King of the Wonks

John Zogby, of the Zogby polling agency gave a talk on campus earlier tonight. I have to say, having heard him speak, that whoever came up with the word “wonk” probably had somebody like Zogby in mind– he had poll numbers for absolutely everything he talked about, and for every single question he was asked afterwards. I spent a few minutes trying to think of a question that he wouldn’t be able to answer with “I did some polling on that…,” but didn’t come up with anything.

He did have a couple of interesting comments, though, that I’ll reproduce here for anyone who’s interested:

  • The one moment when he got really animated, and departed from the objective-pollster act in a serious way, came when somebody asked him if he had polled Iraqis on what they thought would happen when the US pulls out. He said that fretting about whether the country would slide into civil war is foolish because they’re already having a civil war. When the questioner asked “wouldn’t it get worse if we left?,” he shot back “How could it?”
  • He was asked a question about the disastrous failure of exit polling in the 2004 election, and basically punted. He agreed that it was a complete debacle, but attributed it to a bunch of factors, from over-sampling of suburban precincts in Ohio to poor training of poll takers in Pennsylvania (he told a story about a woman in Philadelphia who was supposed to be taking an exit poll, but said “Everyone seems so busy, I hate to ask them any questions.”). Interestingly, he called the theory that conservative voters just don’t like to talk to pollsters “total bullshit,” noting that no conservative voter he met was the least bit shy about saying who they were voting for.
  • The best laugh line of the night was when he noted that there are rumblings of discontent in the Republican ranks. Having previously savaged the Democrats for having no politically viable ideas, he noted “So, you get the chance to watch both parties implode. Go home and make some popcorn.”
  • The most interesting thing he said was the suggestion that in the next several years, he thinks that Hurricane Katrina will prove to have a bigger effect on American politics than the September 11 attacks. He said that, in his opinion, it will lead to a re-envisioning of the relationship between people and the government, similar to the New Deal or the conservative revolution, and that the party that positions itself to take advantage of that will dominate American politics for the next couple of decades. Unfortunately, he was a little vague about what form the re-envisioning would take, other than that it will involve some form of universal health care, and something to do with government assistance to community and charitable organizations. It’s an interesting idea, though I’m not sure I really buy it.

I’m not sure where to go with any of that, but I’ll throw it out there for anyone who wants to comment on it. Or suggest new ideas for re-envisioning the relationship between people and the government…

17 comments

  2. He said that fretting about whether the country would slide into civil war is foolish because they’re already having a civil war. When the questioner asked “wouldn’t it get worse if we left?,” he shot back “How could it?”

    Not a wonk but an idiot.

  3. He said that fretting about whether the country would slide into civil war is foolish because they’re already having a civil war. When the questioner asked “wouldn’t it get worse if we left?,” he shot back “How could it?”

    Roman: Not a wonk but an idiot.

    A good friend of mine (the best man at my wedding) is a journalist in Iraq right now. Most of his stuff is wire-service copy, so he doesn’t get bylines that I could point to on the web, but he sends occasional dispatches to a bunch of friends. (Just this morning, I got the latest installment, describing being in a convoy that was ambushed.)

    What he describes is a civil war.

    Sure, it could get worse– things can always get worse– but the presences of American troops isn’t materially improving much of anything. All they’re doing is providing a convenient target.

  4. Chad,

    ambushing an American convoy is hardly civil war. Civil war would be if Sunni take on the Shiites. Up till now, it didn’t happen on a global scale. The possible reasons for the civil war are two:
    1. Sunni/Shiite conflict
    2. Al-Qaeda (Zarkawi) trying to stirr it up.

    Both won’t go away when the US troops pull out, and 2. will probably get worse as the Iraqis have low anti-terrorism capability now.

    Besides, let’s talk about morality of this. Who came into Iraq and destroyed their government, which — whatever we say about Saddam — kept order and closed borders for the terrorists? The USA. So who’s primary responsibility is to clean things up? The USA’s. How would you call a man who damages your house and refuses to amend the damage?

  5. Roman:

    You’re certainly correct that the moral (and actual!) responsibility for the mess that Iraq is in lies squarely on our shoulders, and that does indeed mean that our decisions about how to proceed there must be made with that in mind, but it’s far from clear to me that remaining in the country now that we’ve managed to unleash what appears to be a civil war is going to help anything. It might, if we had the resources and ability to keep things under some sort of control while we worked to get the parties together to come to some solution that doesn’t involve warfare or violence, but we’ve been singularly unsucessful at doing either of those things so far, and there’s little indication that staying will make it any easier or better.

    I’m not necessarily advocating simply packing up our suitcases and getting out without making any provision for internal security in Iraq, but only a party seen as an honest broker would have any chance of getting all the elements of the civil unrest together and working something out, and we’re (obviously) not that party. If we had the manpower and inclination to crush them the way Saddam did, we might be able (in a few decades) to work our way to a solution, but to believe that we can do much good now, with all the misteps we’ve made, and with our lack of resources “on the ground”, there’s little chance our presence is going to make much of a difference.

    Of course, no power in the world is going to agree to step in and take our place, not with the country in the shape we’ve brought it to, so we’re pretty much stuck for options: stay, and watch things get worse while Americans continue to die, or leave and hope things somehow get better.

    It’s an awful choice to make, and one that’s been forced on us by Bush’s intransigence and blind following of the neocon’s ideologically-determined choices. It the price we pay for having an administration that’s not part of the reality-based world.

  6. I don’t think that things are getting worse. The worst one could say is stagnation. In some areas (civil liberties, media, communication, Internet access) there has been a giant improvement. The no 1 problem is security. The US has to step up training Iraq forces.

  8. Did he discuss his recent polling of US troops in Iraq?
    Some of the more interesting results:

    (1) 85% of US troops in Iraq believe that the US mission is mainly “to retaliate for Saddam’s role in the 9-11 attacks.”
    (2) An overwhelming majority of 72% of American troops serving in Iraq think the U.S. should exit the country within the next year, and nearly one in four say the troops should leave immediately.

    There are more results… but those two really jumped out…

  10. jab:Did he discuss his recent polling of US troops in Iraq?

    He mentioned that he had such a poll coming out, but didn’t go into much detail, other than noting that the overwhelming majority of troops want to be elsewhere, and fast. That didn’t strike me as all that shocking.

    Roman: ambushing an American convoy is hardly civil war.

    That’s why it was a parenthetical note, rather than the center of the argument. I’ve gotten a bunch of emails describing things in Iraq, and the overall picture is one of civil war.

    Of course, it’s possible that he’s just biased, and not reporting all the good news from Iraq. He always was a sneaky liberal.

  11. yes, the fact that the troops want elsewhere isn’t too surprising, but I was a bit shocked that 85% of them think we are there to retaliate for Hussein’s (nonexistent!) role in 9-11… do they only get FOX News over there?!?

  12. http://www.brookings.edu/fp/saban/iraq/index20060130.pdf

    A very interesting and informative report — thanks for the URL.

    However, the dataset ends in December and January, so it’s not really all that recent, is it? It doesn’t cover at all what many observers are calling the beginning of an all-out Iraqi civil war.

    But that aside, what, precisely, are we gaining from even a status quo “stagnation” in Iraq, if you were correct and that is what we’re seeing? For what ultimate purpose are these troops, police and civilians dying or being injured — and are we getting any closer to that goal, or are we going to stay “stagnating” for the foreseeable future?

    I don’t see a reachable goal, nor do I see any “progress” being made. And, in point of fact, things *are* getting worse, not better.

  14. However, the dataset ends in December and January, so it’s not really all that recent, is it?

    I don’t think the month-to-month changes are that important.

    But that aside, what, precisely, are we gaining from even a status quo “stagnation” in Iraq, if you were correct and that is what we’re seeing? For what ultimate purpose are these troops, police and civilians dying or being injured — and are we getting any closer to that goal, or are we going to stay “stagnating” for the foreseeable future?

    You’re asking for too much in too short a time frame. I fully expect the troops will stay in Iraq for 5-10 years, although in smaller number.

  15. I would support our maintainng a military presence in Iraq for a decade or more, if I had any confidence that we had a clear, reasonable, reachable goal, a plan for how to achieve it, and the resources necessary to do so. Unfortunatley, none of those are true.

    And I’m afraid you’re missing the point by dismissing month-to-month changes so cavalierly. The claim being made is that we’ve hit a turning point, the beginning of the long-feared civil war, and by ignoring the newest data, and the anecdotal reports that precede the data, you’re ignoring the evidence that supports (or contradicts) that contention. That’s hardly an attitude that’s appropriate for anyone who wants to look at the world through the reality-based means of the scientific method.

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