The Presidential Expectations Gap: Public Attitudes Concerning the Presidency

Chapter 3: Comparing Incumbent and Retrospective Evaluations of Presidential Performance

16 Chapter 3 Comparing Incumbent and Retrospective Evaluations of Presidential Performance I think it would be good for special interest groups of all kinds— labor, business, environment, and others—to cooperate and to express a partnership in things that are accomplished for the good, instead of concentrating on the negative things that fail to measure up to their own very high expectations. President Jimmy Carter, news conference, May 12, 1977 Not only is the president’s job difficult, according to one of our nation’s top presidential experts, George Edwards (1983, 191), “the president’s job is more difficult than [it was] in the past.” Since the birth of the modern presidency the policy demands on the presidency have expanded exponentially, with presidents currently expected to resolve virtually every societal problem including such highly intractable and diverse issues as managing the economy, controlling the spread of nuclear weapons, confronting international terrorists and drug traffickers, reversing the trend toward global climate change, as well as ameliorating the scourges of crime, teenage promiscuity, and the more mundane propensity of American’s to eat, drink, curse, and smoke too much. Consequently, when Barack Obama assumed the presidency in January 2009 he inherited not only a collapsing economy and two wars (in Afghanistan and Iraq) but also a broken health care system, a burgeoning international trade deficit, a pressing need for serious immigration reform, a rapidly deteriorating infrastructure, as well as the contradictory needs to stimulate the economy and balance the budget. These, plus myriad other divisive issues , confronted Obama from the very first moment that he took the presidential oath of office. Given his message of hope and change in the 2008 Comparing Incumbent and Retrospective Evaluations 17 campaign, public demands and expectations for action were stratospherically high. Although Obama entered the White House under what may be considered the most egregious economic, national security, and political circumstances since the days of the Great Depression and World War II, most previous presidents likewise faced daunting and contradictory policy agendas when they were elected. Nixon was elected at the height of the Vietnam War and the Cold War. Ford assumed office upon the resignation of a sitting president. Carter became president during a time of runaway inflation, unemployment, and interest rates, and declining American prestige abroad. Reagan also had to handle a crushing recession, as well as the follow-up to the Iranian hostage crisis and the repercussions of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan . George H. W. Bush had crises in Panama and the Persian Gulf, as well as a recession. Clinton faced a poor economy and an escalating budget deficit. George W. Bush came to the presidency in a disputed election, his very legitimacy as president questioned, only to face the tragedies of September 11, 2001, followed by two wars, Hurricane Katrina, and the collapse of the U.S. economy. As for the public, having invested its hopes and dreams in each of these particular candidates, American voters expected direct and effective action, often immediately, and exhibited very little patience for the glacial pace of actual policymaking in Washington, nor the increasingly negative tone of Washington politics. In addition to these concerns, presidents also must deal with issues that arise suddenly. Who expected that in 2009 Barack Obama would have to deal with a threat from Somali pirates or that in 2011 Congress might actually push the nation to the brink of default for the first time in modern history? The way that issues crowd onto the presidential agenda virtually guarantees that some citizens will be displeased with the president’s performance , especially since progress on many of these issues (e.g., the war on drugs, the war on child pornography, the war on terror, the war on poverty ) is a protracted and incremental process, with few benchmarks likely to satisfy political skeptics. The reality that presidents must try to maneuver their preferred legislation through an arcane and complex constitutional and legislative process, one that has become increasingly ossified and vituperative in recent decades (as exemplified by the health care debate of 2009–10 and its claims that Obama supported “Death Panels” that would “pull the plug on Grandma”), also guarantees that presidential initiatives will be a compromise (in itself an increasingly dirty word in Washington’s current political vernacular), watered down, rejected, or outright neglected. In this process, presidents can appear ineffectual or even incompetent, even when 18 The Presidential...