Views about business--and many other key institutions--were unusually positive during the good economic times of the late 1990s. Now, after a flurry of corporate scandals, have more negative views about the business sector set in, or have Americans gotten past the run of CEO misdeeds?

In Pew’s 1999 question, 73 percent of respondents said they had a very or mostly favorable opinion of business corporations. Business did take a short-term hit when scandals involving Enron and WorldCom broke in late 2001. More recently, business and other institutions have suffered from a generally sour mood in the public.

Specifically, in Pew’s December question, 57 percent had a favorable opinion of business. Gallup’s data shows high confidence in big business dropping from 28 percent in the spring of 2001 to 20 percent in the spring of 2002. It’s 22 percent today.

In reality, despite the modest dips in support, public attentiveness to business scandals was never especially high. A November 2003 Pew Research Center report concluded that the business scandals had a “minimal impact” on public opinion. There are several reasons.

First, people didn’t think the kind of behavior they saw at Enron would happen at their own companies. For example, in six polls conducted by Gallup and UBS since April 2002, more than 80 percent said that the people who run their companies are honest and ethical.

Second, people have long been wary of the honesty and ethics of big business, and in that sense, the scandals were nothing new. Twenty-eight percent told Zogby in July 2002 that the revelations were “relatively new,” but 64 percent said that they were commonplace.

Nor did the scandals prove particularly harmful to one party or the other. Americans think that both parties are too close to big business. The lack of a partisan cast appears to have dulled the political impact.

People wanted the wrongdoers punished, but there is no evidence that they wanted to clamp down on business in any significant new way.

A Businessman for President? When asked by Fox News and Opinion Dynamics in early February who they would rather see as our next president, 33 percent said a businessman, 21 percent a general, 21 percent a career politician--and 2 percent an actor.

Congress’ Ratings. Pew’s Feb. 1-5 poll finds the public’s views of Congress “at their lowest point in a decade,” with 47 percent expressing an unfavorable opinion, and 44 a favorable one.

Trade Talks. Americans have long been ambivalent about foreign trade, which they like in principle, but worry about in practice.

The Jan. 20-25 CBS News/New York Times poll shows that 67 percent--a number virtually unchanged from the 69 percent recorded in 1996--say the effects of trade on the economy are good. Twenty percent said the effects are bad.

At the same time, 64 percent (compared to 63 percent in 1996) say trade restrictions are necessary to protect domestic industries.

Of those with less than a high school education, 52 percent say the effects of free trade on the economy are good, compared to 84 percent of those with a postgraduate degree who say the same thing.

Measuring by income levels shows much of the same pattern. Still, 60 percent of those with incomes under $50,000 a year say it is a good thing for the economy.

Blog Readership. When Gallup asked Internet users in early December how they use the Internet, 67 percent said they frequently send or read e-mail. Twenty percent said they did this occasionally and 13 percent said they did it rarely or never.

As for reading Web logs, 9 percent said they did this frequently and 11 percent occasionally (two categories that collectively represent about 40 million Americans), while 79 percent said they rarely or never read blogs.

A third said they spend more than one hour a day using the Internet.

A Woman for President. In 1937, Gallup asked people whether they would vote for a woman for president if she were qualified “in every other respect” (a question that would never be asked today and one which Gallup soon changed). A third of those surveyed said yes.

In the January 20-25 CBS News poll, 92 percent said they would vote for a woman for president if she were qualified for the job. A smaller majority, 55 percent, said they thought America was ready to elect a woman president, while 38 percent said it wasn’t.

The early February Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll asked about a group of potential candidates and found that 39 percent said a female candidate would most likely be elected first, followed by an African American (20 percent), a Jew (12 percent), and a Hispanic (6 percent).

Karlyn H. Bowman is a resident fellow at AEI.