The super committee’s inability to forge a consensus won’t trigger anything close to the confidence slide set off by the summer’s debt-ceiling debate because the public just isn’t paying attention, economists and a National Journal data analysis suggest. …

The fragile U.S. recovery can ill afford another sentiment drop like the one that followed the debt-limit debate – and Sweet says that would be a distinct possibility if Americans focus their attention on the super committee, only to see it deadlock.

So far, that’s not the case. Media attention on the super committee has lagged far behind that of the debt-ceiling negotiations in the weeks leading up to the Aug. 2 deadline.

A survey of five of the largest newspapers in the United States by daily circulation—The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times and the San Jose Mercury News—revealed more than twice as many mentions of the “debt ceiling” in the two months prior to Aug. 2 than the “super committee” or its official name, the “Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction,” in the two months leading up to Monday.