One of the goofiest things that happened during the 2004 presidential election was when a national poll asked Americans whether they would rather have a beer with George W. Bush or the Democratic candidate, John Kerry. A majority of those polled indicated they would like to hoist a Heineken with Bush -- how did that method of choosing a candidate work out for us? -- and we appear to be at it again, with this year's version of that nonsense announced late last week.

I'm sure you heard about it over the weekend… An Associated Press-Yahoo! News poll released Friday showed these to be among the most compelling things we should consider when selecting the next President of the United States: Between Barack Obama and John McCain, who would we rather watch a football game with and, as a slightly more dignified follow-up, who would we choose to be our child's teacher.

For the record, Obama was the choice on both counts but let's not endorse these ridiculous questions by dwelling on those results.

It's actually quite sad that in a poll with 34 published pages of questions, these are undoubtedly the only two that made it to your television or newspaper over the weekend.

What I found interesting is that, like most comprehensive polls that include questions about the Iraq war, the AP-Yahoo survey shows once again that the vast majority of Americans want some form of timeline for exiting Iraq -- a result that has not changed much in the last few years.

Please go here to read the rest.