By John Krull
TheStatehouseFile.com

INDIANAPOLIS – The call came at dinner.

It was a pollster.

Normally, pollsters don’t like to talk with people who do the work I do. We, journalists, pay too much attention to politics and politicians. We skew results when the surveyors want to sample how a distracted public feels about people running for office and the issues and events those people debate.

But the woman on the other end of the line said she was willing to talk with me, even though I was a journalist and even I told her there were some questions I couldn’t and wouldn’t answer.

It turned out it was a poll focusing on Indiana Sen. John Ruckelshaus, R-Indianapolis. It was hard to tell whether the Ruckelshaus campaign or some independent operation sponsored the poll. When I asked who paid for the poll, the poll takers answer was opaque, if not evasive.

At least two things about the poll were interesting.

The first involved the initial questions.

Those questions were aimed at finding out how respondents felt about the turmoil troubling the land – and how they felt about the people dealing with those troubles.

The poll taker wanted to know how I felt about President Donald Trump and his Democratic opponent in the presidential race, former Vice President Joe Biden. She asked about Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb and his Democratic opponent, former Indiana Health Commissioner Woody Myers.

All standard stuff in polling.

The next sequence of questions was where things became intriguing.

They were designed to determine how much all the upheaval at the national level in Donald Trump’s America was trickling down to the state and local levels. The questions sought to elicit information about whether respondents distinguished between the anger and rage that now are a routine part of our country’s dialogue.

Put another way, the questions were an attempt to find out if elected officials at the state and local level are being blamed or rewarded in any way for Donald Trump’s presidency.

That was one interesting line of questions.

The other came near the end.

That sequence focused on discovering how frightened respondents might be – and learning what things scared them the most.

The woman taking the poll listed many of the concerns afflicting the land now. She asked me if I was most worried about the COVID-19 pandemic, affordable health care, race relations in America, economic uncertainty, education, and other issues.

“All of them” was not an acceptable answer.

She wanted me to prioritize.

Which was a bit like asking if I found the possibility of having a heart attack less pleasant than contracting cancer, having a stroke or getting shot. Each option can kill and one’s concern about the threat depends upon context.

The same went for this list of national afflictions.

I made my choices – health care and race relations – but at the same time had two thoughts.

The first was that this is a list of serious challenges. Solving any one of these problems will require wisdom, determination, and skill.

Solving all of them demands an almost superhuman effort.

The second thought was that no one leading our country at this moment seems all that interested in – much less capable of – solving these problems.

Exploiting them?

Yes.

Solving them?

No.

Perhaps that’s why, as the poll revealed, at least some state and local politicians are trying to figure out if the unholy mess the federal government has become is tainting them in any way.

It is, but not in the way they think.

The fact that we have these big problems and that no one seems to be stepping up to solve them – no one seems willing to ask for or demand genuine sacrifices of the American people so we can meet common challenges – adds to the anxiety, which builds to frustration and then escalates straight to rage.

That poll will reveal how upset people are.

It won’t, though, ease their frustrations or fears.

That’s what leaders are supposed to do.

FOOTNOTE: John Krull is director of Franklin College’s Pulliam School of Journalism and publisher of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students.