The Presidential Expectations Gap: Public Attitudes Concerning the Presidency

Chapter 11: The Expectations Gap in a Broader Theoretical Context

161 Chapter 11 The Expectations Gap in a Broader Theoretical Context Poverty and hunger and disease are afflictions as old as man himself. But in our time and in this age there has been a change. The change is not so much in the realities of life, but in the hopes and the expectations of the future. President Lyndon Johnson, remarks to editors, conference on foreign policy,April 21, 1964 For more than half a century presidential scholars of all stripes (including political scientists, historians, and biographers), journalists, pundits, political operatives, and bloggers have discussed the negative ramifications of the presidential expectations gap. As we demonstrate in this book, even presidents and their advisers have considered the double-edged possibilities of a gap. The expectations gap has been treated as a given, subject to rare and inadequate empirical analysis. Our book therefore represents the first comprehensive attempt to examine the gap and its effects. We have done so using a variety of measures of the gap, and while we certainly concur that much more work needs to be done to measure this thorny and complicated issue, we believe our initial work sheds substantial light on the dimensions of the gap problem, as well as demonstrating that we can directly test theories of the presidency using survey research techniques. Still, presidential scholars tend to examine the gap as it relates only to the presidency. Yet our findings provide the first hint that the expectations gap is a larger and more formidable problem for American democracy. Not only do we find that the gap operates as has been long hypothesized, providing presidents with short-term benefits while threatening their long-term viability in terms of lower approval ratings, a lower probability of reelection success, and 162 The Presidential Expectations Gap even a more damning verdict from the electorate at a president’s midterm; we also show that the gap operates in a systematic fashion. Our findings can be extrapolated to suggest that the gap affects all modern presidents. Furthermore , there is no obvious solution to the gap problem. It is not enough for presidents to curtail expectations. The problem is endemic. The public has unrealistic and contradictory expectations of presidential performance that in time translate into disappointment and disillusionment. Our Findings First, we have demonstrated that the gap is not a monolith. Rather, it varies from individual to individual, with some people having higher expectations than others. As we found in the last chapter, the gap is related to partisan attitudes. In an age of increasing political polarization in Washington and among the electorate as a whole, these partisan impacts are proving toxic indeed. When Barack Obama tried to transcend partisanship he was derided as naïve and many of his signature policies were simply ignored. The Obama example shows that it simply is not enough to ignore partisanship. At certain critical periods in American history the electorate divides neatly into competing political camps. We are at such an impasse at present. Until the country decides to move in one direction or another, these partisan effects will continue to exert a deleterious impact on our political process. We contend that they will do so not only for the presidency, through the mediating factor of an expectations gap, but through impacts on other governmental institutions, as well. Hence, our findings with regard to partisanship suggest that the expectations gap, while it is important, is but one factor affecting evaluations of presidents and the presidency. Nor do we think that the gap is related only to the presidency. It may be appropriate to discuss an expectations gap in a larger context, one that affects our expectations of a wide variety of other policy actors, at all levels of government . In other words, the expectations gap may not be a presidency-centric concept at all, but rather a symptom of a larger dysfunction with American government. A related finding from our work is that the expectations gap also is related to trust in government, but particularly to the issue of trust in our leaders. This finding also suggests that the expectations gap is not a solitary concept that is merely limited to the presidency alone. It ties into a larger trend, what we referred to in the last chapter as a macro-level phenomenon. Kimball and Patterson (1997) already demonstrated that there is evidence of The Expectations Gap in a Broader Theoretical Context...