a reactionary second gasp of monarchy. And it could well be that it is one or the other or holds some other fatal flaw. It could be a recipe for disaster of some sort to hold, for example, that the 10th Amendment actually means something. It could well be that “shall not be infringed.” is a grotesque absolutist cul de sac but we do not know. We do not know because we have deviated so far from our Constitution that it can only romantically be said to exist so our troubles of all kinds cannot be honestly laid at the feet of the Constitution, as Community Activist Obama was wont to do. Constitutional strictures on war-fighting and domestic leveling are equally held nonsensical. The solemn oath of all office takers “To protect and defend the Constitution from all Enemies, Foreign and Domestic” would in most cases be a vow to suicide, if it were taken seriously.

Our office holders do not and will not take it seriously however because We the People do not take it seriously. But we take these polls seriously, do we not? Oh yes. And why? Because with some luck and some pluck, these whored polls are able to predict the results of the REAL polls that award offices with fancy titles and fancier expense accounts to whomever can game them sufficiently. Let us remedy that in one small way, here and now. No more polling. No more pollsters. Do not answer pollsters on the phone, in person or on the internets. Discuss the state of the nation (and your state, city or town) withyour fellow citizens or even media figures but do not answer the statistical questions… Do you approve/disapprove? Strongly? Do you support/oppose? Simply state the truth, that these issues are not amenable to binary simplification.  What is that you say? That if you do this you will then leave the field to your political opponents? But that is just it, public opinion polling is NOT a proper forum for the great questions of governance or of life. It is not a field of battle, it is a field of blather. Let those in high office serve in ignorance of the whims and fancies in the electorate. Let them do what they judge to be the right thing in service to the interests of the nation and humanity and then let them tremble on election day, not knowing what we think of it until we tell them. Let there be no “safe seats”. Let there be no settled questions. I know, it seems a frightening grope through the dark but Robert Gibbs could tell you, a frightening possibility beats a horrifying reality any day of the week, except maybe a slow Friday.

Off the record, of course.

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