Think about how much goodwill would have been generated if the president or Commerce Secretary Gary Locke had said last week, “These are not ordinary times; we’re running a $1.6 trillion deficit. As much as we would like to spend $2.5 million on an ad promoting the census during the Super Bowl, we just can’t justify the cost at this time.”

Instead it’s full-speed ahead on even the most extravagant government spending, and we get to see Ed Begley Jr. doing a schtick that would have been cut before the dress rehearsal on Saturday Night Live. I know the man’s an environmentalist; I didn’t know he recycled his performances as well. Putting it in terms he can understand, this whole idea is long past due for the compost heap, Ed.

Obama, and many around him, seem oblivious to how public attitudes towards spending get formed. Yes, the federal government spends its money on lots of worthwhile endeavors. (Just not Endeavour anymore.) Yup, we need tanks, we need planes, we need the FBI, we need air-traffic control, we need the Forest Service to watch for fires, etc. But the average voter knows that in addition to all the necessary stuff, there’s a lot of waste hidden in there. It could be a particularly odious earmark — think of how often McCain cited the bear DNA project — or mohair subsidies, or $4 million for “wood utilization research” or $100,000 worth of food and booze on congressional trips abroad or whatever bit of federal spending you find most outrageous. The more of these examples of waste that they see, the more they suspect that the whole federal budget is a scam and that the important stuff gets shortchanged so that our governing class can fleece the Treasury.

The decision to spend $2.5 million on a silly census ad is a remarkably damaging self-inflected wound, and I’m not sure anyone in the Obama administration grasps that . . .