WHY BUSH DOESN'T CARE WHAT YOU THINK

The headline of this Survey USA poll is "Most in USA Disagree with Bush Decision to Commute Libby Prison Sentence" -- but that's not quite accurate.

The key number is this: When asked, "Are you familiar with the legal case involving former White House employee Scooter Libby?," 45% of poll respondents say "No" or "Not sure."

Of the remainder, only 21% agree with the commutation -- but an additional 17% think there should have been a complete pardon, while 60% think the sentence should have stood.

That means fewer than a third of poll respondents think Libby got off easy. The rest fall into three categories: (1) pro-commutation, (2) pro-pardon, (3) don't know what the hell we're talking about.

That latter group is the biggest group, and Bush knows it. So he doesn't care about the people who are angry.

Look -- this never got onto most people's radar the way the war or Katrina or Terri Schiavo did. Maybe that would have changed if Patrick Fitzgerald had indicted someone most Americans had actually heard of, i.e., Rove or Cheney, but he didn't. So don't hold your breath waiting for the commutation to set off some sort of firestorm. (Huffing and puffing in the Beltway and the blogosphere don't count -- not if the anger doesn't spread to Main Street, which it won't.)

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AND, OF COURSE: How concerned is Fred Thompson about a possible anti-commutation backlash? So unconcerned that, just as he's entering the presidential race, he's issuing a statement praising the decision, thus reminding us that he's a prominent member of the Scooter Libby Legal Defense Trust committee. Wake me when that raises his negatives, even among Democrats.