Editor’s Note: John Zogby is the president and CEO of Zogby International and "the most accurate pollster" (Seattle Post Intelligencer, Cleveland Plain Dealer, USA Today) in the United States today. Since 1996, Zogby has polled for Reuters, and from 2000 to 2004 polled for NBC News. His clients also include MSNBC, CNBC, the New York Post, Fox News, and nearly every daily newspaper in New York State, among others. His book, The Way We’ll Be: The Zogby Report on the Transformation of the American Dream, was published by Random House in August 2008. He is married to Kathleen Zogby, a retired special education teacher, and has three sons.

MARY: John, I sent out a lot of copies of your book, The Way We’ll Be, because a lot of the people that I know were in advertising or marketing or the research business. And everybody is crazy about it. You must be selling lots and lots of them.
   
JOHN: It’s doing very well, but to hear that from you is better than the Good Housekeeping seal of approval. You are a great lady and this is an honor for me.

MARY: Oh, thank you. But the thing about the book that is so wonderful is that it’s fun. I’ve read similar books on the subject and have spent a lot of time with pollsters and researchers. But this is the first time I think that I’ve read a lot of really revealing information that’s useful and at the same time was so entertaining. You have made it very interesting to read. It’s a terrific book.

JOHN: Well, thank you.

MARY: How did you put it together?

JOHN: I set out to write a far different book and one that was not necessarily going to be so upbeat. In fact, I thought that it was going to be about how the American dream changed, how people moved away from the drive to succeed or the desire to acquire and were essentially giving up. And basically, the more I delved into the numbers and asked more questions, a completely different picture emerged, a picture of a movement toward living within limits, embracing diversity, looking inward and demanding authenticity. I realized that we had something different here. The generation now rising to power is fundamentally different in its aspirations and expectations from "the Greatest Generation" that’s now fading into the sunset. We’re still an optimistic people, but what the numbers and data told me, as I really started researching this book, is that in a real and deep way we’ve changed the terms of what "optimism" entails, and have come to accept and even embrace our membership in and our responsibilities to the global community. And as it turns out today, with the stock market being the way it is, with the general malaise in the country regarding our political system, an upbeat, optimistic book is connecting with people.

MARY: I would think so because it’s so gloomy out there. But tell me, first of all, how did you decide demographically who you were going to talk to? Did you plan it in terms of people from different parts of the country? Or doesn’t that matter?

JOHN: These are regular polls that we conduct all the time on a nationwide basis, going back 16, 17 years. We would add questions to our regular nationwide samples. But I cut my eyeteeth in this business in the 1980s doing lots of local and regional polls, and always took the opportunity when I had a local government client or a sheriff or a product that was in a regional market, to ask some of my own questions, to feel that I got to dig down a whole lot deeper by going beyond nationwide circles. I could get down deep into locales and regions and really get at people where they were on their most intimate level.

MARY: That really comes through and that’s why the book is so personal and funny and touching. Of course, everybody refers to you as the rock star of public opinion. Very Short List said that. When you talked to people, were you constantly surprised? Do people, individually, surprise you when you’re talking to them?

JOHN: They do. They do.