Mobocracy

Publishers Weekly

Conservative fears of democracy as "mobocracy" and "undermining authority" are as old as democracy itself; political commentator Robinson updates these fears with a highly selective attack on media polling. He addresses serious concerns rising voter ignorance, apathy and alienation, conflict-based horse-race politics, and the increased breakdown of deliberative democracy but does so with little sense of the structural, historical and analytical approaches used by more progressive authors to approach these same problems. He claims inaccurately that voter participation peaked in 1960, rather than 1876, and he connects voter apathy with the welfare state, ignoring the high voter turnout figures in Europe's more robust welfare states. Robinson rightly identifies the methodological sloppiness riddling most media polls and criticizes the media for not discussing their data-gathering procedures, but he's guilty of the same crime he examines polls selected on no apparent basis beyond his agenda of conflating their faults with the media's alleged liberal bias (which he asserts but never tries to prove). By insisting that polls saved Clinton from "the rule of law," Robinson ignores substantive arguments against impeachment by hundreds of constitutional scholars, as well as media calls for impeachment or resignation that contradict his claim that media agendas drove the polls. True believers will find a comforting elaboration of cherished beliefs others will find much heat, but scant light. (Mar.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

A right-wing pundit rails against the use of polls in journalism today. If the media are obsessed with polling, Robinson is obsessed with their obsession. This ham-fisted study only reinforces what everyone knows about polls and statistics: Anyone can make them say anything. For Robinson, polling shows how the media suffer from an incorrigible liberal slant that can be exorcised only by the cool application of (his) common sense. He informs us that-surprise, surprise!-the question a pollster asks foreordains the answer he or she will be given. In this way, he concludes, liberals saved the presidency of Bill Clinton. The questions the public was asked revealed that most of them thought the president had done wrong in re Lewinsky and that impeachment was a good thing, but that they didn't want him thrown out of office. Although Robinson can't seem to keep these contradictory ideas in mind simultaneously, he does manage a convincing attack on one aspect of polling: Most people, when they answer poll questions, don't even know the personalities concerned or the substance of the questions posed. In this sense, slanted questions are dangerous, as they tip ignorant citizens toward cooked-up responses politicians then use to back up their policy initiatives. Bill Clinton wasn't a president driven by polls but a president whose polls drove the nation. Robinson's rants about George Washington and the first president's views on public education, intended to instruct the reader how to clear the stains polls have left on democracy, come off as amateur revisionist history. His attack on the limp wrists of journalists, however, strikes a chord. Instead of granting the media's risible claim that pollsare objective, he asks, why not encourage a more openly partisan press to express its biases more articulately? A mediocre take on an aspect of politics that deserves more critical attention.