Dissing Winston

We haven't had much to say about Andrew Sullivan's musings lately, not least because that beat is well covered by other Washingtonian magazine-approved sites. In addition, he's been making marginally more sense (albeit from a very low base) and in particular, one of today's posts correctly gets at "smart conservative" David Brooks' fairly obvious attempts to distance himself from the fundamentalist Christian movement of which his opinions have made him a part. As always with Sullivan, though, there's a considerable element of transference and projection in his critiques of fellow conservatives.

But he's up to his old tricks when he links to a study showing that a poll of British academics found Clement Attlee rated a more successful 20th century Prime Minister of Britain than Winston Churchill. It's funny (sort of) to see him get so worked up about Abu Ghraib (as he should be), but then be equally distressed at evidence of leftist bias amongst British professors, although we'll grant that the enormous salaries and wealth of British academics, not to mention their dominant control of London's financial and media institutions does make them a force to be reckoned with.

Anyway, what about this outrageous study itself? Follow the link. The sample size is 139, representing about half of those polled. There is no control for whether those who actually responded are representative of the overall group. The respondents do report their own party leanings and about half are Labour. But check out the Tory responders -- of which there are a grand total of 11 (this is what happens in the world of small sample sizes). Anyway, even Sully's beloved Tory academics don't put the bulldog highest. They have Maggie at Number 1. Sully says

Without Churchill, there wouldn't have been an independent Britain [for Attlee] to wreck.

Or for St Margaret of Finchley to unwreck.