The President should have visited Cairo this week – Cairo, Illinois that is.

A new Gallup poll confirms America’s “surging pessimism” about the job market coupled with an ongoing decline in consumer confidence. Strikingly, one in four Americans surveyed were worried that they or their spouses would lose their job in the next twelve months.

Yet another Gallup poll released this week finds that President Bush’s approval ratings remain consistently low across the entire range of domestic and foreign policy issues, with the glaring exception that the President’s approval ratings on the economy have plunged from 41 percent a year ago, to 35 percent in August of 2007, to a mere 27 percent today.

This “sharp deterioration” in the economic perceptions of Americans means one thing in this election year: It’s the Economy Stupid!

Howl at the moon if you like, but perception is becoming reality, my friends. That is, in the words of Anthony J. D’Angelo, “Reality doesn't bite, rather our perception of reality bites.”

And bite it will if Republicans ignore American perceptions. It is time to listen. After all, voters don’t care what we know; they only want to know we care. It may be trite, but it is the truth. It is always the truth at the ballot box. Bush can now ignore it, but McCain does so at his peril.

As Joshua Kurlantzick recently noted in his article entitled “Globalize This” published in the New Republic, “In the past, politicians sometimes were able to ignore middling support for free trade … But in an ever-tighter American political scene--one in which many voters increasingly blame trade for the insecurity of the modern workplace … no one can afford to lose votes.”

Now, let’s go back to Cairo, Illinois. Surely Obama has been there on the ground preaching “hope” in a town that has been decimated by free trade and globalization. You better believe that Obama has a hopeful platitude for displaced workers.

So, as many Americans are questioning the underlying premise that globalization is good for them, the task of educating the American public and letting them “know we care” falls squarely in the lap of the incumbent political party, especially as Hillary and Obama pander to organized labor.

As stated recently by U.S. Trade Representative Susan C. Schwab, “The forces of economic retrenchment and isolationism are rising on the winds of dubious economics and popular myths.” “No duh!” as my kids used to say. Continued...