With the president in Indiana today, taking the case for economic stimulus to the people -- or rather, taking Washington to see why the people need an economic stimulus -- this post on how folks outside Washington haven't been too dismayed by Cabinet snafus is worth reading to get an idea of the things that are actually noticed outside of an election year:
The key points are these:
* How many Americans really know what's going on with Geithner, Daschle, et al.? Who's following these stories that closely? The relatively small fraction of people who follow politics on a daily basis.
* And most of these people already have pretty fixed ideas about Obama. Hence it's hardly any surprise that Obama's poll numbers didn't dip suddenly with the news of Geithner's or Daschle's tax problems. Instead, his rating has steadily ticked down a few points since inauguration, likely as some Republicans have changed their minds (a trend that should continue). It hardly seems that “the country” or “Americans” are really all that exercised about this.
* Rarely does a presidency or a presidential election actually turn on malfeasance. It takes a scandal of pretty large proportions — Watergate, Iran/contra — to affect a president's public standing. Even the parade of Clinton-era scandals didn't affect his approval rating all that much. And trust in government went up! The public just doesn't weight minor scandals that much, if at all. And scandals about Cabinet nominees not paying taxes are minor indeed.
I'd hypothesize that the public generally does notice the broad effects of public policy initiatives.
-- Tim Fernholz
