02-24-2001

POLITICS: The Passionless Public

Once upon a political time, untold millions of Americans used to really,
really care about the issues of the day. They would brave tear gas to
protest a war, would jostle the House Ways and Means Committee chairman's
car because of his handiwork on catastrophic health insurance, or would
drum sinful politicians out of office. Ah, those were the days, when the
public wanted something from Washington and refused to be denied.


Undoubtedly, scattered passions remain. Abortion opponents marched in
Washington last month yet again, for the 28th year in a row. Californians
who are reading by flashlight at the moment very likely harbor strong
opinions about electricity deregulation.


By and large, however, and surely for better more than for worse, we are
living in relatively passionless times, as far as affairs of state are
concerned. The weightiest issues of the late 20th century-reforming the
welfare system, eliminating the federal budget deficit, winning the Cold
War-have been settled. "It is kind of a lull right now,"
acknowledged Rep. Dennis Moore. The moderate-to-conservative Democrat, who
is starting his second term representing a politically divided district in
and around Kansas City, Kan., phoned from back home during a recent
congressional recess. Did any constituent warn him that he'd better do
such-and-such or, two years hence, he might be looking for a new line of
work? "Nobody has told me that," he replied.


And why should a voter be so rude? This is a time of peace and-for the
moment, at least-prosperity. "There's not a huge, overarching crisis
they want government to fix," said Robert M. Teeter, a Republican
pollster. Robert J. Blendon, a professor of health policy and political
analysis at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government,
noted that "the election was almost issueless" and that the
electorate showed "no desire for any major change except on moral
values." And how much can Gomorrah-on-the-Potomac possibly do about
those values? Even if President Bush succeeds in restoring "honor and
integrity" to the Oval Office, as he so often promised during his
campaign, don't expect that accomplishment to drive Temptation Island off
the air or to prompt a hormonal teen-ager to decide differently at a
moment of high emotion.


Americans, pollsters say, do fervently want better schools, kinder HMOs,
affordable prescription drugs for old folks, and-in the wake of the
vote-counting fiasco in Florida-some kind of election reform. But the list
pretty much ends there. And a failure to act on those goals, even
advocates concede, probably wouldn't prove politically fatal. The
Republicans in charge of Congress intend to deliver on education, health
care, and taxes, said Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., who serves as the chief
fund-raiser for his fellow House partisans. But, he added, "I don't
think there is a huge, intense issue with any of them. [People's concerns
are] very diffuse right now."


Intensity of opinion is hard for pollsters to measure. But George C.
Edwards III, a political scientist at Texas A&M University, doesn't
see much fervor in any of the polls that ask people to name the most
important problem now facing the country. The answers are
"fragmented," he reported, and "all over the place.... When
people are happy, they're not demanding things."


For a new President and a delicately balanced Congress, the fact that the
public isn't insisting that they do very much ought to make political
survival a breeze. Even low expectations, however, pose risks. A
"Do-Nothing" Congress-or President-is a no-no, too. Remember
what happened to John H. Sununu? "There's not a single piece of
legislation that need be passed in the [next] two years for this
President," the first chief of staff to the first President Bush
famously told a roomful of conservative activists just after the 1990
election. "If Congress wants to come together, adjourn, and leave,
it's all right with us." Instead, it was Sununu who left, to be
followed all too soon by his boss, who was done in by his nonchalance
toward an economic recession that was hurting his fellow citizens. Surely
the senior Bush learned that a President must make it look as if he's
all-fired busy-even when he isn't doing much of anything on the domestic
policy front. His successor surely understood that lesson.


Soon, it'll be clear whether Bush's son understands that lesson as well.
This best-of-all-possible worlds-in which the gravest political test is
getting rid of a prospective budget surplus that keeps growing-could end
in a trice. The fact that more and more Americans believe the country is
on the verge of a recession (51 percent, in a recent Zogby poll, compared
with 39 percent who don't) only increases the chances that they'll cut
back on consumer spending and prove themselves right.


And if they are right, politicians had better watch out. Experts in
tracking public opinion say that although Americans may lack fervor about
a given issue right now, they have become used to getting the government's
help whenever they need it. Politicians who disappoint them-especially
during tough economic times-won't find themselves so easily
forgiven.


Education President III


Just after he had taken the oath of office, and in front of the cold,
grand statues of politicians past, the new President lunched with the
leaders of Congress and, in his brief remarks, talked big but aimed low.
"I'm here to tell the country that things will get done," Bush
said. "We're here to rise above expectations."


That shouldn't be too hard. Even in California, with its overloaded power
plants and its underfinanced schools, "people have fairly low
expectations for the President and the Congress and for what they'll be
capable of doing," said Mark Baldassare, a senior fellow at the
Public Policy Institute of California. An institute poll in January,
asking Californians about their views on national problems, found that
people were "very reluctant to accept any kind of sweeping
proposals," Baldassare said. When faced with a real crisis, however,
such as the state's rolling blackouts, Californians will accept a drastic
solution-but in this case, it lies in Sacramento and not in
Washington.


Bush's stands on the issues weren't the main reason that he won (and only
barely, having lost the popular vote). In the course of the campaign, he
and Vice President Al Gore proposed quite similar solutions on many of the
issues. (See NJ, 10/7/00, p. 3144.) Bush was elected "not on issues,
but on personal qualities," asserts Andrew Kohut, the director of the
Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. "Issues didn't
carry the day."


Consider the first legislative initiative from the nation's third
consecutive Education President. Bush's package of education measures,
released on his second workday in the White House, targeted the general
topic that most pollsters put at the top of the public's list of
concerns-and with an ideologically eclectic approach aimed at building a
coalition of centrist support. (See NJ, 1/27/01, p. 286.) "Bush is
right on target in pushing education as his linchpin to begin his
Administration," said Alan O. Crockett, the vice president for
communications at Zogby International, a polling firm. In exit polls on
Election Day, a plurality of voters called it their top priority for the
new President (30 percent of them, as opposed to the 26 percent who named
a tax cut and the 23 percent who mentioned Social Security). Teeter's
mid-January poll showed the gap between education and other priorities
considerably wider.


But how much can Washington do about the quality of the nation's schools,
which are controlled by local and state governments? The federal
government can help finance repairs on worn school buildings and help
build new ones. It can-as Bush has proposed-require annual testing of
students, and it can lean on the worst-performing schools to improve, by
threatening them with the loss of students and money. The President can
also lead a national conversation on education, one to which educators and
parents will pay attention.


But when it comes to raising the standards of the nation's far-flung
schools, "people realize that it's quintessentially a local
issue," said Deborah Wadsworth, the president of Public Agenda, a
nonpartisan public opinion research organization in New York City. Tom W.
Smith, a social survey director at the University of Chicago's National
Opinion Research Center, put it this way: "No one really believes
that Washington can create a national program that would solve
education."


Lawmakers, too, say that the voters don't seem to hold Washington directly
responsible for bringing schools up to snuff. Rep. Martin Frost of Texas,
the chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, reports that his constituents
"aren't sure what they want us to do." Rep. Lois Capps,
D-Calif., said that the people unhappy with their children's schools take
their displeasure to the local school board-"they won't call me
first." So, what is Washington's role? "It's the bully
pulpit," she said. For Bush, the sheer act of talking about education
and keeping the public's attention on improving education may be about as
much as Washington can really accomplish-and politically, that may
suffice.


A Healthy Passion?


Zogby's Crockett sees intensity nowadays on just two issues-education and
health care, both of them highly personal matters within virtually every
American's realm of experience. Two health-related issues in particular
have drawn the public's interest and support: prescription drugs for the
elderly, and a so-called bill of rights for patients insured by HMOs. Mark
S. Mellman, a Democratic pollster who has conducted opinion surveys for
the Health Insurance Association of America, said that public support for
those two issues is "as intense as for any policy proposal" in
the past 15 to 20 years-more than for term limits, say, or for a
balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution. In a poll he took last
month, they finished first and second (out of 25 issues) when respondents
were asked which issues personally concerned them the most.


Elderly voters in Texas, and some middle-aged ones as well, have
approached Rep. Frost unprompted, to talk about prescription drugs. In the
focus groups conducted by the Bush campaign, a Republican insider said,
"every single person had a horror story" about the travails of a
loved one in affording medicines. Not surprisingly, Bush joined Gore in
raising the issue repeatedly during the long campaign, though talk of it
dwindled as the election drew near.


But its political importance shouldn't be overstated. In exit polls on
Nov. 7, only 7 percent of the voters named prescription drugs and Medicare
as the issue that mattered most, and another 8 percent named health care
in general. Prescription drug coverage is an issue, but "it's not a
wild passion," said Harvard's Blendon.


Similarly, there's not much deep indignation over patients' inability to
sue their HMOs if the bean-counters won't allow treatment prescribed by
doctors. Polls show that nearly 90 percent of Americans who belong to HMOs
are satisfied with their medical care, even as the public overwhelmingly
thinks that patients ought to have more rights. Nor are people as ardently
concerned about the plight of the nation's uninsured as they were in
1993-94, when President Clinton tried-but spectacularly failed-to overhaul
the nation's health care system. The ranks of the uninsured have grown
since then, while the public's anger over the availability and cost of
health care has cooled. According to Gallup surveys, the level of outright
dissatisfaction has declined, from 45 percent in 1993 to 27 percent. (See
chart.)


Health issues are undoubtedly high on the public's agenda, but voters
probably won't browbeat politicians in Washington if they fail to act,
said Drew E. Altman, the president of the Henry J. Kaiser Family
Foundation, which regularly surveys Americans' sentiments on health care.
For members of Congress, Altman said, it would count as "a huge plus
to deliver, but not necessarily death not to deliver." And he has
doubts that they will deliver, given the "real differences of
principle," as well as of detail, between Republicans and
Democrats.


Pressure from the public to clean up the political system seems similarly
lacking. A recent Pew poll that identified a half-dozen issues that at
least 70 percent of Americans ranked as a top priority also found that
campaign finance reform wasn't one of them; only 37 percent placed it at
the top. Proponents contend that this understates the public's true
feelings. Disquiet with how campaigns are financed "registers in how
people don't trust government," Rep. Capps said. That may be true,
but the issue carried Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., only so far: It helped
him become Bush's chief rival for the GOP's heart, but it didn't get him
to the White House.


Low-Grade Tax-Cut Fever


The public's evident passion for tax cuts is every bit as iffy. When
Ronald Reagan entered the White House in 1981, he was able to persuade
Congress to reduce federal tax rates because his stirring electoral
victory was widely seen as a mandate to act. Inflation and interest rates
appeared to be out of control, which further helped Reagan's
cause.


Now, however, the air of economic desperation is gone, and the proportion
of Americans who say they need a tax cut has tumbled (by Gallup's
reckoning) from 62 percent in 1979 to a scant 21 percent in 1999, before
Bush made it a pillar of his campaign. Americans do tend to think that
their taxes are too high, and they do favor (by 55 percent to 34 percent,
in a Feb. 10-12 CBS News poll) a Bush-style cut in tax rates. But they're
skeptical that a budget surplus as big as budget Pollyannas predict will
actually materialize, and they envision better uses for it. A Newsweek
poll this month found more than 2-to-1 support for Bush's across-the-board
tax cut. But it also found that only 28 percent of respondents prefer to
use a surplus mainly to cut taxes, while 65 percent would rather pare the
federal debt and make Medicare and Social Security financially more
solvent.


Lawmakers say that their constituents have urged them to end the so-called
marriage penalty in the tax code and to ease the burden of inheritance
taxes on farmers and small-business owners, but they haven't heard a
clamor for an across-the-board tax cut. "I haven't had anyone tell
me, `Give me a huge tax cut,' " Capps said.


This, of course, may not head off a bidding war between the Republicans
and Democrats in Congress who-already worrying about the next
election-aren't averse to tossing tangible benefits to voters who haven't
demanded them. As the economy sours, support for tax cuts tends to rise.
It is no surprise that the Bush team has recently shifted its rationale
for a major tax cut: No longer presented so much as a philosophical act-a
measure designed to restore a proper balance between taxpayers' burdens
and federal largesse-the proposed cut has become a fiscal stimulus meant
to keep a recession at bay.


Feeling the Public's Pain


Remember those WIN buttons, on which President Ford pinned his hopes to
"Whip Inflation Now"? Or former President Bush's visit to a J.C.
Penney's to buy four pairs of white socks?


Those were laughable attempts to lift a sagging economy. Naturally,
neither of them worked. But when hard times loom, a President has got to
do something. People feel ornery, and it is for real reasons.


An economic downturn does more than raise Americans' anxieties about
making ends meet. It also has ripple effects. For instance, individuals'
health insurance premiums tend to rise in a recession, experts say,
because financially strapped companies often scale back benefits or shove
more of the costs onto their employees. In a recession, welfare rolls are
bound to grow, as tax revenues fall, and state (and federal) budget
surpluses will shrink as a result. Victims of a rotten economy are prone
to push Washington-whether on foot, by e-mail, or by bugging their elected
representatives-to do such things as extend unemployment compensation, or
raise the minimum wage, or offer tax breaks to industries in trouble.
During the recession of 1981-82, tent cities of the out-of-work sprang up
near the Reagan White House and in cities around the country. Veterans of
the first Bush White House remember the pressure, during the recession of
1991-92, that was exerted by real estate developers, automakers, and
California defense and aerospace companies.


The next time a recession arrives, the pressures exerted on
Washington-from elected officials, the press, and public opinion
polls-could get even worse. For one thing, voters' expectations of
Washington have changed, said Richard T. Curtin, a specialist in public
opinion at the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research.
"They want the federal government to play a different role," he
observed-and not a smaller one-"to help them withstand any potential
[economic] decline."


This shouldn't come as a surprise from a populace rife with baby boomers
accustomed to prosperity. The post-Gulf War Bush recession, after all, was
only a blip for an economy that has been surging since 1982. "Our
level of expectations has increased as a result of almost two decades of
economic growth," said Roger B. Porter, a political scientist at
Harvard's Kennedy School.


But this success, Porter warned, creates a political danger. And he is in
a rare position to know. He has a few WIN buttons stashed away, having
served as an economic and domestic policy adviser in the past three
Republican-run White Houses-and during the past three recessions. (He has
joked to friends that he'll stay out of George W. Bush's White House-in
the national interest.) "The public wants what it wants, right
now," he explained, but the lack of prompt, accurate data about the
real-time state of the ever-changing economy makes it hard for government
officials to make policy for the short term. When they try, it is
"almost always a mistake," said Porter, who counseled that
officials should do whatever is best for the long run.


But that doesn't relieve a President-one who wants a second term, at any
rate-of the requirement to do enough. What's enough? In 1992, the voters
"wanted a President who could feel their pain," said Todd G.
Buchholz, who was an associate director of economic policy for the elder
Bush, before his boss was ousted from the White House for his
under-reaction-in public, at least-to the recession at hand. The newspaper
account in 1992 that Bush was a stranger to supermarket scanners may not
have been factually accurate, but, because it showed a President out of
touch with a discontented public, the anecdote was true in its political
essence.


A President faced with a recession must do more than talk, according to
Porter: The public will also want a proposal for action that bears some
relation to the particulars and the magnitude of the problem. The younger
Bush may have lucked out, in this regard, because his campaign pledge to
cut taxes across the board is easy to repackage as a recession-fighting
instrument. The new President linked his recent call for oil exploration
in environmentally pristine Alaska to the electricity crisis in
California. So what if the connection is tenuous? Most of the public isn't
interested in the details.


The Perils of Leadership


What the public demands and what it will accept are two different things.
In the absence of war or economic sorrow, the consciously self-reliant
American public doesn't ordinarily turn to Washington to insist that it do
something or that it cut something out. But this doesn't mean that a
strong-minded President can't try to lead. Sometimes, say historians, the
political elites can push an issue to the fore, and the voters will
follow.


Consider what President Johnson accomplished in 1965, when he persuaded
Congress to enact a War on Poverty and other social programs meant to
create a Great Society. The public had no particular desire for such
magnanimity, but it was something that Johnson wanted to do, and his
electoral landslide and working control of Congress furnished the
political means to achieve his goals. Although Johnson kept track of
public opinion polls, "he was anything but a slave to them,"
said Boston University professor Robert Dallek, a historian and an LBJ
biographer. Indeed, it was his inattention to public opinion-on Vietnam
more than on his domestic plans-that ultimately sank his presidency. On a
lesser scale, President Carter succeeded in getting Congress to relinquish
U.S. control over the Panama Canal; and the elder Bush built public
support for the Persian Gulf War, in part by equating Iraqi dictator
Saddam Hussein with Adolf Hitler. But neither cause started a public
groundswell.


From such a problematic history, "Presidents have learned that
leading is hard," said Robert Shapiro of Columbia University, a
scholar on public opinion. And leadership can accomplish only so much.
"A President can't change the fundamental direction of the
public," Teeter said. "He can modify it, steer it, soften it,
and change it to some degree. But he can't take it on a 90-degree
turn."


Even the most eloquent Presidents can do only so much. Franklin D.
Roosevelt, who established the model for the modern presidency, proved
himself a master at guiding public opinion while never getting too far out
in front-for instance, in maneuvering an instinctively isolationist nation
toward World War II. Reagan moved the nation's political direction toward
the right, but only because the public was ready. He captured what Mellman
described as the public's "inchoate concerns and generalized upset
and distress"-set off by high inflation and the humiliation of
American hostages' being held in Iran-and he offered what he framed as
solutions, encased in a smaller government and a tougher diplomatic
posture.


"A President can lead a lot," said William G. Mayer, a political
scientist at Northeastern University, "but within narrow
bounds."


Leadership is especially hard to exert in undemanding times, when the
public isn't easily mobilized for a politician's version of the greater
good. "Clinton tried and failed constantly to mobilize the
public," said Edwards of Texas A&M. On issues ranging from health
care reform to school uniforms, Clinton proposed and Congress, well,
disposed.


His successor may not find it any easier. But it would behoove him to try.
For one thing, Bush might succeed in getting a few things done, on such
matters as education, prescription drugs, and taxes. That may constitute
leadership, even if it isn't bold. Boldness probably isn't a requirement
for political success. But action, or at least the appearance of it, is.
"People always want an activist President," said Teeter.
"All successful Presidents have been."


Bush, who pushed an activist agenda as Texas governor, has lessons to
learn from the two Presidents before him. His father's inaction in the
face of public demands limited him to a single term. The President who
served between father and son provides a more auspicious example. When the
Republicans seized control of Congress two years into Clinton's
presidency, the 42nd President had to curb his policy ambitions and find a
new strategy for political success. He did, in striking deals with his
opponents on welfare and the deficit while offering an unceasing flurry of
small policy ideas that made him seem to be doing a lot. So he served two
terms and left the White House with a higher job-approval rating than any
other outgoing President in several decades. The voters, it appears, want
Washington to work and their elected representatives to do things, even if
they don't want them to do very much in particular.


Burt Solomon

National Journal