They don't know Jack: the Abramoff scandal thrills Washington but bores voters.

• Author: Weigel, David
• Position: Columns: David Weigel - Column

SIX MONTHS AGO, Washington pundits could agree on one thing: The Jack Abramoff scandal was going to shake the city to its foundations. New York Times columnist Frank Rich opined that "Watergate itself increasingly looks like a relatively contained epidemic of corruption" next to l'affaire de Jack. Awarding a journalism prize to Washington Post investigative reporter Susan Schmidt, Bloomberg's Washington managing editor, Al Hunt, said "the Abramoff affair may be the biggest and sleaziest scandal since Watergate" Rumors swirled that dozens of representatives and senators would be dodging indictments. House Speaker Dennis Hastert? Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid? President Bush? No one was safe.

But they're all safe now. The Abramoff scandal has largely been a bust--a D.C. version of the 2005 Red Sox or Lady in the Water. The dozens of ruined careers have been pared to four: failed Georgia lieutenant governor candidate Ralph Reed, former Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas), Rep. Bob Ney (R-Ohio), and, pending the next election's results, and Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.). The Democrats, who spent months talking about a Republican "culture of corruption," dialed down that message and pivoted to simpler, worn-in issues like the minimum wage.

In April The Weekly Standard's Matthew

Continetti published The K Street Gang, a wide-ranging history of Abramoff and the lobbying culture in GOP-dominated Washington. Gang was promoted to millions of readers and viewers on The Daily Show, in The Washington Post, in reason. Doubleday printed an initial run of 50,000 copies. According to Nielsen Bookscan, around 47,000 of them never left the bookstore shelves. The word went out to publishers and agents: Don't buy any Abramoff books.

Why did the fedora-sporting lobbyist who was going to bring down the GOP become such a dim star in the 2006 election campaigns? Because Washingtonians failed to grasp how poorly the "corruption" issue was playing beyond their borders, and looked past what voters really were angry about.

Americans never caught on to the details of the Abramoff scandal and never indicated that they cared about it. One reason: They didn't need convincing that Congress was crooked. A January Gallup poll found 49 percent of the public agreed that "most members of Congress are corrupt" Gallup took the survey again in May, after Abramoff stories had led nightly newscasts and eloped with the A-I pages of Americans' newspapers. The new "pox on all their...