Like Father, Like Son: Testing the Bush I-Bush II Comparison Predictions

Professor Carpenter challenges the conventional wisdom that George W. Bush must avoid the fate of his father by focusing on the economy. He argues that the economic picture was quite different for father and son, such as dissimilar rates of change in unemployment and inflation during their tenures in office. More importantly, economic approval ratings fail to predict accurately their overall approval ratings. In contrast to the conventional wisdom, Carpenter’s analysis shows that perceptions of foreign policy leadership appear to be more important in predicting approval for both presidencies. And even though the combination of economic and foreign approval ratings appear to drive Bush II’s performance ratings overall, these played a rather insignificant role for Bush I. ∗Dick Carpenter is an assistant professor at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. His research areas include leadership, public policy, communications, education law, and the U.S. presidency. Beginning with campaign 2000, the "like father, like son" comparison between presidents H. W. Bush and W. Bush enjoyed modest attention among journalists and pundits (Pilger 2002). When national and geo-political events in 2003 appeared reminiscent of the early 1990s, the comparison grew into full-on prediction. The conventional wisdom evident in outlets such as the Associated Press newswire (Lester 2003), the New York Times (Nagourney and Elder 2003), and the Albany Times Union (Powell 2003) held that the junior Bush needed to learn from the senior Bush's election debacle—do not sacrifice the economy and other domestic issues at the alter of Iraq. To be specific, pundits pointed to the seemingly parallel tensions between the administrations' international versus economic priorities (Cannon 2002). According to Gallup's Jeffrey Jones (2003): The public continues to have an overall favorable view of the president and to give him high marks for his handling of the terrorism issue. But a growing number say he is not paying enough attention to the economy, and his economic approval rating is lagging behind his overall job approval rating and his rating on foreign affairs. (para. 1) Moreover, as the New York Times (Nagourney and Elder 2003) reported in January 2003, Bush II enjoyed only 44 percent support for his economic management, a figure almost identical to the 42 percent approval level for Bush I's handling of the economy at a similar point in his term. Around the time of Bush's 2003 State of the Union Address, the Bush I-Bush II comparison/prediction intensified (Nagourney 2003a; 2003b). "The [speech's] early emphasis on the ailing economy and other issues...was clearly an attempt to show Americans that he isn't focused solely on war--a mistake that cost his father a second term," reported the Boston Herald (Battenfeld 2003, p. 7). The New York Times (Nagourney 2003b) further observed that Bush's speech "signaled that the White House had come to agree with many Democrats that being a strong president at a time of war did not necessarily assure Mr. Bush the second term that eluded his father" (p. A14). The Bergen County Record (Brownstein 2003) concurred: "By offering such an ambitious domestic agenda, Bush demonstrated again his desire to avoid the perception that undermined the presidency of his father..." (p. L11). Informed observers joined the drumbeat. "Everybody is watching to see if Bush goes the way of his father--from 90 percent to toast in barely a year," quipped American Enterprise Institute's William Schneider (Powell 2003, p. A6). American University's James Thurber asserted: "Bush is suffering a rapid decline, just like his father. With high unemployment, a low stock market hitting the middle class, a controversial economic stimulus package and anxiety about the war in Iraq--no wonder his approval rating has dropped" (p. A6). With the Iraq War’s advent, the conventional wisdom continued. On MSNBC's Hardball (Matthews 2003), Chris Matthews and Peggy Noonan discussed the phenomenon in terms of Bush's "mojo," MATTHEWS: What would you tell him to do about how to convert this enormous public support he has right now so he can lead this country at home against -and transform a weak economy into something that people are happy with and can get ahead on? NOONAN: I'd say keep your mojo working. I've got to -you know, Bush knows, this Bush knows the history of his father very intimately. He was there. Unlike most 1 Carpenter: Like Father, Like Son Produced by The Berkeley Electronic Press, 2004 presidents, he's watched two presidents up close. He saw what happened to his father. He saw that his father won big, had huge popularity, and then didn't know what to do until the next election. He made mistakes afterwards. Papers across "the pond" also perpetuated the Bush comparison. The London Daily Telegraph (Harnden, Guardia, and Cleaver 2003) led with: "Fresh from victory in Iraq, President George W. Bush yesterday launched the battle to retain the White House and avoid the fate that befell his father after the first Gulf war" (p. 10). Likewise, the London Financial Times (Harding 2003) encapsulated the comparison in a headline: "Economy the priority as Bush returns to stump: Domestic concerns president learns lesson from father and quickly sets his sights on the home front" (p. 12). At war's end, the San Francisco Chronicle's Vicki Haddock (2003) aptly described the conventional wisdom thus: "Already the story line is cliche" (p. D1). In a dialogue with Tim Russert, Soledad O'Brien (2003) on the April 27 edition of NBC's Sunday Today asked, "Many people, of course, compare the two president Bushes. What exactly does this president have to do to avoid the pitfalls of his father's administration?" The same day, David Broder (2003), in his Washington Post column, commented on a Ted Kennedy press conference: "It looked like a script for a TV ad in the 2004 campaign--good, red-meat stuff, hitting Bush on the economy--the same kind of attack that sank the president's father in 1992" (p. B7). The following morning, on National Public Radio's Morning Edition (Edwards 2003), Cokie Roberts reported: [Bush is] determined not to make foreign policy the centerpiece of his White House. That's what his father did after the first Persian Gulf War. And this President Bush is just determined not to fritter away the political capital that he has gained by winning the war. Finally, near year’s end and as the 2004 election season began, members of the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) attempted to use the idea to their advantage. In a DLC magazine, From and Reed (2003) focused on economic and international concerns and concluded, “George W. Bush, who was supposed to learn from his father's mistakes, has been condemned instead to repeat them” (para. 4). Just how accurate are these predictions? Is the sitting president on his way to "deja vu all over again?" This research seeks to answer such questions by examining the relationships between the economies during the two administrations and the approval ratings for foreign and economic policy and overall job approval ratings of Bush I and Bush II.