Are you Plato's Freed Man?

A common refrain from voters is they want a politician who isn't a slave to "the polls." Bill Clinton was the most notorious for this behavior as he once famously polled where his family should go on vacation. (I think they went horseback riding out west somewhere?)

And finally along came George W. Bush who used to boast often and loudly that he didn't pay much attention to the polls. And you know what I sort of believe him. Not surprisingly that strategy led Bush to the lowest approval ratings of any modern president since Nixon.

But then again I'm glad Obama ignored the polls on health care and pushed a bill through even in the dark days after the Scott Brown fiasco. So I'm not really concerned with whether politicians follow the polls. Sometimes I'm OK with it and sometimes I'm not.

What I'm most interested in is what do people really mean when they say they don't want a politician who follows the polls? My suspicion is that everybody assumes they have all the answers to the nation's ills and the only thing preventing politicians from doing what is necessary is that elected officials are slaves to the mob. If we could peer in to people's minds I bet many of them are screaming, "Why won't they listen to me?" In everyone's mind they are the Freed Man from Plato's Allegory of the Cave. Destined to speak the truth to the masses only to be killed for it.

But if my suspicions are right the paradox is that a majority of the country perceives itself as possessing the truth and yet think they are in the minority. So someone must be deluding themselves.

I will point to one rather striking example of how a most Americans say one thing and then immediately proceed to contradict themselves. Almost everyone says they want to tackle the deficit and get the budget back in order. But if you look at the graph below you will see most Americans support cutting almost nothing. And the programs they are willing to cut (ie. foreign aid) are so miniscule as to be practically meaningless.