[FRIAM] Friam Digest, Vol 38, Issue 3

[Marcus G. Daniels]

Phil Henshaw wrote:
> I'm very pleased you also see the curve as reflecting a pattern in the
> phenomenon of public trust
I said it was reasonable to posit that.  Also reasonable to posit other 
things to find the model that explains the most while assuming the 
least, e.g. that `trust' is something all people seek, and thus some 
kind of universal explanation for human inclinations.
> I think you're right on to observe that
> the decay pattern started *prior* to any of the big mistakes that later
> confirmed it.    One thing that might produce that pattern is excessive
> original expectations, that we may have had 'irrational exuberance' for
> things we thought we could do about 9/11 and as a community, we held on
> to the desire to retaliate even as our ability to believe it possible
> kept getting steadily harder and harder...   
>   
Actually I meant the period prior to 9/11.  There appears to be a 
downward trend there too. 

A contrasting hypothesis being roughly "Things go bad for typical 
presidents in this democracy, it's just a question of how fast."  Put 
another way, that intensity of presidential criticism scales with time, 
automatically as a general collective protection mechanism.  As 
cumulative deaths in Iraq are necessarily only increasing, and 
popularity is going down steadily, it's no surprise to see a 
correlation.  (And they say this.)  I find the volatility and change 
plots in the paper more convincing correlates of Iraq-related events, 
e.g. figure 6 and 8.  And really not a big difference in Table 2 
comparing change in log gas price vs. cumulative U.S. deaths in Iraq / 
1000.  It would be interesting to see what they find should they look at 
local trend models, as they indicate they want to (page 20).

Marcus