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Getting Inside the Beltway: Perceptions of Presidential Skill and Success in Congress

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2009

Brad Lockerbie  and
Stephen A. Borrelli
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Extract

Different methodological approaches sometimes lead to different substantive conclusions. Nowhere is this more evident than in studies relating assessments of presidential skill to legislative success. Scholars of the historical, traditionalist school of presidency research argue that presidents who are perceived to be adept at getting what they want are more likely to achieve their legislative goals than are those perceived as less adept. Neustadt identifies perceived skill, or what he calls ‘professional reputation’, as one of the three resources that are the essence of presidential power. Yet students of the presidency who employ quantitative methods have found little or no systematic relationship between variations in skill evaluations and variations in success. George Edwards reports thai similarly situated Congressmen are not especially more likely to support highly esteemed presidents than lowly esteemed presidents. Fleisher and Bond similarly find that once contextual variables have been controlled for, there is no pattern suggesting that presidents thought to be highly skilled do better with Congress.

Type
Notes and Comments
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 19 , Issue 1 , January 1989 , pp. 97 - 106
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1989

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References

1 Neustadt, R.. Presidential Power: The Politics of Leadership from FDR to Carter (New York: Wiley. 1980).Google Scholar

2 Edwards, G., Presidential Influence in Congress (San Francisco: Freeman, 1980)Google Scholar; Edwards, G., ‘Presidential Legislative Skills: At the Core or a! the Margin?’ (paper presenled at (he annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, Illinois, 1986).Google Scholar

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9 Light, P., ‘The President's Agenda: Notes on the Timing of Domestic Choice’, Presidential Studies Quarterly, II (1981), 67–82Google Scholar; reports that Carter's legislative reputation steadily improved throughout his term but could not completely overcome the impressions of his initial poor performance.

10 Neustadt, . Presidential Power, p. 61.Google Scholar

11 See Kellerman, B., Tlie Political Presidency (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984)Google Scholar; Rockman, . The Leadership QuestionGoogle Scholar: and Hargrove, E. and Nelson, M., Presidents, Politics, and Public Policy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984)Google Scholar for extensive theoretical discussions of presidential legislative skills.

12 See fn. 7 for the work that has employed this methodology of residual analysis.

13 Neustadt, . Presidential Power, p. 47Google Scholar; see also Grossman, M. and Kumar, M. J., Portraying the President: The White House and the News Media (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. 1981), pp. 206–25Google Scholar for a discussion of the role of Washington-based columnists.

14 Grossman, and Kumar, , Portraying the President, p. 61.Google Scholar

15 See, for example, Jones, C., ‘Presidential Negotiation with Congress’Google Scholar in King, , ed., Both Ends of the AvenueGoogle Scholar; Malbin, M., ‘Rhetoric and Leadership: A Look Backward at the Carter Energy Plan’Google Scholar, in the same King edited volume; and Fleisher, and Bond, , ‘Assessing Presidential Support in the House: Lessons from Reagan and Carter’.Google Scholar

16 For a discussion of the reliability problems inherent in content analysis research, see Manheim, J. and Rich, R., Empirical Political Analysis: Research Methods in Political Science (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1981).Google Scholar

17 This is an interesting finding, in light of Paul Light's theories of ‘the cycle of decreasing influence’ and ‘the cycle of increasing effectiveness’ (see Light, , ‘The President's Agenda: Notes on the Timing of Domestic Choice’, p. 71).Google Scholar

18 Neustadt, , Presidential PowerGoogle Scholar; Kernell, , Going Public.Google Scholar

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20 Source of data: Gallup, , Gallup Opinion Index (Reports # 180 and # 231, published 1980 and 1984, respectively).Google Scholar

21 Source of data: Economic Report of the President (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1978–1985).Google Scholar

22 For a discussion of these issues see Bond, J. and Fleisher, R., ‘Presidential Popularity and Congressional Voting: A Re-Examination of Public Opinion as a Source of Influence in Congress’, Western Political Quarterly, 37 (1984), 291–306CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Wildavsky, A., ‘The Two Presidencies’ in Wildavsky, A., ed., The Presidency (Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown, 1969).Google Scholar

23 Bond, and Fleisher, . ‘Presidential Popularity and Congressional Voting: A Re-Examination of Public Opinion as a Source of Influence in Congress’.Google Scholar

24 Source of data: Congressional Quarterly Almanac (Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly, 1977–1979, 1981–1983).Google Scholar The 80 per cent + criterion is commonly used to eliminate trivial and non-conflictual roll calls, some of which may be targets of presidential attempts to inflate their CQ scores (see Covington, C., ‘Congressional Support for the President: The View from the Kennedy-Johnson White House’, Journal of Politics, 48 (1986), 717–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bond, and Fleisher, , ‘Presidential Popularity and Congressional Voting’).Google Scholar

25 Edwards, , ‘Presidential Legislative Skills: At the Core or at the Margin?’, p. 9.Google Scholar

26 Kellerman, , The Political Presidency, Chap. 10.Google Scholar

27 Edwards, , ‘Presidential Legislative Skills’, p. 9Google Scholar; Kellerman, , The Political Presidency, p. 199.Google Scholar There is some dispute as to whether Carter's attempt to legislate a national energy policy succeeded or failed. This is irrelevant to the point here, which is that the penalties for failure (whether real or hypothetical) were not so much a reversal of support but a reversion to a natural level of support.

28 Carter equalled or exceeded the 3.2 threshold only twice in thirty-five months; Reagan exceeded it eight times. The correlation between ‘PRES’ and ‘HISKILLt–I’ is only 0.25, indicating that skill varies within as well as across presidencies, and that collinearity between the president dummy variable and perceived skill should not affect the results.