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THE POWER OF POPULARITY.
One of the reasons I like reading Patrick Ruffini is he has a tendency to grapple with, rather than downplay, troublesome evidence. Here he is, for instance, on Obama's personal popularity:
Obama's personal popularity stayed remarkably stable throughout the course of the campaign, and the average unfavorable rating barely ever cracked 35%. Obama the campaigner looks downright polarizing compared to Obama the President, who now sports a 65/25 fav/unfav in the Pollster.com average.
Why is this important? Republicans right now haven't the slightest idea of how to reduce the President's appeal because they've never actually done it before. It would be one thing if Obama had become a controversial figure during the campaign, like Bill Clinton did in 1992, providing fodder for a comeback once he did get into office, but that possibility scarcely exists today.
While personality may not be everything, and real-world policy outcomes provide opportunities for inflection points, it rarely ever works out that a President's policy agenda is unsuccessful while he remains personally popular. Yes, there are weird situations where a President might be personally loathed (Clinton post-Monica) but politically successful, but not (that I know of) the other way around.
This sort of thing is particularly important when passing complicated pieces of policy. In general, it's very hard for voters to evaluate health care legislation or a cap and trade plan. So they often evaluate the politicians associated with the legislation. If a politician they trust stands on a podium and tells them a particular bill is a good idea, and a politician they don't trust stands on the other podium and says the bill is a bad idea, they go with the politician they trust. That, obviously, is a stark hypothetical. But it's a pretty good description of the current situation. The American people trust Obama. There is no high-profile GOP spokesperson with similarly high approval ratings.
Put slightly differently, in 1994, the Republican Party had Bob Dole. Who do they have today? In 1994, the GOP used Whitewater to erode public trust in Bill and Hillary Clinton. What do they have today? The problem for the Republican Party is not simply that they lack popular leadership. It's that the Democratic Party doesn't share their dilemma.
COMMENTS (45)
There's another flaw in Ruffini's logic here. Was Clinton really personally loathed at the end of his presidency? I know that Republicans loathed him, but as I remember it the general public still had a generally favorable opinion of him. This may be another case of conservatives mistaking their own views for those of society in general.
Posted by: John S. | May 12, 2009 3:30 PM
Yeah, I thought the post-Monica period was exactly the opposite: Clinton couldn't get Congress to cooperate with him because Democrats were too afraid of being associated with him, but his actual approval ratings stayed high.
Posted by: tps12 | May 12, 2009 3:35 PM
The flaw in this argument was that Clinton was never personally loathed. The rabid right hated him, of course, but they hate Obama just as much. The big difference is that a half-dozen or so right-wing "democrats" like Sam Nunn have been replaced by genuine Democrats in the Senate.
Posted by: Paul Gottlieb | May 12, 2009 3:39 PM
Ditto on what the others said about "personally loathed".
Also, post-Monica, was he that "politically successful"?
Posted by: leo | May 12, 2009 4:31 PM
I was disappointed with Clinton especially after he went small bore post '94. While I wasn't thrilled he was wasting time diddling an intern, the Republican impeachment fiasco actually had a 'rally to the flag' effect.
Posted by: could have been great | May 12, 2009 5:50 PM
I think O's popularity stems from the following:
"....unmolested by the Left as he moves mountains of money in a crusade to save the investment banking class. Anti-war forces dissolve into nothingness as Barack Obama extends the U.S. occupation of Iraq indefinitely. A new theater of war called Af-Pak coagulates in South Asia, yet benumbed "progressives" praise their president as the consummate man of peace. "By demanding nothing of Obama and the Democrats except that they not technically be Republicans, our so-called "progressive" organizations effectively grant advance approval to whatever corporate and imperial policies the new president and the Democrats execute." - Paul Street
http://www.blackagendareport.com/
Posted by: S Brennan | May 12, 2009 5:55 PM
Clinton was never loathed (and I'm a conservative, I would know).
Loved-but-unsuccessful: Reagan in 1986 and thereafter?
Posted by: Thomas | May 12, 2009 6:05 PM
I think some are confused about presidential approval ratings, which were sky high for Clinton even during the Lewisnky scandal and whether or not they liked the president. Clinton's like/dislike numbers were, I think, worse than his approval numbers.
But I'm too lazy to look them up so I could be wrong.
Posted by: Cols714 | May 12, 2009 7:01 PM
Maybe split the difference -- it was only among the hardcore 30% righties that Clinton was personally loathed, but he also wasn't rated as high personally as he was for his presidential performance.
Obama is in a pretty rare class: a president with high personal magnetism who is attempting great changes (and will likely succeed at the latter, as Ruffin says, thanks in part to the former). The only previous president who really compare are the two Roosevelts and Reagan (Kennedy had the magnetism but not the ambitious agenda; LBJ took over and pushed an agenda, but lacked the magnetism).
The bright sign for Dems right now? All those previous presidents were not only re-elected in major landslides...they also managed to get successors elected. 12 straight years of Dem presidents is long enough to make real change.
Posted by: demtom | May 13, 2009 2:21 PM
W. had high personal magnetism for the righties and apparently people who want to have beers with the president.
I actually don't think Obama is all that personable. His personal approval ratings are based more on intellect, thoughtfulness and the ability to articulate the problems and his solutions.
Posted by: disagree | May 14, 2009 7:26 AM
I think there is a more fundamental admission by Ruffini than maybe he has even acknowledge. Beyond the fodder that he presents about popularity, what he actually is admitting is that the Republicans stake there political fortunes on politics and politics only. For the party that was fashioned as the one of "ideas" Newt Gingrinch and others, Ruffini has essentially exploded that fallacy in this article. If it was about ideas, then Ruffini would have written about the republicans victories based on this concept, but he did'nt. He wrote about the party's failure to besmirch or negate Obama's public perception enough to disallow his policy iterations. IF it were about ideas, then they would present their's with confidence, regardless of the messager, and stand firm in the belief that their's are better.This it not what they've done in the last 30 years. What they've specialized in is caricaturizing the Democrats and demeaning them personally.
Posted by: onlinesavant | May 18, 2009 1:21 PM
Clinton even during the Lewisnky scandal and whether or not they liked the president. Clinton's like/dislike numbers were, I think, worse than his approval numbers.
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