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It turns out there is such a thing as bad publicity.

By the time Attorney General Alberto Gonzales announced his resignation Monday morning, he had become a household name for his role in a number of administration scandals, as well as his spectacular failure to explain away the issues to Congress.

At this point, Gonzales couldn't be blamed for looking back wistfully to November 2004 and the relative anonymity he enjoyed in the days following his appointment.

Back then, a Zogby poll found that 59 percent of respondents were not familiar with Gonzales. Of those who had, more than two-thirds said they held an overall favorable opinion of the then-White House counsel.

Those figures are hard to imagine now, when recent polling data shows Americans more aware of and less happy with the attorney general. An ABC News/Washington Post poll taken in June found that most Americans disapproved of the job Gonzales was doing, compared with just 25 percent who approved. After all the attention Gonzales received this spring, the number of people still unable to identify him in the poll had fallen to 23 percent.

But Gonzales' notoriety probably didn't play into the timing of his resignation or President Bush's decision to accept it. His approval ratings -- as well as the percentages of respondents who thought he should resign -- stayed relatively constant for the last several months.

In March 2007, shortly after the firing of eight U.S. attorneys started making news, more than a third of respondents told Newsweek pollsters that Gonzales should resign, with nearly half of Democrats saying he needed to leave. Only 32 percent said he should stay.

A CBS News poll the next month showed confidence in Gonzales continuing to slip. Sixty-three percent of those surveyed said the attorney general could not be trusted to tell the truth about the firings.

And members of the public weren't the only ones turned off by Gonzales' performance. National Journal's March poll of congressional insiders found that, of the 33 Republican lawmakers surveyed, fewer than half were confident in Gonzales' performance. Nearly all the Democrats who participated in the poll said they lacked confidence in him.

Even the Republican base, so crucial to Bush's success, didn't seem eager to rally around Gonzales. The ABC News poll from June found slightly fewer than half of Republicans said Gonzales should keep his job, and nearly as many disapproved of his handling of the attorney firings as approved.

Various theories have already begun sprouting up as to why Gonzales resigned when he did, but the polling seems to indicate it wasn't a sudden concession to public opinion. The White House will have to work hard to put up a convincing case that officials in this administration are accountable to a constituency greater than one.

The Public Pulse -- Latest Opinions At A Glance
The table below offers the latest key national numbers. Click on the number in question for poll details. (Last updated April 2)

20% Job approval rating.	28% Job approval rating.	19% Give the economy a positive rating.	20% Say country is going in right direction.

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