(FORTUNE Magazine) – The President's approval ratings are holding firm. Everybody's going to get reelected. (Well, maybe not everybody, but almost everybody.) The stock market is in trouble, but a lot of us are still living high. Russia seems unhinged, but scads of missiles aren't aimed at L.A. and Manhattan anymore. Things still look fairly decent around here.

The words on commentators' lips might be "high crimes and misdemeanors," but the prevailing sentiment in Washington is, "What, me worry?" Four years ago the nastiest epithet in politics was "incumbent," but this year that word is an invitation to the victors' circle.

Still, there's a dark lining to this silver cloud. Few really expect the economy to keep chugging along. Obviously, the world's geopolitical problems are not behind us. And nobody really thinks Washington has any earthly idea of where it is leading the country. The chilliest poll finding of the year: The issues that have preoccupied Washington lately--the campaign-finance system, the crusade to cut teen smoking, and the incessant fighting about abortion--are three of the four issues that voters consider the least important, according to a Washington Post/ABC News poll.

There's a whole lot more danger out there than politicians may realize. The number of House members running unopposed (86) is good news for them, but it's grave long-term news for the system. Confidence in the nation's leadership is still very low; a Pew Research Center poll shows that only one in three Americans trusts the government. Perhaps that's why voter participation is so lax; a smaller percentage of Americans voted in this year's primaries so far than ever before. In fact, primary turnout is down 14% from the last midterm elections, with the steepest decline among the Americans who are the poorest, the youngest, and the least educated. "We're not talking about a happy electorate here," says Curtis Gans, director of the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate. "We have essentially undermined the notion that there is an American civic religion, and we are moving toward an electorate of the interested and the zealous."

Political insiders blithely write off the low interest in government and politics as a peculiar fin-de-siecle combination of happiness and apathy--"hapathy" is the term--but it's more likely that the anger of only four years ago is just hibernating. Only half of Americans believe the government is run for the benefit of all the people, according to the Pew survey. In truth, the distrust of government that began with Vietnam and deepened with Watergate has never gone away; that unease is now twinned with growing public worry about morality--and not only about the President and Monica Lewinsky.

"The public thinks the country has a character problem," says Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center. "When you talk to people about Washington, they throw their hands up and roll their eyes. People don't think the political system is working very well--but fortunately this is a time when people don't have to pay much attention to this." But politicians may soon learn an old schoolyard lesson. There's one thing worse than being hated. It's being ignored.

DAVID SHRIBMAN is Washington bureau chief of the Boston Globe and a Pulitzer Prize-winning political reporter.