Polls are trashy, tawdry things, horse-race baloney. Until you get the call.

It's last Sunday night, and the phone rings just as we're finishing dinner. The caller ID reads "CBS News." We're stone-cold screeners in my house, and what would CBS be calling about, anyway? Donations for the Dan Rather Legal Defense Fund?

I've had some wine and am feeling indulgent, so I pick up. It's a grandmotherly-sounding woman with one of those doleful New York accents that always melt me.

She's says she's doing a poll for CBS and The New York Times. Pollsters are salespeople first and they have to make you want the experience. But what's to want? A half-hour on the phone talking about the most over-talked, over-polled election in the history of the world? No wonder so many people hang up.

So they give me this dumpling of a beguiling grandma and she tells me her real name, which is not Sylvia, but I'll call her that to protect her anonymity, just as she's going to protect mine. Pollsters and pollees have these bonds.

Sylvia says this poll is going to be reported on The CBS Evening News With Dan Rather on Monday night, and in The New York Times on Tuesday morning. Would I be willing to participate?

Would I? Not only is Sylvia my special new friend (polling has its own Stockholm Syndrome), but she's offering me the very thing that every American wants in this hyperpolitical age: impact, influence, a seat at the Sunday talk-show table. This is a nation that used to admire astronauts and scientists who cured horrible diseases. Now, we aspire to be Carville and Matalin. Pollsters know this, and they dangle the bait so artfully.

You'd think that having a column would be enough impact, but as the bleary frequent fliers of the TV pundit circuit know, impact is a drug, and you can never get enough.

I've written whole columns trashing polls, never imagining I'd face the moment every citizen dreams about. My "vote" could be the one that swings this poll, and this poll could swing a swing state, or several. In short, I may be about to choose the next president of the United States.

(Plus, if I do everything Sylvia asks, maybe she'll pass on to Dan Rather a little document I've "typed up" about Ralph Nader's previously unreported shenanigans in the Champagne Unit of the Luftwaffe.)

Once I agree, Sylvia is all business. She recites the questions in the best deadpan fashion, so as to betray no bias. Still, when she asks, "Do you think Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon?" there's the slightest ironic lilt in her voice, and it makes me think she might be one of those brash freethinkers who have some doubts about this claim.

After we've said goodbye, it's the Saddam question that lingers.

As a culture, we don't trust facts any more, because experience has taught us not to. The White House launched a war based on "facts" that turned out to be false. Factual distortion is an accepted campaign practice; both parties do it shamelessly and pay almost no price. The most prestigious news outlets, including both sponsors of this poll, have been caught peddling fiction as fact. Facts are damaged goods.

It's pretend-facts—feelings and impressions, unverified claims—that now have all the juice. Anything outrageous that can be argued about on TV and keep the bloggers busy. A good story is one where the factual ground is shifting daily or even hourly. We're all water bugs now, skimming the surface, staying shallow, clicking from link to link. What's Drudge got? What's the tracking poll say about the lesbian thing? Who believes the Saddam-9/11 story? Watch the campaign as it unfolds, minute by minute, on any given day—it's almost never about facts.

Polls are ideally suited to this world. They seem factual. It's a fact that X number of people answered the questions in the following ways. But, at bottom, polls are only pseudo-factual. Read the fine print on a poll sometime, the tortuous paragraphs about "weighting" and "sampling errors." If a poll suggests that 47 percent of Americans will support George Bush on November 2, is that a fact? Polling is better than Tarot cards, but not much.

Polls are busywork for us water bugs. They keep the story feeling fresh and new. Plus, everyone involved gets to feel they had impact.

And we do.

I missed Dan Rather's Monday report on my poll and I forgot to TiVo it. Late that night, I went to the CBS News Web site and found this headline: "Bush Holds Narrow Lead in CBS Poll." The next morning, the poll was the lead story on the front page of The New York Times, but with this rather different headline: "Poll Shows Tie; Concerns Cited on Both Rivals." Which fact do you prefer?

Oh, and 30 percent of those surveyed in my poll said they believe Saddam was personally involved in the 9/11 attacks. I wonder what Sylvia thinks of that.