Michael Kinsley: In Praise of Bush's Honesty (Honest)

By Michael Kinsley
Post
Sunday, May 1, 2005; B07

Q: Is the poll troubling?

PRESIDENT BUSH: Polls? You know, if a president tries to govern based upon polls, you're kind of like a dog chasing your tail. I don't think you can make good, sound decisions based upon polls. And I don't think the American people want a president who relies upon polls and focus groups to make decisions for the American people.

-- from the April 28 news conference.

The comic high point of the president's prime-time news conference was this muddled disquisition on how the American people don't want the president to do what polls say the American people want the president to do.

This could be simple nonsense -- an unfortunate conflation of two rhetorical devices treasured by politicians of both parties but best kept a few paragraphs apart. One is the insistence that they don't follow the polls. The other is substituting the phrase "the American people" for the word "I" in sentences like, "The American people demand immediate passage of H.R. 5712, the Grotesque Subsidies to Widget Producers Act."