It's too early for prez polls

People from all walks of life have been carping and complaining that our next presidential election is starting earlier than ever. You'll get no argument from me; we can now officially debate which begins much to early - the Christmas buying season or our presidential elections.

Anyway, call me crazy, but even though the candidates, declared and undeclared, seem to be getting a fair amount of press these days, isn't it a little early for polls? At least six months early? The first primary is about nine months away, so polls are meaningless now, right? Yea, sure.

This is a cover that the Philadelphia Daily News ran on February 28, pimping a poll proclaiming that Pennsylvania is turning red. More specifically, that McCain or Giuliani would beat Hillary or Obama, according to the latest poll.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but what a meaningless cover story. I'm not saying it because I'm no fan of Giuliani or McCain. I'm saying it because nine months is an eternity in American politics.

While Pennsylvania is a closely divided state, recent history has it trending it blue; the DemocratIC nominee has carried the state during the last four presidential elections, and Democrat Ed Rendell just began his second term as the state's governor. And it's not exactly like Republicans haven't tried, either; President Bush visited Pennsylvania more than any other state (aside from Texas) during his first term, and the state still went to John Kerry in 2004. (Democrats won the "Battle of Pennsylvania," but lost the war.)

I wonder if the motive for the Daily News running the above cover on Feb. 28 has anything to do with the paper's chief executive, Brian Tierney (right)? The former PR flak and Republican operative led a group of investors that bought both of Philadelphia's newspapers in March 2006.

So far, the jury's out on Tierney's influence over editorial content, (so that rates as a positive)but there's no question that the 2008 presidential election will be the biggest test of Tierney's leadership.

I'm no fan of Tierney's, and never will be. He has a checkered past as a PR executive when it came to the press. It's more than a little ironic that he became the chief executive of Philadelphia's two daily newspapers and philly.com. I certainly don't miss his ridiculously partisan election night diatribes on Comcast. (How a PR executive qualifies to give prognostications about politics is beyond me, but Comcast doesn't have a good track record of picking commentators at all; having Ed Rendell do post-game analysis of Eagles games is equally stupid.)

My point is that polls are a waste of time and money right now. It's much too early, but that's not likely to stop the media from conducting them anyway and reporting the results like the 2008 election hangs in the balance.