The Limits of Rational Choice: Bush and Clinton Budget Summitry

Rational choice models change uncertainly into risk, convert risk from a constraint that paralyzes action to a set of opportunities that encourages decision, measure decisions taken against presumably more "rational" options, and provide a baseline to determine how well politicians maximize their preferences or those of constituents. Prescriptively, rational choice assumes that maximizing or satisfying individual game payoffs ultimately maximizes the public good because solutions that are more efficient for the parties also increase the payoffs for the society at large. Rational choice models are often used by economists in describing decisions made by governments, firms, and consumers; they are used by sociologists in criminology and education; political scientists have developed rational actor models for war, diplomacy, games of deterrence and compellence, legislative and electoral voting behavior, and negotiations, including veto, appointment, and treaty votes involving president and legislative chambers. What can presidential scholars learn from rational choice methodology? Its champions claim that it will take over the field because generational demographics favor it (a nice way of saying that eventually the old fogies will depart) and because presidential scholarship lacks methodological rigor.(1) Its critics reply that rational choice methodology is to rational decision making as military music is to music, because the mathematics are trivial and the logic of inquiry wrongheaded.(2) Here, I intend to demonstrate the limitations of rational choice methodology by focusing on summit budgeting in 1990, 1995, and 1998. In the fall of 1990, George Bush went back on his "no new taxes" promise and positioned himself in the middle on taxing and spending issues for the fiscal year 1991 budget. After a brief government shutdown, Bush agreed to a compromise budget crafted by Democrats that began to get the country's fiscal house in order, established new spending limitations in place of deficit reduction targets, and cleared the decks for his confrontation with Iraq. The decision split the Republican Party, contributed heavily to Bush's 1992 defeat, and laid the groundwork for the rise of the conservative Republican leaders in the House. In the winter of 1995, President Clinton won a budget game by spurning a proffered compromise, allowing the government to shut down (this time for several weeks over the Christmas season) and leaving the budget process in shambles. Voters blamed Republicans, and Clinton began his remarkable political comeback, which culminated in his reelection. In the fall of 1998, facing the prospect of impeachment by a Republican-dominated House of Representatives, Clinton faced down threats of another shutdown and consummated a bipartisan budget agreement that gave him significantly more than his Republican opponents by way of domestic policy outcomes. These three summits call into question some axioms of budget politics, to wit, that maintaining the integrity of the process itself is an important value, that it is better to conclude an agreement that can be reached when the other side goes more than halfway than it would be to walk away from the deal, and that it is better to get something done and act in a bipartisan manner than it is to act confrontationally and rely on presidential prerogative. Bush compromised on policy and improved the process--and self-destructed. Clinton provoked Republicans with phony budget numbers and abandoned the process--and resurrected his presidency. Why Clinton succeeded where Bush failed can tell us a great deal about how budget games are played.(3) It can also help us to understand why two rational choice models in their current state of development--spatial positioning and game payoffs---cannot yet make a contribution to our understanding of these outcomes. Spatial Positioning My analysis begins with the results of the 1990 budget summit. …