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PresidentObamaremains the most important person in the midterm election, which is now just a week away. He is not as unpopular as his predecessor was at this point eight years ago, but he is still unpopular, andDemocratic candidatesaretwisting themselves in knots to create distance from him.

Second-terms are seldom happy affairs, and this one has been no exception. The last two years have witnessedrevelations about thesurveillance state,Vladimir Putin's provocations, and the rise of the Islamic State. The IRS quasi-scandal and the revelations of worrisome gaps at the Secret Service have kept the press office at the White House busy. So has the catastrophiclaunch ofthe Obamacare Web site last year and thechaoticresponse to the Ebola epidemicthis year.

Yet, despite what you might read in the news, Obama'sunpopularity likely haslittle to do with these events. After Obama won reelection, his approval ratings were positive. They began declining early in 2013, before any of these crises developed. They continued to erode at a steady rate, regardless of the headlines from week to week,beforeleveling off at around 40 percent, according to the latest polling from The Washington Post-ABC News. Indeed,the ratings have hardly budged throughout the past 12 months, as Gallup's polling shows.

Frank Newport,editor-in-chief of Gallup, described this trend simply as "a regression tothe mean," the gradual waning of the public's goodwill toward the president that he'd built up during his campaign for reelection and "the halo that comes with victory."This kind of decline is common for a president following a successful election campaign.

Theeffects of badpress,as measured by the polls, have always disappeared after a few days. For example, the presidents' ratings were alreadymore or less stableby the time ofthe launch of healthcare.gov. Somegood news aboutthe health care law a few months later,when the administration announced that it had met its enrollment targets, inflated the president's poll numbers for a few weeks, before they declined again to their previous level.

"If you look at the graph, you just see a gradual erosion from the high point," Newport said. By now, he added, most people seem to have made up theirminds about Obama, and itwould take something really dramatic to makethem reconsider.

The Iran-contra scandal swayedpublic opinion against President Reagan during his second term, as did the Iraq war after Bush's reelection, Newport said. While it's true that second-term presidents often seem incapableofadvancing their agendas, that doesn't mean they're always unpopular:A buoyant economykept President Clinton's ratings highthroughout his tenure. Indeed, his approval rating climbed to a whopping 73 percent immediately after his impeachment.

The nowlukewarmeconomy is the probably best explanation for the public'slukewarm views of the president, Newport speculated. The economy is generally amongthe most important factors in determining how people will vote. While voters are more likely to criticize Obama on a range of issues from immigration to foreign affairs, their views on his handling of the economy are more or less in in line with their views on his presidency in general, according toThe Post-ABCpoll.

It's impossible to say which forces aremost important in determining the president's popularity, butthey have apparentlyreached a kind of equilibrium. Crises and fumbles, real or imagined, have not shifted that equilibrium and probably won't in the future, either.

What's in Wonkbook:1) Conflicting stanceson Ebola 2) Opinions:Good and evil, voter identification, and midterm boredom4) TheRepublican agenda5) New research on sexual assault and the future of online television

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Wonkblog: Obama is unpopular, but not because of scandals and crises