Popularity Contest

Gallup has a new set of data out on what sort of job Americans think a range of federal agencies are doing. The Centers for Disease Control came in near the top with 61 percent of respondents saying the agency is doing a good or excellent job, while the Federal Reserve Board lagged being, with only 30 percent saying that the agency was doing well.

I think it's always worth taking these ratings with a grain of salt, as an indicator of how the public thinks government is performing generally on a broad swath of issues, rather than as an indicator of informed opinion on government performance. For example, I doubt 61 percent of Americans even have contact with the CDC in a single year. But a whole lot of people heard about swine flu, got worried about it, and then were relieved they didn't get it. And so they think the federal government is doing a decent job at disease control, and when they hear the name of an agency that does that in a survey, they say they think said agency is doing a pretty good job. Ditto with the Federal Reserve, which touches all Americans, but in ways that are less directly traceable to affirmative contact with federal agencies. Folks don't feel great about the economy, they know the Federal Reserve has something to do with it, and so they say the Federal Reserve isn't doing great, entirely irrespective of anyone's efforts. It's also a fairly random sample. Why ask about the Central Intelligence Agency, but not the Defense Department, for example? In other words, this is sort of generally useful information to have, but I don't think the folks at the Federal Reserve should be despondent today.