God is love, love is beauty, Jennifer Aniston is beautiful, Jennifer Aniston is God.
New spin.
Perception is reality, we each have our own reality, our reality dictates our politics, politics is perception.
Award winning songwriter Bobby Braddock posted a personally created poll on Facebook the other day and the results are interesting.
For both obvious and not so obvious reasons.
From Mr. Braddock's page:
Here are the results of my Favorite President Poll. There were 73 who chose to participate. Your #1 choice gets five points, #2 gets four, etc. etc. That's fifteen votes per respondent, making a total of 1,095 votes. I'm listing these by Top Ten, first from the overall vote, then the demographic breakdowns. There were 22 Democrats, 14 Republicans, and 37 independents (I classified those indicating no party preference as independents). There were 48 born in the South (the eleven states of the old Confederacy), 25 born outside the South. There were 41 males, 32 females. A few replied by private message. Okay, here it is.
OVERALL
1 Abraham Lincoln Republican
2 George Washington Federalist
3 Franklin D. Roosevelt Democrat
4 John F. Kennedy Democrat
5 Ronald Reagan Republican
6 Thomas Jefferson Democratic Republican
7 Bill Clinton Democrat
8 Theodore Roosevelt Republican
9 Harry S. Truman Democrat
10 Barack Obama Democrat
DEMOCRATIC PARTICIPANTS
1 Abraham Lincoln Rep
2 Franklin D. Roosevelt Dem
3 John F. Kennedy Dem
4 George Washington Fed
5 Bill Clinton Dem
6 Barack Obama Dem
TIE 7 Thomas Jefferson Dem-Rep
TIE 7 Theodore Roosevelt Rep
TIE 7 Harry S. Truman Dem
TIE10 John Adams Fed
TIE10 Jimmy Carter Dem
REPUBLICAN PARTICIPANTS
1 Ronald Reagan Rep
2 Abraham Lincoln Rep
3 George Washington Fed
4 Thomas Jefferson Dem-Rep
TIE 5 John F. Kennedy Dem
TIE 5 Theodore Roosevelt Rep
7 Harry S. Truman Dem
8 Franklin D. Roosevelt Dem
9 George W. Bush Rep
10 Richard Nixon Rep
INDEPENDENT PARTICIPANTS
1 Abraham Lincoln Rep
2 George Washington Fed
3 Franklin D. Roosevelt Dem
4 John F. Kennedy Dem
5 Ronald Reagan Rep
6 Thomas Jefferson Dem-Rep
7 Bill Clinton Dem
8 Theodore Roosevelt Rep
9 Lyndon Johnson Dem
10 Harry S. Truman Dem
PARTICIPANTS BORN IN THE SOUTH
1 Abraham Lincoln Rep
2 George Washington Fed
3 Ronald Reagan Rep
TIE 4 John F. Kennedy Dem
TIE 4 Franklin D. Roosevelt Dem
6 Thomas Jefferson Dem-Rep
7 Bill Clinton Dem
8 Harry S. Truman Dem
9 Theodore Roosevelt Rep
10 Richard Nixon Rep
PARTICIPANTS BORN OUTSIDE THE SOUTH
1 Abraham Lincoln Rep
2 Franklin D. Roosevelt Dem
3 John F. Kennedy Dem
4 George Washington Fed
5 Thomas Jefferson Dem-Rep
6 Bill Clinton Dem
7 Theodore Roosevelt Rep
8 Barack Obama Dem
9 Harry S. Truman Dem
10 Jimmy Carter Dem
MALE PARTICIPANTS
1 Abraham Lincoln Rep
2 George Washington Fed
3 Franklin Roosevelt Dem
4 John F. Kennedy Dem
5 Ronald Reagan Rep
6 Thomas Jefferson Dem-Rep
7 Bill Clinton Dem
TIE 8 Theodore Roosevelt Rep
TIE 8 Harry S. Truman Dem
10 Barack Obama Dem
FEMALE PARTICIPANTS
1 Abraham Lincoln Rep
2 John F. Kennedy Dem
3 Franklin D. Roosevelt Dem
4 George Washington Fed
5 Ronald Reagan Rep
6 Bill Clinton Dem
7 Thomas Jefferson Dem-Rep
TIE 8 George W. Bush Rep
TIE 8 Barack Obama Dem
TIE10 George H.W. Bush Rep
TIE10 Jimmy Carter Dem
TIE10 Dwight Eisenhower Rep
TIE10 Harry S. Truman Dem
Having been an amateur student of political science through the years, I found Bobby's poll intriguing for a couple of reasons.
First, his use of the term "favorite".
Often, when it comes to opinion polls, people mistake the word "favorite" for the word "best".
Hats off to Bobby for, intentionally or not, steering clear of that speed bump by asking people to choose their "f" word.
"Best" immediately creates unnecessary issues, given that the word calls for a judgment on the part of the responder, an obviously subjective judgment since we all can agree to agree that one person's best is another person's fair to middlin.
"Favorite", on the other hand, simply asks for the responder's personal preference.
And while a lot of people would be, and likely are, shaking their heads and offering up an energetic WTF? at the idea of, for example, Barack Obama, showing up on any list of "best" Presidents (chances are those would be people who have just received, or are about to receive, "Dear John" letters from their health insurance carriers), there can be no reasonable retort to anyone who opts to pick him as a favorite.
Hey, some people, believe it or not, actually think the Kardashians are cool, you know?
What caught my politically slanted attention, though, was a name curiously missing from the list.
Any of the lists.
Lyndon B. Johnson.
Neither a fan nor an apologist I, it was still noteworthy to me that LBJ was nowhere to be found as anyone's choice of favorite.
Choices that not only included the aforementioned, much polarizing Obama, but also history's favorite black hearted varmint, Richard M.
And not that it matters, because, again, this whole exercise is obviously just a fun facts to know and tell kind of thing, but the OCD in my DNA can't help but be a little activated by the omission of the tall Texan.
Because a simple Google search of Johnson's accomplishments would provide a pretty formidable and laudable list.
Medicare.
Medicaid.
The Civil Rights Act.
Immigration and Nationality Act.
The creation of Public Broadcasting.
Not to mention the historically applauded, even revered, manner in which he grabbed securely hold of the wheel and kept the ship of state sailing safely through the horrific days and nights following the murder of John F. Kennedy.
Who, by the way, shows up pretty often on a number of the aforementioned lists.
Actually, in the top five, overall.
Number four, to be precise.
(The temptation here, of course, is to wax witty by offering "number four with a bullet", but, even after fifty years, it still seems a little too soon.)
Kennedy who, while certainly charismatic and, ultimately, near mythological, had really seen very little of his own legislative agenda succeed in the less than three years he held the office.
And any reading of any good book of the period will show that the Civil Rights Act, one of the most iconic of legislations in American history, was, in fact, put forward in the Kennedy administration but was stalled, moved forward and realized only by Johnson's skillful combination of his wheeling and dealing ability and his strategically brilliant method of invoking Kennedy's assassination as a means of offering legislators the chance to pay tribute to the fallen leader...by passing every bit of law that sat stuck in the "in" box right up to the moment the limo turned onto Elm Street in Dallas.
Fifty years later, though, Lyndon is nowhere to be seen on any of the lists.
Lists that include Jimmy Carter, who almost made Barack Obama look like a get it done kind of guy.
And Bill Clinton who did not...have sexual relations...with that woman....Miss Lewinsky.
And, of course, history's favorite black hearted varmint, Richard M.
What all of this comes down to, I think, is simply this.
In the grand scheme of things, especially when the grand scheme is seeking public office, it matters next to nothing what you stand for as opposed to what people think you stand for.
And, sad but true or not, how much voters like what you say, or even do, matters, if only a little, less than how much voters like you.
That says a lot about the political process.
Not to mention the quality of the government that results from that process.
But, what do I know?
I just like to read polls and wonder why people think the way they do.
It's not necessarily the best use of my time.
But it's one of my favorites.
No comments:
Post a Comment