Remember how whenever John Kerry was in the news, his poll numbers went down? But when he took time off from the cameras, his poll numbers went up? Voters seemed to like the idea of John Kerry more than Kerry himself. It’d be interesting to know if something similar plagues Obama. Would his numbers go up if he just took some time off from the public eye? Conventional wisdom says no, of course. He’s more popular than his agenda, etc. The CW might be right, but it’d still be interesting to test the hypothesis. The problem is that Obama has never been off center stage long enough to try it out (though he did try during his vacations. But his first vacation was too big a “news story” to ignore and his Christmas vacation coincided with the underbomber attack, pulling Obama back into the limelight).