Pundits and Presidents

Building off David’s great insight, why is it that when some Presidents do things that the public doesn’t support, such as sending more troops to Iraq in 2006, pundits laud the President for bold leadership, while when others do things the public doesn’t support, like extending health care to all Americans, pundits accuse the President of not listening to the people? How can we ex ante define when going against public opinion shows bold leadership versus not listening to the people? Similarly, what’s the difference between pandering and listening to the people?

Public opinion data and public policy

From the latest Democracy Corps poll:

A majority (51 percent) say that even though the deficit is a big problem, we should not raise taxes to bring it down…And by an even wider 2:1 margin, voters reject cuts in Social Security, Medicare or defense spending to bring the deficit down (61 to 30 percent). With nearly three-quarters of the federal budget devoted to these items, exempting them from cuts leaves little room to make realistic progress on deficit reduction…Nearly half of voters think the deficit can be reduced without real cost to entitlements, with 48 percent believing there is enough waste and inefficiency in government spending for the deficit to be reduced through spending cuts while keeping health care, Social Security, unemployment benefits and other services from being hurt.

This blog is not about US domestic politics so I am not going to take a stand on policy. My question has to do with the utility of public opinion data for making policy. I heard a lot of people say Obama should have dropped health care because the public was against it. Yet these data show that it is impossible to govern the economy the way the public wants – we want a lower budget deficit, but not higher taxes or lower spending. So why is public opinion important for what policies the government enacts? If Obama wants to gamble on his future by enacting an unpopular policy, why should its unpopularity be an issue if public opinion is schizophrenic? Saying that the government must follow the will of the people if what the people want is impossible to achieve doesn’t make any sense. That government should follow the will of the people but only when the will of the people is coherent isn’t a particularly good argument, either.

The *right* way to use numbers

Somewhat related to Barak’s post last week about how to ask a question is this cartoon by PhD Comics on how to report the answers.

I wish I could think of a more original reason for this besides blaming CNN for creating a negative feedback loop as reporters strive for ever more news to fill the 24/7 cycle, and the public becomes more and more jaded about the quality of the news, and instead flips back to the Daily Show on DVR, but right now I can’t.

Asking a simple question the hard way

Gallup just released a new poll on American perceptions of the global image of the US. The question that intrigued me the most was on perceptions of the US president:

At first I thought this was an interesting question. After looking at the data, I realized it was not. Rather, this is little more than a complicated way of asking “do you approve of the job performance of the president?” Think about it: how many respondents are going to say foreign leaders have a different perception of the president’s performance than the respondent does? Sure, if you ask about certain leaders – say Gordon Brown versus Kim Jung Il – you will probably get different responses, but when you lump all foreign leaders together, the only logical response is to think that others see the president as you do. That’s how I would respond. Thus, what on the surface appears to be an interesting question is really little more than asking a simple question the hard way.

Questionable Afghanistan public opinion poll

ABC news has released a public opinion poll from Afghanistan that claims to be a nation-wide random sample. I am extremely suspicious of the results. In the first place, how does one conduct a nation-wide random sample in Afghanistan when the Taliban has control over large parts of the country? Second, many of the findings are hard to believe:

• About 70% think Afghanistan in going in the right direction.
• Hamid Karzai’s approval rating is about 70%, even though he got less than 50% of the vote in the first round of last August’s election and was found guilty of massive vote rigging.
• 75% are satisfied with the outcome of the election, even though 60% believe there was fraud.

That 70% think the country is going in the right direction and approve of Karzai is hard to believe. The news from Afghanistan strengthens my suspicion:

Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s second attempt to form a cabinet has raised concerns of a return to patronage politics with a batch of largely unknown figures who appear to come with useful connections.

Analysts said many of the new names submitted Saturday for parliament’s approval — to replace 17 nominees rejected by lawmakers earlier this month — have little or no experience in government, raising the risk of failure.

Karzai is battling to form a functioning government and end a political crisis in the war-ravaged nation that has dragged on since he was returned to power in a fraud-tainted presidential election in August.

It’s hard to accept that 70% of Afghans approve of Karzai and think the country s going in the right direction if “Karzai is battling to form a functioning government and end a political crisis in the war-ravaged nation.”

The responses about the election also are hard to accept. 75% of the respondents claim to be happy with the outcome of the election. Karzai probably got about 50% of the vote in the first round of the elections. If 75% of the people are happy with the election outcome, this means that a large part of the 50% of Afghans who did not vote for Karzai and/or a large part of those who did not vote are happy with the election outcome, even though most people think he rigged the election. Certainly this is plausible, but I am suspicious.