News of the Tautological

The following is an excerpt from OpinionJournal.com’s “Best of the Web” written by the editor, James Taranto.

News of the Tautological

• “Genealogy Search Can Reveal Connections”–headline, Omaha World-Herald, Sept. 17
• “As Ranchers in Drought Areas Sell Cows, Others Buy”–headline, Associated Press, Sept. 19

Bottom Stories of the Day
“Republican Voices Express Disapproval of Obama”–headline, New York Times website, Sept. 18

‘We Were Impressed’
If you get a call from a pollster conducting a survey for the New York Times, you may want to hang up on him. The Times has its own idea about the purpose of opinion polls–an idea that is insulting to the public and that, as far as we know, no other news organization shares. Normally, the purpose of a poll is to measure public approval of politicians and their policies. For the Times, the purpose of a poll is to see if the public measures up.

We first noticed this last September, when the Times conducted a poll on New Yorkers’ attitude toward the proposed Ground Zero mosque, for which the paper had been cheerleading even though–or, perhaps more accurately, because–most Americans found the idea distasteful. When it turned out that opinion within the city was in line with that of the rest of the country, the Times delivered a dressing down to the participants in its poll: “As the site of America’s bloodiest terrorist attack, New York had a great chance to lead by example. Too bad other places are ahead of us. . . . New Yorkers, like other Americans, have a way to go.”

The Times’s snotty superiority was bad enough. Making matters worse, the paper’s news article on the poll had quoted some participants by name. As we noted at the time: “They were minding their own business when the Times came to them and asked their opinions, only to hold those opinions up for derision.”

That turned out not to be a one-off. Yesterday the Times published yet another editorial in which it presented its poll as a test of whether the public has the correct attitudes. This time, the public passed, or so the Times claimed: “The Times and CBS News released a new poll on Friday, and once again we were impressed that Americans are a lot smarter than Republican leaders think.”

Here is what [the Times] means:

Despite what the Republicans loudly proclaim, Americans do not buy into economic theories that were disproved 25 years ago. What the new poll and others show is that most do not see the deficit and “big government” as the main problem, and they do not buy the endless calls for slashing spending and reckless deregulation.

A solid majority said creating jobs should be the highest priority for the government now and that payroll taxes should be cut to help with that. A whopping 8 in 10 think building bridges, roads and schools is important, which means–gasp–spending money.

Unless the Times editorialists are even more insipid than we think–and trust us, that’s unlikely–they are not really impressed that the public agrees with the trivial propositions that “reckless deregulation” is bad and “building bridges, roads and schools is important.” Rather, their phony praise for the public’s wisdom is a rhetorical diversion from the preposterous claim they are staking here, namely that support for Obama’s Stimulus Jr. plan necessarily follows from these propositions.

As it turns out, respondents to the poll were decidedly unenthusiastic about Stimulus Jr., though you wouldn’t know it from reading either the Times editorial or its news story on the poll. But CBS News, the Times’s polling partner, noted that only 12% of respondents said they were “very confident” that “Obama’s proposals will create jobs and stimulate the economy.” Thirty-six percent were only “somewhat confident,” and 47%, including a majority of independents, were not confident at all.

The Times alludes to this lack of confidence in the editorial’s conclusion: “There is so much noise out there that we are not sure most voters know how much they agree with the president. It is up to Mr. Obama to show them.”

So according to the Times, if you think you disagree with the president, you’re wrong and don’t know better. Oh, and the Republicans think you’re stupid.

The Times also writes:

Mr. Obama has done more for the country than many voters realize. The stimulus program so demonized by Republicans was too small, but it saved the economy from a complete collapse. Mr. Obama’s maligned decision to bail out the car companies saved large numbers of jobs. The huge benefits of his health care reform, which Republicans have vowed to repeal, will become clearer to Americans in the years ahead.

…..

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