We Don't Worry About Polls: Bushco

Oh yeah? Gallup Polls seems to disagree. My reading is they think you're scared shitless and will do anything to make the public poll better.

by Frank Newport, Editor in Chief
The Gallup Poll

President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld have all in recent weeks made assertions about negative consequences of paying attention to public opinion polls.

In recent comments in Charlotte, N.C., Bush responded to queries about the debate in Washington over a timetable for removing troops from Iraq: "Here's my answer to you: I'm not going to make decisions based upon polls and focus groups." Cheney and Rumsfeld have chimed in with similar sentiments.

This is not new. A Bush campaign pamphlet from the Republican primary in Delaware in the spring of 2000 quotes Bush as saying: "I don't need polls to tell me how to think. If elected president, I will not use my office to reflect public opinion."

Despite these protestations, of course, the administration has, by all accounts, been paying a lot of attention to polls. [thank God for Gallup] Alarmed by dropping job approval ratings last fall, the president embarked on an extraordinary series of speeches about Iraq. He has been similarly engaged this year, expanding his speeches to include questions from the audience, increasing the frequency of his press conferences, and allowing more access from reporters. His well-publicized shake-up in the White House staff has almost certainly been caused by concern over polls. The president's appearance at a photo opportunity at a gas station in Biloxi, Miss., and his public comments this past week also reflects his advisers' concerns that the rise in gas prices will cause even further erosion in his standing in the polls.

In other words, while protesting publicly that they don't pay attention to polls, the White House appears to be quite busy reacting to negative poll numbers. [emphasis mine]

No news here. They lie about everything.