How Cozy

Consistent with any tenuous relation to the truth, sooner or later the lie becomes so sweet and useful that you start to believe it. John Rosenthal who runs the website and blog Transatlantic Intelligencer has an article on the current Tech Central Station discussing a situation which has grown into just that: the relationship between the Elysée and the AP/Ipsos polling operation, specifically the unusual amount of access, power, and priveledge extended to Didier Truchot.

«The most recent AP-Ipsos poll, released on November 11, brought bad news for President Bush. The headline told the story: "Poll: Most Americans Say Bush Not Honest". Coming just after the indictment of vice presidential aide "Scooter" Libby for perjury in the so-called CIA leak affair, the implication was clear: the majority of Americans were beginning to get what Democrats and Frenchmen had understood all along (or almost): "Bush lied!"

But this was not the first time that an AP-Ipsos poll had been the bringer of bad tidings for the President. Back in September, it was an AP-Ipsos poll that in the aftermath of Katrina first showed the President's approval rating falling below the landmark 40 percent barrier, thus confirming the widespread perception -- widespread, at any rate, in France -- that Americans were unhappy about the President's handling of and/or responsibility for extreme weather phenomena. Curiously, other polls conducted at the time (Rasmussen, CNN/USA Today) showed the President's ratings holding in the high 40 percent range.»

Here they are reporting on themselves:

«AP press releases identify Ipsos coyly as an "international polling firm". Ipsos's own releases on its AP work describe the company as "a leading global survey-based market research company" -- as well as "non-partisan" and "objective". One would hardly expect them to say otherwise. But here is what neither AP nor Ipsos want Americans to know and assiduously avoid saying: Ipsos is a French polling firm. Not that this should matter per se. But AP and Ipsos undoubtedly fear that to many Americans it might or that, in light of the current climate of Franco-American relations, it might at least raise some doubts about Ipsos's impartiality and objectivity.»

But the relationship with governmental power is a bit more disturbing, and looks like a case of one hand washing another:

Here's how a November 2001 profile in the French economics weekly l'Expansion described the cozy relationship of Ipsos co-President Jean-Marc Lech to the occupant of the Elysée Palace:

«During the two seven-year-terms of François Mitterrand, he was one of the advisors to the prince and he held open house at Copenhagen, the famous restaurant on the Champs Elysées not far from the "castle". Since he began working for Jacques Chirac, he has left the Champs and stays put in the XV arrondissement at lunchtime. Now, he merely delivers his confidential polls personally to the antechamber of the President.»

The same sort of primitive push-polling was seen in the 2004 US presidential election, and was laughed at, even by some in the MSM. Why then would anyone believe a poll knowing who owns to two red bat-phones which are connected to one another? Simple – self flattery.