Just hung up from a phone survey on the recall election. As with other surveys I have taken, the questions are engineered to steer the respondent to a certain result, or to make it impossible to answer a question the way the respondent would really like to. I wish I had a good enough memory to go over the questions one by one, but the gist of it was "what would it take to make me leery of voting "yes" to recall Davis?"

The questions mentioned only a limited number of candidates. One list of only six candidates included Larry Flynt, for God's sake. I'd vote for Gallagher first. Many questions dealt only with Davis and Arnold,* which kind of sucked since I favor Tom McClintock as my first choice. However, I have never let a question like that go by without pointing out to the pollster that the poll was trying to fix my answers. I do this politely, of course. Pollsters are nice people hired to do the job by the political hacks that set the polls up.

The last thing on Earth the Democrats want to see is a full-bore competent Republican politician as governor. They are basically trying to pretend McClintock doesn't exist.

One question: If Bustamente dropped out, how would this affect how I voted on the recall? "I'd still vote yes," I told her. "But you couldn't pull Bustamente out of this election with a boathook. He sneaks into Davis' office to try out the governor's chair, and Davis has to chase him out of there." Gave the pollster the giggles, which is always worth a few points. Most of them are well aware that the polls are designed to steer the rat to the cheese.

* I hate looking up the spelling of his last name.