COLUMN: Giving Gallup my two cents

From Daniel Fienberg's, "The Fien Print," Fall '99 From Daniel Fienberg's, "The Fien Print," Fall '99Note: Today's Fien Print is correct within a 3.5 to 4 percent margin of error. In my so-called life, I find that I rarely do anything truly important, anything that makes or shapes world and public opinion. On Monday night, however, I got to make a genuine difference. OK. Fine. On Monday night I became 1/3000th of Bill Clinton's approval rating. Heaven bless the good people of the Gallup poll for letting me shape our president's self-worth. That's about all that matters to Gallup, you see. My education? Nope. My political leanings? Not so much. My presence as an informed young adult immersed in a legion of newsprint? You've gotta be kidding. No, the Gallup polling process, a "grueling" 15-minute list of socio-economic-politico-sexual queries, actually thrives on making the surprised samples act like morons. That may well be something for the ruling class to consider before they trust the findings as reported in USA Today or CNN. Or at least I sure felt like a fool. First question: Do you approve of Bill Clinton's job in office? Sure. Why not? I can be enlightened enough to differentiate between the liberal and the libido. I've read enough statistics to know that I'm comfortably in the majority on this one. Or at least a majority of people like me, young folks lured into a false sense of security by an easy first question. Then questions started getting odder. The personality-free voice began to ask me if I approved of several different countries. Just that broad. Nothing more specific. Foreign policies? Standards of living? Personal hygiene? Nah. Do I approve of Israel? Strongly approve. Canada? Just so they don't take away my second passport, yes. Mexico? Um, human rights violations and stuff -- slightly disapprove, I guess. China? Love the food, a little sketchy on the communism and treatment of Tibet, let's say I disapprove. Brazil? Huh?!? First he draws you in, then he pulls the rug out. I honestly don't know how I feel about Brazil. Odds are the Gallup people end up getting responses that range from ignorant to embarrassed far more often than those that range from intellectual to, well, correct. I, for example, just don't know if the United States has troops in Bosnia at this minute or if Americans serving with the United Nations peacekeeping forces count. For the last couple of days, I've been checking the news to see if I get humiliated via a story, "And 75 percent of American youths are too stupid to know where we hide our soldiers." Oops. Fortunately, the pollster allowed me to apologize for my obliviousness by confessing that my recent attention to the Bosnian crisis has been "not enough." The Gallup poll runs on the notion that the "average" people stand out after the goofballs have neutralized themselves. But some of the questions just beg for people to run screaming for eclecticism. Be honest, when somebody asks you for your favorite presidents from history, don't you desperately want to destroy their data by fighting for lost causes like Chester A. Arthur, who had the greatest handle-bar mustache of any chief executive, or Calvin Coolidge, who never said anything at all? When "Chris" the Gallup Man asked me this question, I had to stifle more creative urges -- Hayes! Harrison! Harding! -- to mutter names like Wilson, Lincoln, clichZs like that. But if the creative people would just give in to their darker urges? Hard to tell what might happen. People actually believe in these polls. Mostly, they believe in them because no matter what position you're trying to prop up, there's a question just confusing enough to put you in the majority. Among the 20 to 30 different questions about gun control and the NRA, for example, I'm sure that at least once I said that automatic firearms are a nifty idea. I was just that confused. And then "Chris" started asking me what jobs I felt homosexuals were qualified to hold. After I told him that I was cool with gay doctors, lawyers, priests and TV weathermen, he kept going, listing profession after profession as if he were praying that I would somehow get even more emphatic if he suggested "interior decorator, musical theater star or flight attendant." He stopped just short of that. And I was glad. Under enough duress, I'm not sure what crazy things I may have said. So now that I'm Gallup certified, you'll probably trust me more, right? I suspect roughly 65 percent of you will respond with the same answer I gave when "Chris" asked if I approved of the Gerald Ford presidency: You're kidding, right?