What keeps Bill Clinton's poll ratings so high? It's the economy, stupid!
"Once again after a quarter-century, there's serious discussion about the possibility of dismissing an incumbent President -- whether by forced resignation or House impeachment and a Senate trial," observes Everett Ladd, editor of The Public Perspective, a publication of the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research. Ladd emphasizes that, "for the first time since Watergate, a President is being strongly criticized for malfeasance in office by some of his own supporters, not just his opponents."
Ladd argues that "Americans have never really liked the game of politics or held most of its players in particularly high regard. When a scandal breaks, we are apt to say, 'Well, that's politics!' In April 1973," he recalls, "just 31 percent of [poll] respondents who had heard of Watergate . . . described it as 'a very serious matter,' while 53% called it 'just politics' -- the kind of thing that both parties engage in. As the investigations proceeded and new revelations cascaded, the proportions shifted between these two responses, but gradually and moderately."
The American public, it seems, is both temperate and prudent. "The most striking finding from polling on Watergate," Ladd claims, "is how slowly and reluctantly many Americans came to accept the idea of ousting the President. We wanted an investigation of the scandal, but until very late we really didn't want Nixon kicked out. This reluctance stemmed partly from a reverence for the institution," he contends. "Even near the end of Watergate much of the public continued to show sympathy for the beleaguered President and a real reluctance to accept a forced resignation."
But accept it we did, once Nixon's culpability had become "perfectly clear" and even party loyalty and awe for the office would not sustain him. The public will turn on Bill Clinton, too, when at last it becomes impossible to suspend disbelief. "Polls show high levels of support for Clinton's being forced from office," Ladd observes, "if evidence indicates he broke the law -- if , for example, he lied under oath about having an affair with Monica Lewinsky, or if he participated in an effort to get her to lie under oath about it." He recalls that "support for Nixon's forced exodus jumped whenever 'ifs' were added about firm evidence of illegal action."
The biggest difference affecting the public's reaction to the two scandal-plagued Presidents is the state of the economy. "In 1973 and 1974, Americans saw their country in a terrible mess," Ladd explains; "now we're generally upbeat and, with regard to the economy, almost euphoric. Nixon took the blows of Watergate in a political environment where his standing would have been greatly diminished had Watergate never intruded, whereas Clinton has seen the impact of his scandals softened by good times." Ladd concludes that "Nixon's low approval ratings and Clinton's high approval scores don't establish the relative impact of the two scandals. Instead," he asserts, "they point to the profound dissimilarity between the two periods."
