Article: Where's the Rally?

Approval and Trust of the President,

Cabinet, Congress, and Government Since September 11 Author: Brian J. Gaines Issue: Sep. 2002 Journal: PS: Political Science & Politics

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Wheres the Rally? Approval and Trust of the President, Cabinet, Congress, and Government Since September 11*
here has been much debate over whether the United States has changed in any lasting and T fundamental manners since September 11, 2001. Immediately following the carnage, editorialists and pundits proclaimed a national loss of innocence, the end of American exceptionalism, the new globalization of terror, and other cataclysmic shifts. One year later, it is still too early to be certain which claims will stand the test of time, and which will eventually come to seem overblown or simply off the mark. Our concern in this symposium is limited to civic engagement in the aftermath of the assaults, and this note will be narrower still in focus. Here, I attempt an early, mid-rally assessment of public approval of, and trust in, government and political gures. Around precisely which institutions or gures have Americans been rallying? Is there any reason to believe that the current presidential approval rally is different in kind, not by merely degree, from Brian J. Gaines, previous crisisinduced surges in University of Illinois at support for the Urbana-Champaign president? Have Americans been equally generous in their appraisals of other public gures, or, indeed, shown new trust in government in the abstract? All of these questions seem likely to attract a great deal of careful attention in the near future, and the following analyses are more in the spirit of uncovering suggestive clues than offering proof for novel, broad theories. Gallup poll has detected higher approval of his job performance than Clinton or George H.W. Bush ever received over the same phases of their terms, with the single exception of an 80% approval mark for the elder Bush in a January 1990 poll. In fact, the current rally is remarkable even when set against the whole history of presidential approval. A surge of 3040 points is exceptional, as is the very slight decay of support over the ensuing eight months. The seizing of the American embassy in Iran, the onset of the Gulf War, and the Cuban Missile Crisis all produced smaller, more gradual, and/or less durable surges in approval for Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush, and John Kennedy. Other well-known rallies, such as that produced for Gerald Ford by the Mayaguez incident, pale in comparison (e.g. Brody 1991, Table 3.1 and Figure 3.2).2 When Gallups September 21 and 22 poll found 90% approval for Bush, they declared it a new record high. One should not take point estimates too seriously, and other presidents have recorded approval in the vicinity of 80%, butexcept for George H.W. Bushthose presidents served before the one-two punch of Vietnam and Watergate deated normal presidential approval levels (Brody 1991, 4041). The Gallup polls may, moreover, exaggerate the extent of post-peak slippage in President Bushs approval. Compare Figure 1, which seems to show about a 15-point slide from the maximum having occurred by early May, to Figure 2, which includes data from multiple polling rms, and thus has more than four times as many observations.3 Figure 2 suggests that George W. Bush has experienced two fairly simple, but slightly different approval dynamics, one before and one after the attacks. The solid lines are lowess regression estimates, which provide a simple and exible model of trend for a univariate time series of irregularly spaced observations. In his rst eight months, Bush enjoyed an essentially constant 55% approval level (with random uctuations), but saw his disapproval rise steadily, as the residual categorythose who decline to answer either approve or disapprovegradually vanished. This is, more or less, the normal pattern (Brody 1991, 36). Then the terrorists struck, and, instantly, about 30% of the public shifted from disapproving to approving of Bushs job

Presidential Approval
President Bushs approval ratings catapulted to unprecedented heights after the September attacks, and approval of his job performance has since remained very high, for a very long stretch of time. Figure 1 shows Gallups presidential approval times series for George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George H.W. Bush over the rst 16 months of their terms.1 Clearly, the swell in support for George W. Bush since September 11 has been exceptional in magnitude and duration, at least against the baseline of recent history. Whereas prior to September, the president was enjoying a rather routine honeymoon, every post-attack
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Figure 1 Gallup Presidential Approval Data, First 16 Months

rally and improvements in approval levels that stem from policy successes. In that light, one could try to separate rewards for the rapid victory over the Taliban from the rally, qua rally. Then again, the immediacy of Bushs approval surge leaves no doubt that many Americans swung to approval of the president before he had had a chance to react in any substantive way to Septembers terrorist incidents. That polls taken as early as September 13 showed 78% to 86% approval may also shed some light on the initial source of the pro-Bush opinion swing. One of the main themes of Brodys book (as captured by its subtitle) is that public evaluations of the president are mediated by media accounts, which, in turn, reect elite opinion. Hence, the dominant understanding of rallies is that they follow from a (temporary) suspension of elite criticism of the president and a concomitant absence of media cues justifying disapproval of presidential performance. The September 11 terrorist attacks were probably the most salient news event in decades for Americans, and few learned about the story days late, after coverage had developed a distinctive, uniform tone. Most Americans did learn about the attacks from the media, to be sure, but the public reaction was probably too immediate to be understood as originating in changed elite discourse, as reected in the media with a small lag. Priors contribution to this symposium suggests that Figure 2 knowledge about the war on terrorism has disApproval and Disapproval of George W. Bush played a unique logic, with people somehow through April 2002 overcoming many of the usual obstacles to obtaining political information. My conjecture here is simpler, but related, insofar as I too suspect that the present case is in some ways anomalous. It seems possible that the movement from disapproval to approval of George W. Bush preceded elite support, as conveyed by the media. Brody takes variations in public responses to seemingly similar international crises as ruling out any simple explanation of the rally phenomenon as a reexive patriotic response (62). The present rally may eventually have conformed to Brodys model, but, prima facie, it seems initially to have been a strikingly good example of an instantaneous, reexive patriotic response, which is certainly how it was portrayed in news items about the late-September run on ags at Wal Marts across the nation. A breakdown of the approval time series by partisan identication would reveal, of course, that such decay in approval as has occurred has been disproportionately concentrated among Democrats. In those polls shown in Figure 2 that do report separate results by partisan identication, the Republican, Independent, and Democratic average support levels in 2002 have been 96%, 76%, and 66%, respectively. While that 30-point gap is impressive, note that 66% is close to the peak approval for the whole national performance. In the ensuing months, Bush has experienced a sample from both of Clintons two series shown in Figure 1. kind of second honeymoon, as approval has dipped only My impressionistic sense is that Democratic leaders have experslightlyby around 10 pointswhile disapproval has risen by imented with pulling almost all punches in discussion of foreign approximately the same amount. affairs, while tentatively poking at Bush on domestic matters. In short, President Bush has enjoyedand as of early May Following Zaller (1999), then, we might expect only the most 2002 is still enjoyinghistorically high levels of approval from attentive Democratic partisans to be shifting back to their more the American people, taken as a whole. Brody (1991, 48) pronatural position of disapproval of the presidents performance. poses that one not lose sight of the distinction between a pure

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But a parting of ways between Democrats and Republicans in the mass public could occur with or without elite and media intervention, and without comprehensive data on media tone over the last eight months, I cannot really separate rival accounts for the overall durability of Bushs support levels. One nal comparison that illustrates the impressive duration of this rally is the time series on media coverage of September 11s aftermath. The Tyndall Report has compiled data on total network newscast coverage of eight distinct stories directly related to the terrorist attacks and Americas response. That time series shows a quite drastic, though not smooth, falloff in total coverage, so that by early 2002, the news had clearly shifted to other topics (<www.tyndallreport.com>). Yet, while the media moved on, the public stuck with approval of the president, perhaps out of a sense that his policies were succeeding or that the nation remained in peril. In any case, over the last eight months, presidential approval has been abnormally high and yet largely immune to normal deterioration patterns. The Tyndall data suggest that this inertia might be hard to explain as originating in media, reinforcing the impression that the nation is in the midst of an unusually populist rally.

Figure 3 Ratings of President Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Democrats in Congress

Other Political Figures

Further clues about how to understand American public opinion since September 11 come from the approval series for other prominent political actors. Congressional job approval has attracted less interest than presidential over the years, but pollsters have asked, Do you approve or disapprove of the way Congress is handling its job? (or slight variations thereof) frequently enough to provide some sense for the long-term dynamics of public approval of the legislature. Over the second Clinton term, for instance, the approval level for Congress was typically 1020 points below that of the president, with movements in the two series being weakly correlated. Before September 11, this presidential edge had shrunk, as Bush was leading Congress only slightly in most polls. According to about 40 polls measuring congressional approval, Congresss approval level also shot up immediately after the attacks. Gallup recorded 84% approval in a poll taken over the period October 1114, and polls taken for CBS/New York Times, Gallup, IPSOS-Reid, and the Los Angeles Times over the next month detected about 70% approval, on average. However, this rally did not match its executive counterpart in persistence: the average approval level for Congress in 14 polls in 2002 has been only 56%, and the lowest readings have been below 50%. Disapproval, likewise, seems to have shot upwards over late 2001, and then leveled off between 30% and 40% in the new year. So Americans may have instinctively rallied around their legislature briey, but approval of public gures is in no sense automatic at the moment, as most of the congressional surge quickly came undone. That said, recent polls show higher congressional approval than did polls from 1998 to mid-2001, so it might be fair to conclude that some Americans (maybe 10%) continue to rally around the Hill.
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A few more clues lie in public attitudes toward prominent Cabinet gures. Figure 3 shows Harris data (again, retrieved from National Journals online poll track) on public attitudes towards a selection of gures over the rally months. Here the question is not framed in terms of approval, but quality of job performance: How would you rate the job the following ofcials are doingexcellent, pretty good, only fair or poor? Support for President Bush is roughly what one might have expected from his approval numbers:

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Standing Guard. While approval marks for Congress were strong immediately following September 11, Senate majority leader Thomas Daschle (top, right) and Senate minority leader Trent Lott (top, left) have seen their numbers dip. Gaines notes that It would seem that Americans are less appreciative of the Congress than of President Bush and his Cabinet. Top: (AP Photo/Kenneth Lambert); Bottom: (AP Photo/Doug Mills).

In the absence of quality data on media portrayals of Rumsfeld and his colleagues, one cannot easily discriminate between an explanation for their rallies that stresses spillover from their boss from a rival account emphasizing media and/or elite friendliness. My impressionist sense about Rumsfeld is that he initially received poor press, emphasizing his age and the sense that he was one of yesterdays men, but that his command of the war in Afghanistan later produced glowing coverage. A more interesting and suggestive case is Attorney General John Ashcroft. With the possible exception of Tom Ridge, no other senior Bush Administration gure seems to have faced as much media hostility. Ashcroft and the press corps face one another across a wide cultural divide, and a urry of stories in January played up his alleged prudery when, at a press conference, his staff erected a backdrop that happened to screen out a nude statue of Justice. Even more memorably, in December, New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis used his nal column to equate Ashcroft and Osama Bin-Laden, without a hint of irony.4 Late night comedians (including pseudo news anchor John Stewart of The Daily Show) followed suit. In short, even if there has been something of a suspension of criticism of Bush Administration ofcials since September 11, Ashcroft seems to be the preferred whipping boy in the media. Yet, his ratings in the Harris polls of January and March were better than those of the Democrats in Congress or Tom Daschle (e.g., roughly 60% rating his performance pretty good or better, to Daschles 45%). Again, then, I detect some signs that the American publics rallying behind President Bush and his cabinet is populist, in the sense that it seems at least partially independent of media cues.

Issues, Rallies, and Trust

although excellent ratings have declined, there has been only a small movement from pretty good or excellent to only fair, and poor remains a fringe response. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was omitted from the September survey, and thus missed a chance to record an immediate, post-attack high. But his October to March values look very much like those of Bush. Colin Powells ratings (not shown) are more impressive still, in fact slightly better than those of the president. The Democrats in Congress, by contrast, enjoyed a sensational September report card, but then saw more and more ratings of only fair and even 12% choosing poor by March. So, again, enthusiasm for Congress looks to have been short lived. There seems to be a small partisan effect, as the Republicans in Congress have done slightly better than their Democratic colleagues over this period. But their series looks more like the bottom panel than either of the top two, and by March only 50% were rating them pretty good or better. It would seem that Americans are less appreciative of the Congress than of President Bush or his Cabinet.

Along with the standard approval item, a number of pollsters have been asking respondents to discriminate between approval of overall job performance and approval of handling of the economy, foreign policy, and so on. Reactions seem to vary when questions are framed by issue, and, predictably, Bush has typically (but not uniformly) scored better for management of foreign policy and the war on terrorism than for his handling of the economy. It will be interesting, eventually, to test whether George W. Bushs approval levels have responded to economic trends over this period of elevated support, as, for instance, Reagans approval seems to have done notwithstanding the conventional wisdom that he was a teon president, approval for whom was impervious to bad-news corrections (e.g., Ostrom and Smith 1993). For present purposes, what is intriguing about differences in issue-specic approval ratings is that they work against an understanding of the rally as being purely knee-jerk, or divorced from policy considerations. In an early January Public Opinion Strategies poll, 55% strongly approved and 27% approved somewhat of Bushs job performance. Approving respondents were asked
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to identify the reason for Bushs high ratings, Figure 4 with the choices: his policies have resulted in no Trust in Government*, 19582001 further terrorist attacks; his response to the events of Sept. 11 and the direction of the war in Afghanistan; his general personal strength and sense of leadership since Sept. 11; or, the present administrations response dealing with the economic downturn. Only 6% selected the rst or fourth options, while 44% cited his personal strength and leadership, and 34% said the rally was based on the direction of the war. Since the question was not open-ended, and none of the options allowed respondents to locate the change in the American people rather than the president, these gures do not necessarily allow one to conclude that the current climate of support is necessarily personalized. But to the extent that support does stem from the success of the war and Bushs inspiring tone of leadership, it would seem there is no reason to believe there will necessarily be any long-term traces of the rally. On the other hand, a few survey items have tried to tap into the American publics sense of trust in government and institutions, to examine whether the swing of public mood is, in some respects, deeper than mere approval of the policies and personalities in the current administration. ABC news found no post-attack change of priori*The series shows the percentage of respondents answering just about always or ties, as respondents favored providing needed most of the time to How much of the time do you think you can trust the services over holding down the size of governgovernment in Washington to do what is rightjust about always, most of the time, ment by identical 63%36% margins in July 2001 or only some of the time? and January 2002. But trust in the governments ability to solve (general) problems rose from 51% rally. Whether this new willingness to express faith that governin 2000 to 66% in 2002. Curiously, government elicited ment is usually doing what is right will persist cannot easily be higher levels of trust with respect to its ability to deal with projected at this point. The contrast between ABC and the NES national security than with social issues. Asked, When it in recent years makes that question all the more intriguing, comes to handling social issues like the economy, health care, since the biennial NES results suggest that trust has been Social Security and education, how much of the time do you steadily rising since a local minimum in 1994, while ABCs trust the government in Washington to do what is right? annual surveys seemed to show that the mid-1990s trust rally Would you say just about always, most of the time or only quickly zzled, and that the public has in very recent years some of the time? only 38% chose the rst two, optimistic been moving back towards the late-1970s nadir in general trust. responses. However, 70% made those choices when the leadA caveat about the 64% nal observation is that it came in a in was, When it comes to handling national security and the late September poll, and even Congress seemed to be enjoying war on terrorism. That gap is quite puzzling if respondents a surge in approval at that point. Hence, this gure seems parreason retrospectively, given the manifest failure of governticularly prone to future revision, and it would almost certainly ment to prevent terrorists from killing thousands only months be imprudent to declare that the bright side of Septembers before. The responses may reect prospective evaluations and tragic loss of lives is that they helped usher in a new era of a realistic sense that governmental priorities had shifted totrust in government amongst the broader public. wards security in a major way. Or, it might be that the trust terminology here is misleading, and that what these responses best demonstrate is Americans willingness to exConclusion press solidarity with their government in times and realms of crisis. That Republicans express more condence than DemocThe American public continues to rally around the president rats on both items (48% to 32% on social issues and 80% to eight months after a few tragically efcient terrorists shocked 62% on security) probably demonstrates that Bushs shadow the nation. The rally has been long-lived, and somewhat deep, falls across the vaguely specied government. insofar as it seems to encompass the Cabinet, and maybe even Last, what about the most general trust in government Congress, albeit in a much muted form. There are hints that item for which we have a long time series? Figure 4 shows this has been an unusually unmediated response, although I both the National Election Study (NES) and the ABC have not presented any evidence that I would regard as conNews/Washington Post series for trust levels, with a post-9/11 clusive on that front. On the most intriguing question, of ABC reading as the nal observation. Here, then, is yet another whether the publics newly high approval for politicians porspike in public sentiment following the attacks, a surge every tends a turnaround in cynicism about government, I suspect bit as striking in magnitude as was the presidential approval that it is still too early to tell.

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Notes
*Thanks to Scott Althaus and Peter Nardulli for helpful suggestions. 1. The gure shows the proportion of all respondents answering approve to the question: Do you approve or disapprove of the way George W. Bush is handling his job as president? The Gallup presidentialapproval time series has been called, the longest and most valuable in public opinion history (King and Ragsdale 1988, 278), and it has certainly been much studied. Since September 11, it seems likely that more people than ever have been exposed to these data. Of course, all of the usual caveats about survey items apply. In particular, the gure shows only point estimates, and 95% condence intervals generally span an interval of plus or minus three or four points. 2. Note too that there is also little sign of any substantial rally around George W. Bush in April 2001, during the standoff with China over a downed U.S. spy plane, following its collision with a Chinese ghter jet. 3. The data plotted in Figure 2 were obtained from National Journals online poll track. I included every national-sample poll, most of which had about 1,000 respondents. I aggregated responses for those polls that asked respondents to express degrees of approval or disapproval, and I also include some polls that sampled registered voters or likely voters rather than adults, since the variation in responses appeared to be slight. 4. certainty is the enemy of decency and humanity in people who are sure they are right, like Osama bin Laden and John Ashcroft (Abroad at Home; Hail And Farewell, New York Times, 15 December 2001, sec. A). This was not Lewiss only assault on Ashcroft, and Lewis was not a lone critic. For instance, Al Hunt, from the pages of the Wall Street Journal, has nearly matched Lewis for strident rhetoric directed at the Attorney General.

References
Brody, Richard A. 1991. Assessing the President: The Media, Elite Opinion, and Public Support. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. King, Gary, and Lyn Ragsdale. 1988. The Elusive Executive: Discovering Statistical Patterns in the Presidency. Washington, DC: CQ Press. Ostrom, Charles W. Jr., and Rene M. Smith. 1993. Error Correction, Attitude Persistence, and Executive Rewards and Punishments: A Behavioral Theory of Presidential Approval. Political Analysis 4:12783. Zaller, John. 1999. The Myth of Massive Media Impact Revived: New Support for a Discredited Idea. In Political Persuasion and Attitude Change, ed. Diana C. Mutz, Paul M. Sniderman, and Richard A. Brody. Ann Arbor: Univeristy of Michigan Press, 1778.

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