Republican Mark Foley's resignation in disgrace, following disclosures of the congressman's obscene overtures to male House pages, occurred within the space of days; and the question of whether Foley's superiors condoned the inveigling was, in the same amount of time, answered with a valid No. Just as the public's attention neared eclipse, polls were held up like olympic judges' placards — almost half a dozen of them published, Newsweek, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Ipsos, Gallup.
Now, polls are practical barometers of opinion in the days after a political or cultural event, and it is only natural of a surveyer to probe topics that are on the mind. People have been asked about Foley and are a) not very happy about his indiscretions, and b) not particularly discriminate in who thought responsible for it. They are also, as relayed through statistics, suddenly and novelly of the belief that terrorism is best combated by Democrats. This is too astonishing to be fortuitous, though one is left suspecting a causal relationship not between event and poll respondent but rather vested interest and poll result. How does a homosexual man and his concupiscence lead the electorate to induce his party's comparative weakness in foreign policy? Collectively blamed, Republicans might certainly lose faith on matters of rectitude and propriety. But national defense? Is this Freudian?