AP Pollsters Go Off-Leash

Amidst the multi-year media onslaught that our presidential election process has become, I’ve had to adjust my critical thinking filter to an even finer sieve than before. Sometimes it occurs to me that at least the news media is flooding the landscape with an issue that matters to people’s lives. At other times, though, the campaign overkill reaches such a level of absurdity that I wonder if perhaps these press hacks aren’t qualified to tell us about anything more important than Anna Nicole’s baby daddy, so maybe they should stick with that.

Consider for example this AP/Yahoo News poll and writeup published yesterday, which concludes that John McCain is the candidate of choice among pet owners.

A once-over of the article is sufficient to detect the sketchiness of the very premise:

…From George Washington’s foxhound “Drunkard” to George W. Bush’s terriers “Barney” and “Miss Beazley,”…

Hold on a second – George Washington named his dog Drunkard? That’s just… unkind. Are we sure that guy was the father of our country? I mean, in The Jerk Steve Martin had a golden retriever named Shithead, but the name wasn’t his idea – he’d wanted to call him Lifesaver. And he was supposed to be… you know, a jerk! Geez. I don’t think I’ll ever look at a dollar bill the same way again.

By the way, in confirming the thing about Washington’s dog’s name, I discovered that multiple other sources identify Drunkard as not a foxhound, but a black and tan coonhound. So already, AP is playing fast and loose with the facts. Anyway, onward to the real point:

…pets are a longtime presidential tradition for which the presumed Republican nominee seems well prepared, with more than a dozen.

The apparent Democratic nominee Barack Obama, on the other hand, doesn’t have a pet at home.

The pet-owning public seems to have noticed the difference. An AP-Yahoo! News poll found that pet owners favor McCain over Obama 42 percent to 37 percent, with dog owners particularly in McCain’s corner.

A complete look at the article’s polling methodology such as this one by Mark Blumenthal reveals it as a logical house of cards. But setting even that aside, I as an Obama-supporting pet owner who has never once received a phone call from a pollster, have a few additional questions. Specifically:

Richard Powell, 79, of Spokane, Wash., whose dog passed away last fall, said if a person owns a pet that “tells you that they’re responsible at least for something, for the care of something.”

…If voters identify with a guy who owns pets, it’s easy to see why they’d like the Arizona senator. He has a veritable menagerie, including Sam the English springer spaniel, Coco the mutt, turtles Cuff and Link, Oreo the black and white cat, a ferret, three parakeets and a bunch of saltwater fish.

So who takes care of this motley herd while Senator McCain travels the campaign trail for well over a year? When was the last time he stopped in at Petco and picked up some birdseed? Or grabbed the trowel and a paper bag and swept the backyard for land mines? I’d lay odds that it’s been quite awhile, possibly forever.

Except for nakedly partisan outlets such as Fox News and its ilk, I’m normally circumspect about the common accusations that the MSM is coddling one candidate or another. Reason dictates that the light in which a feature or story portrays a candidate is incidental to the news organization’s chief concern, which of course is sales. An inconclusive poll result would not justify the resources spent to conduct it, since there would be nothing worth writing about.

Photo: Flickr – Barack Obama

But reason has its limitations. I can’t help feeling that the Republicans are tarnishing the honor of my dog. Bastards. Try to co-opt my dog to score a cheap political point? That’s it, you little old homunculus – now you’re really, really going down. We’re going to send you home to Phoenix so you can learn to take care of your animals.

I know, the media is at least as much to blame. The thing is that they, unlike Sen. McCain, are not going away. All we can do about them is try to make them better at what they’re supposed to be doing. As I alluded to earlier, the mass media has massed itself to such a point that it’s easy to lose sight of the simple concept of choosing a President. It’s supposed to be an election, but it feels like the siege of Troy. I plan on hunkering down and waiting it out with my dog. My Obama-loving dog.