| Understanding the mood and opinions of the Arab public is a critical challenge, given the continuing struggle for peace, economic growth and stability in the Middle East. As the people of the region respond to a wide range of dynamics, including American efforts to jump-start the Middle East peace process, stabilize Iraq and counter Iran's bid for hegemony, accurately gauging Arab public opinion is an imperative. |
(( I believe we had better spare Aardvarkville this one, Mr. Bones, and sing it for the Muses and ourselves. Over there they are bewitched by PubDip, "public diplomacy," and would find our heresies heretical in a flash. ))
"Life is unfair," but there it is -- tank-grown thought imported from Harvard Yard and Mass. Ave. NW and so on is a good deal more likely to influence the governments of the Middle East than "the mood and opinions of the Arab public."
Dr. Telhami did not have Mr. Zogby ask the street Arabs about their own masters, though (1) such investigation is hardly necessary, and anyway (2) a certain amount of indirect light is cast on the subject by enthusiasm for outlandish Nasralláhs and al-’Asads. [1]
Prof. Lynch’s commentariat responds in a conventional way: like majorities, polls are self-evidently dispositive when they support the policy that one proposes to dictate, but easy to pooh-pooh as inaccurate when they do not. That has never seemed a well-thought-out position to me, but maybe Dr. Pollock’s book will justify it.
Until corrected, though, I wonder whether polling that can not ever ask a question like "If the presidential election were tomorrow, would you vote for J. Sidney McCain or for Lucy P. Loser?" is really the same institution as polling that asks it frequently. Ordinarily that is the only question with an answer not only within the range of the patients’ knowledge, but under their control as well. Accordingly, it might be regarded as the sole genuinely political question in so-called political polling, the rest being sociology fodder in the West, primarily of interest to the secret state police elsewhere. [2]
Dr. Telhami, or whoever wrote that silly-to-detestable blurb, cries "critical challenge" and "imperative" without any explanation of why anybody in particular should care what the subjects of Levantine régimes think about matters of state. If the street Arabs were on the point of rising to replace the existing government rackets with mob rule, one would naturally want to guess in advance what the mob might do with power if they get it. Yet surely they are not at any such point? And surely Dr. Telhami does not suppose them to be? So what is it "imperative" that the Masters of the Universe should DO with this "critical" data?
Happy days.
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[1] Dr. Telhami’s own recommended silver lining is his least uninteresting discovery, namely "the emerging popularity of modernizing Sunni Arab leaders, particularly Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid al Maktoum of Dubai, when respondents identify the two leaders they admire most." His Emirial Serenity only gets six percent of the admiration, however, the same slice as that other modernizing Sunni, M. Bin Ládin. (Cf. "Slide 68 of 83.")
[2] Everybody’s mukhábarát has been in roughly this line of work for a long time without waiting for the Brookings Institution. Since those good folks do not often publish their findings, Dr. Telhami and Mr. Zogby are undoubtedly making a contribution. Granted. But what is critical or challenging or imperative about their contribution?
Taken as para-academic knowledge obtained and valued for its own sake, who could object? But that is not at all the way the product was advertised.
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