37? Atau **>< V72/ PRESIDENTIAL SUPPORT AND THE POLITICAL USE OF PRESIDENTIAL CAPITAL DISSERTATION Presented to the Graduate Council of the University of North Texas in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY By Michael E. Ault, B.A., M.P. Denton, Texas December, 1998 Ault, E. Michael, Presidential Support and the Political Use of Presidential Capital. Doctor of Philosophy (Political Science), December 1998, 125 pp., 8 tables, 7 figures, references. This research incorporates a decision-making theory which defines the linkage between the public, the media, the president and the Congress. Specifically, I argue that the public holds widely shared domestic and international goals and responds to a number of external cues provided by the president and the media in its evaluation of presidential policies. Although most studies examine overall presidential popularity, there are important differences in the public's evaluations of the president's handling of foreign and domestic policies. Additionally, I am concerned with how the Congress responds to these specific policy evaluations, the president's public activities, and the electoral policy goals of its members when determining whether or not to support the president. Finally, I link together the theoretical assumptions, to examine the influence of varying levels of support among the Congress and the public, and the president's own personal power goals on the type, quantity, and the quality of activities the president will choose. Ultimately, the primary focus of this dissertation is on the sources and consequences of presidential support and the influence of such support on presidential decision-making. 37? Atau **>< V72/ PRESIDENTIAL SUPPORT AND THE POLITICAL USE OF PRESIDENTIAL CAPITAL DISSERTATION Presented to the Graduate Council of the University of North Texas in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY By Michael E. Ault, B.A., M.P. Denton, Texas December, 1998 TABLE OF CONTENTS "fc> Page LIST OF TABLES v LIST OF FIGURES vi Chapter 1. INTRODUCTION 1 Purpose and Significance of the Study Outline of the Work 2. PUBLIC EVALUATIONS OF U.S. PRESIDENTS' POLICIES 6 Introduction to the Problem The President, the Public, and the Role of Presidential Policies A Model of Public Evaluations of Presidential Policies Measuring and Explaining Public Support Analysis and Discussion Conclusions 3. PRESIDENTIAL SUCCESS IN CONGRESS 36 Congressional Uncertainty, Information, and Voting Predicting Presidential Success Methodology and Analysis Conclusions and Implications 4. PRESIDENTIAL DECISION-MAKING 69 Presidential Responsibility and Activity Predicting Activities Methodology and Analysis Conclusions and Implications IV APPENDIX A 101 APPENDIX B 110 REFERENCES 118 LIST OF TABLES Table Page Table 1. Augmented Dickey-Fuller Unit Root Tests 102 Table 2. Public Support for U.S. Presidents' Economic and Foreign Policies, 1977-1994, Ordinary Least Squares Estimation 103 Table 3. Public Support for U.S. Presidents' Economic and Foreign Policies, 1977-1994, Two-Stage Least Squares Estimation 104 Table 4. Presidential Success in the U.S. House of Representatives, 1953-1990 105 Table 5. Presidential Success in the U.S. Senate, 1953-1990 106 Table 6. Presidential Success in the U.S. House of Representatives, 1977-1990 107 Table 7. Presidential Success in the U.S. Senate, 1977-1990 108 Table 8. Presidential Activity, 1962-1990 109 LIST OF FIGURES Figure Page Figure 1. The Theoretical Model Ill Figure 2. Economic Support and Presidential Approval, 1977-1994 112 Figure 3. Foreign Policy Support and Presidential Approval, 1977-1994 113 Figure 4. Percentage of Presidential Victories in House and Senate by Issue, 1953-1990 114 Figure 5. Percentage of Presidential Victories in House and Senate by President, 1953-1990 115 Figure 6. Uses of Force, Major Addresses, and Foreign Travel by Presidents 116 Figure 7. Annual Uses of Force, Major Addresses, and Foreign Travel 117 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Purpose and Significance of the Study The president's role as the most visible, and yet "elusive" actor in the American political landscape has been the focus of much attention from the early years of the Founding to the present. Presidential biographies are filled with clever anecdotes, famous speeches and sayings, and accounts of presidents' noble and ignoble deeds. Daily newspaper reports and weekly news magazines are filled with presidential foibles, distinguishing characteristics, and their sometimes glorious/ignominious achievements. Politicians from both sides of the aisle have spent enormous amounts of energy lauding or condemning presidential actions and inactions. Since the New Deal era, three of the seven Amendments to the Constitution of the United States have attempted to clarify the contours of the president's power. And, finally, sociologists and psychologists have investigated presidents' upbringings, psychological make-ups, and personal habits in an attempt to understand the execution of presidential power. Despite such a magnitude of interest, the Office of the Presidency as an object of systematic empirical political inquiry has somehow lagged behind other areas in political science. While previous empirical research has made modest gains in the understanding of the presidency, it has been primarily conducted by separately investigating presidents' public support (e.g., Edwards 1983; Ostrom and Simon 1985, 1988), levels of congressional success (e.g., Bond and Fleisher 1990; Edwards 1989) and presidents' public activities (e.g., Brace and Hinckley 1992; Kernell 1993; Ragsdale 1984,1987). Taken as a whole, each of these analyses has been conducted in isolation from one another. Lacking in the field is an understanding of the theoretical and empirical linkages between each of the separate analyses. Such an investigation is, I argue, a necessary step toward building cumulative knowledge in the field of the presidency. Specifically, all of the previous studies neglect two critical considerations. First, each study neglects to provide a truly integrated theoretical framework for each of the variables of interest. For example, they neglect the fact that the public has considerable expectations of the president and Congress, and as such, they fail to consider the way in which these expectations affect each political actor under investigation. Second, each study provides a static, and therefore incomplete, portrait of the interrelationships that exist between the different variables of interest. For example, by examining public and congressional support for presidents, without considering presidents' attempts to influence such support, the previous studies risk understating the role of a number of important factors that operate in the public's and Congress's decision-making process. I argue that the findings of these previous studies can and should be assembled to form the basis of a truly integrated theory of presidential public support and the political use of such support in the president's and Congress's decision-making process. United around the central theme of the presidency, the following Chapters attempt to fill these gaps by providing a systematic inquiry into the actions presidents undertake to garner support from their two key audiences~the American public and the Congress of the United States—and the effects of differing levels of support on presidents' own actions. In doing so, I investigate the theoretical linkages between: (1) the American people and the Office of the Presidency, (2) the presidency and the congressional policy-making process, and (3) the effects of different levels of public and congressional support on the decision-making process of U.S. Presidents. Figure 1 illustrates the linkages (Appendix B, p. 111). I draw upon literature from all three of these areas in the presidency literature to build a parsimonious, yet integrated model of the dynamics of presidents' public support, and the effects of such support on the president's and Congress's decision- making process. At the same time, I maintain that there are important distinctions among the different policy domains in which presidents act. Simply, public and congressional expectations vary depending on the policy domain in question. While it has long been argued that presidents enjoy greater leverage on issues within the foreign policy domain than in the domestic policy domain, no one has attempted to build these features into an integrated model of public and congressional support for presidents' policies. By specifying models of public support for each policy domain, and then incorporating these important distinctions into a model of congressional support for presidents in each domain, I believe previously undiscovered, but theoretically relevant, relationships may appear. In the first paper, I examine the sources of public support for presidents' foreign and domestic policies. I maintain that the public holds widely shared domestic and international goals and responds to a number of external cues provided by the president and the media in the formation of its evaluations of presidential policies. Although most studies of presidential support examine overall presidential popularity, there are important differences in the public's evaluations of presidents in the foreign and domestic policy realms. While presidential scholars have long acknowledged the president's enhanced leverage in the foreign policy domain, no one to my knowledge has directly