THE MAN IN THE TEFLON SUIT? THE ENVIRONMENTAL CONNECTION, POLITICAL DRAMA, AND POPULAR SUPPORT IN THE REAGAN PRESIDENCY

An examination of public support during the presidency of Ronald Reagan reveals a unique pattern. The major features include two instances of rapidly declining support followed by historically unprecedented and sustained recoveries. The recovery of support is particularly surprising given that the literature of the early 1980s emphasizes the irrecoverable erosion of public support and a resulting "no win" presidency. In this sense, the pattern of public support from 1981 to 1987 raises a significant question about the "no win" presidency. Does the Reagan case contradict recent assertions about the inability of modern presidents to maintain public support or is Reagan an exception that "proves the rule"? To answer this question, the analysis is divided into five parts. The first examines the literature and shows that there is a striking uniformity in contemporary accounts of Reagan's public support. These explanations discount the importance of conditions in the environment and emphasize that Reagan's public support is based upon a mixture of luck, personality, and political drama. Part two defines political drama and examines its use from 1981 to 1987. In part three, we develop a methodology for incorporating political drama into a general model of public support for Reagan. Part four estimates the model and uses the results to assess the relative impact of the economy and political drama on public support for Reagan. These results are used in the final section to CHARLES W. OSTROM, JR., is Professor of Political Science at Michigan State University. DENNIS M. SIMON iS Assistant Professor of Political Science at Southern Methodist University. The authors wish to thank Paul Abramson, Robert Jackman, Robin Marra, Michael MacKuen, Brian Ostrom, David Rohde, Joseph Schlesinger, and Renee Smith for comments on the manuscript. An earlier version of this paper was delivered at the 1987 Annual Meeting of the Southern Political Science Association, 5-7 November, Charlotte, NC. Public Opinion Quarterly Volume 53:353-387 K 1989 by the American Association for Public Opinion Research Published by The University of Chicago Press / 0033-362X/89/0053-03/$2.50 This content downloaded from 157.55.39.159 on Sun, 22 May 2016 04:34:32 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 354 Charles W. Ostrom, Jr., and Dennis M. Simon evaluate the specific explanations of Reagan's public support and to reflect upon the competing general explanations found in the literature. As Ronald Reagan was inaugurated as president in January 1981, students of the presidency were in the midst of an intellectual turnabout. Scholars writing in the 1960s and 1970s alternatively praised (see Cronin, 1980: esp. 75-100) and criticized (Schlesinger, 1973; Reedy, 1970) the substantial authority vested in the office. By the early 1980s, writing on the presidency began to emphasize the inherent weaknesses of the office and the near inevitability of failure among its incumbents. The presidency was now described as imperiled (Cronin, 1978) and impossible (Barger, 1984), with its occupants forced to operate in a "no win" context (Light, 1982). A variety of reasons have been identified to explain this predicament. These include the intractability of problems (e.g., Oppenheimer, 1981), the limited prerogatives of the office (Cutler, 1980; Bacon, 1980), and a greater willingness of Congress to challenge the president (Sundquist, 1981). The most interesting diagnosis of the problem involves the connection between presidential effectiveness and public evaluations of presidential performance. With a frequency that is unmatched in public opinion surveys, the Gallup organization has posed the following question to the American public: "Do you approve or disapprove of the way (incumbent) is handling his job as president?" The proportion of respondents who select the approval option is typically used as a measure of the public support, approval, or popularity of the president. The frequency of these surveys and the attention attracted by their results have grown to the point where the presidential performance poll is now regarded as "a fact of American political life" and "part of America's unwritten constitution" (de Sola Pool, 1980:48). Within the presidency literature, it is recognized that the level of public support, as measured in these polls, operates as a key determinant of the president's ability to influence both rival decision makers and the policy-making process (Neustadt, 1980). Importantly, discussions of this relationship emphasize that there is a distinct and repeatable pattern in the president's approval rating over the course of a fouryear term. It is a pattern of decay. After a brief "honeymoon" period of rising support, according to Roper (1983:42), the president's "approval rating is inclined to drop, drop, drop." The assertion that public support along with presidential influence and effectiveness will inevitably erode over the course of a term is employed as a basic premise in analyses of presidential policy-making. Light's (1982) analysis of domestic policy-making is built on the premise that there is an invariable cycle of declining resources over the This content downloaded from 157.55.39.159 on Sun, 22 May 2016 04:34:32 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms The Man in the Teflon Suit? 355 course of the term. Light then argues (1982:217-233) that, excepting rare historical conditions, the best strategy presidents can pursue is to capitalize on the high approval ratings during the "honeymoon period" to secure the passage of incremental policies. Recent research also concludes that the prospects for avoiding the erosion of support and escaping the "no win" situation are remote. Tufte (1978:143), for example, concludes that aside from short-term attempts to manipulate the economy, presidents can exert little control over outcomes used to judge their performance. The most pessimistic view regarding presidential effectiveness is presented in Lowi's recent book, The Personal President (1985). Lowi addresses the general question of whether any president can maintain public support. His "law of outcomes" provides an unambiguous answer: "The probability of failure is always tending toward 100 percent" (Lowi, 1985:11, emphasis added). Both the frequency and the force with which these conclusions are offered create the impression that any president is destined for failure. The evidence used to support these conclusions is based upon fifteen years of presidential turmoil highlighted by the Vietnam war, urban riots, Watergate, a stagnant economy, energy shortages, and the Iran hostage crisis. During that period, Presidents Johnson and Nixon were forced from office; Presidents Ford and Carter were retired via the ballot box. All four presidents became politically vulnerable after suffering substantial declines in public support. Thus, in 1981 it appeared that American politics was firmly in the era of "throwaway presidents." There was doubt whether Ronald Reagan could maintain a level of public support sufficient to govern effectively and to survive politically. For example, Hodgson (1980:253) observed that Reagan "like all his recent predecessors, has aroused expectations that he cannot fulfill." The predicted result, Hodgson (1980:253) continued, was that disappointment will turn to disillusionment, and excessive expectations will curdle into unreasonable resentment. That is what happened, in one way or another, to each of the last half dozen Presidents. Why should Ronald Reagan be an exception? Other commentary, in both the academic (e.g., Rubin, 1981:234) and the popular press (e.g., Bacon, 1980), found no reason to disagree with such predictions. Figure 1 traces Reagan's aggregate approval as recorded by the Gallup organization from January 1981 to December 1987. Note, first of all, that the time path of public support in 1981 and 1982 exhibits the expected pattern of erosion, albeit in a more severe form than experienced by Reagan's predecessors. Reagan's initial approval rating of 51% was the lowest starting level in the history of the Gallup Poll. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.159 on Sun, 22 May 2016 04:34:32 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 356 Charles W. Ostrom, Jr., and Dennis M. Simon