Presidential Campaigns and Presidential Accountability

2. Agenda Accountability in Action

25 2 Agenda Accountability in Action Presidential approval is the main mechanism for the public, en masse, to respond to presidential behavior outside of elections. Presidential approval, the percent of the public who “approve of the way [the incumbent] is handling his job as president,” reflects the contemporary consent of the populace for the use of presidential authority. These familiar approval ratings have been called the “Dow Jones index for politics” (Brehm 1993) and a perpetual election (Hodgson 1980). Clearly, the idea of presidential popularity as a means of informal accountability is not new. Yet approval has not been directly tied to campaign evaluations or incorporated into our theories of democratic accountability. Approval is consequential for a president. Although a decline in approval does not lead to immediate dismissal, it is politically meaningful . Approval levels influence the electoral calculations of potential opponents —low approval encourages the opposition—and the subsequent electoral success for both the president and his party in Congress (Gronke, Koch, and Wilson 2003). High levels of approval embolden the president (Light 1999), shape his legislative strategy (Canes-Wrone and Shotts 2004), and increase the likelihood of legislative success (Canes-Wrone and de Marchi 2002; Rivers and Rose 1985). Though the president and the political world are fascinated with approval ratings, what they mean is not entirely certain. Neustadt early on pegged approval ratings as “unfocused,” telling us “anything or nothing about what respondents meant by what they said” (1990, 81).1 Despite the inherent ambiguity surrounding the reasons for approval ratings, they clearly reflect a withdrawal of contemporary public support, al- beit an informal one. And presidents care immensely about their public support. Even those who question the impact of presidential approval agree that presidents care about these ratings. Indeed, the president may well care too much (Heith 2004; Jacobs and Shapiro 1995). Jones (2005, 134), for instance, describes White House concern with approval ratings as a “near-obsession.” Presidential approval ratings “are very widely read in Washington” and “widely taken to approximate reality” (Neustadt 1990, 81, n. 9). Political commentators presume that presidents with high job approval will succeed on Capitol Hill if they know how to wield this resource . These perceptions, by the White House and the larger political community, confer significance to presidential approval ratings regardless of their actual influence on subsequent presidential success. What, then, shapes approval? After reviewing what scholars have previously concluded about presidential approval, I begin to build an empirical argument, based on the three most recent presidents, about the centrality of campaigns to understanding presidential approval in the early administration. Understanding Presidential Approval Perhaps surprisingly, the broad consensus among scholars is that there is little presidents can do to boost their numbers (Edwards 2003), at least once in office. Whether would-be presidents can influence their future standards of evaluation in the campaign, though, is a question we have not yet asked. A vast literature on presidential approval exists, usually examining the over-time aggregate approval ratings, and most often underscoring the influence of economic conditions, war or related rally events, and the general passage of time on approval rates (Kernell 1978; MacKuen 1983; Mueller 1973; Ostrom and Smith 1992). Without a doubt, peace and prosperity are consistently related to presidential popularity. This understanding of presidential approval, though, rests on an assumption that the public does not care about what policies the government passes or what problems the president pursues. Although most explanations of presidential popularity rely on individual -level theories, they are rarely tested at the individual level. And though presidents and political elites might well be most concerned with the aggregate numbers, there are good reasons to examine presidential approval at the level of the individual as well. First, presidential approval is most likely based on a wider variety of issues than those measured in 26 chapter 2 the time-series models. Because over-time trends of public preferences on most issues are unavailable, they are left out of these explanations.2 Policy outcomes other than economic conditions are also harder to measure , and thus, to include. Second, the explanations of aggregate approval necessarily assume that all presidents are evaluated similarly, that is, that individuals have the same expectations and concerns regarding each president. Though the assumption is often left implicit, some scholars explicitly argue that people have enduring expectations of the president (for example, prosperity and peace) that “are etched into each person’s...