Brendan Nyhan

Despite the fact that President Bush’s approval numbers are below 30%, I’m shocked at how little respect he commands from what remains of his base in polls asking about presidential greatness. In April 2003, a USA Today/Gallup poll found that 11% of Americans rated Bush as the greatest US president ever. Now a LA Times/Bloomberg poll found that only 11% rate him above average (4% outstanding, 7% above average, 24% average, 23% below average, 39% poor). That means that even most Republicans think Bush is an average president at best.

Until the Blagojevich scandal broke, Barack Obama looked to be on his way to a presidential honeymoon (though not a mandate). Now, however, things look less clear.

Just a few days ago, Obama’s approval numbers were remarkable, as CNN noted:

A new national poll suggests that Barack Obama’s having one heck of a honeymoon.

Nearly eight in ten Americans questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey out Tuesday morning are giving the president-elect the thumbs up when it comes to his handling of the transition. Seventy-nine percent approve of Obama’s performance so far during transition, with 18 percent disapproving.

Obama’s approval rating is “14 points higher than the approval rating for president-elect Bush in 2001 and 17 points higher than president-elect Clinton’s rating in 1992,” CNN Polling Director Keating Holland noted.

Rasmussen found a similar uptick in approval of Obama from 52% just after election day to 67% yesterday. The shift has consisted almost entirely of growth in the number of people saying they approve of Obama’s performance but do not strongly approve — a finding which is consistent with a honeymoon.

The reason for this shift is relatively simple: Republicans are largely refraining from criticizing Obama, which limits negative news coverage since reporters often frame such stories around the president’s critics. The flow of information to the public about him has therefore become overwhelmingly positive, which has driven up his approval numbers. As Jim Stimson explains in Tides of Consent, this is the classic pattern of presidential honeymoons.

Now, however, the Obama administration has to be concerned that the Blagojevich scandal could undermine the honeymoon before it has even really begun. My research (PDF) suggests that efforts to link Obama to the scandal are likely to fail in the current political climate, which features relatively high approval of Obama among opposition party identifiers. However, the controversy and the questions that are being asked about Obama’s role (if any) may draw out Republican criticism, returning the political climate to a two-sided message flow that will ultimately deflate Obama’s approval numbers. That’s what happened to Bill Clinton — early controversies concerning his appointments and gays in the military encouraged his opponents to speak out against him, which ended any chance he had of a honeymoon.

It’s too soon to say, of course, whether Blagojevich will have any significant effect on Obama, but the downside risk is real.

Update 12/12 9:47 AM: Via Media Matters, here’s an example of how the scandal is emboldening Republicans to restart the flow of negative information about Obama:

Although prosecutors said Mr. Obama was not implicated in their investigation, the accusations of naked greed and brazen influence-peddling have raised questions from some about the political culture in which the President-elect began his career.

Republican leaders, sensing an opening, have raised questions about Mr. Obama’s relationship with various players in the Illinois political drama, and criticized Mr. Obama’s first remarks on Mr. Blagojevich as vague. They have urged Mr. Obama to divulge any contacts between his staff and the governor’s administration.

The only thing dumber than opening a website for the public to submit and vote on questions to Barack Obama (which will either provide a platform for anti-Obama content or require suppression of it) is to do so in the midst of a scandal that people are trying to link to Obama. And — sure enough! — Politico is already covering
the way visitors to the site are flagging questions about Blagojevich as inappropriate.

Let me join the unlikely duo of Bob Somerby and Ross Douthat in being embarassed that the Washington Post published this Ruth Marcus column on Caroline Kennedy potentially being appointed to Hillary Clinton’s Senate seat. After noting that she “recoil[s] from political dynasties” and calling them “fundamentally un-American” (I agree!), Marcus proceeds to describe how the “fairy tale” appeal of Kennedy’s appointment has won her heart:

What really draws me to the notion of Caroline as senator, though, is the modern-fairy-tale quality of it all. Like many women my age—I’m a few months younger than she—Caroline has always been part of my consciousness: The lucky little girl with a pony and an impossibly handsome father. The stoic little girl holding her mother’s hand at her father’s funeral. The sheltered girl, whisked away from a still-grieving country by a mother trying to shield her from prying eyes.

In this fairy tale, Caroline is our tragic national princess. She is not locked away in a tower but chooses, for the most part, to closet herself there. Her mother dies, too young. Her impossibly handsome brother crashes his plane, killing himself, his wife and his sister-in-law. She is the last survivor of her immediate family; she reveals herself only in the measured doses of a person who has always been, will always be, in the public eye.

…I know it’s an emotional—dare I say “girly”?—reaction. But what a fitting coda to this modern fairy tale to have the little princess grow up to be a senator.

As Somerby writes, “Endlessly, the world is a novel for these elites—a pleasing story, a fiction, tale.” But it’s Douthat who nails what’s so offensive and anti-democratic about the column:

This is, of course, a pretty good distillation of the case against dynastic politics: Namely, that it transforms the business of republican self-government into a soap opera, in which the public/audience thrills to the “intriguing subplots” involving a President’s daughter, a President’s wife, and a Governor’s son who happens to be the President’s daughter’s sister’s ex-husband … and sighs, enraptured, at the “fairy tale ending” when the President’s daughter grows up to have a Senate seat handed to her as a reward for having endorsed the President-elect. This sort of politics is entertaining to write about, which is one reason why fantasy sagas and Shakespeare are generally more interesting than Washington novels. But after twenty years with the same two families in the White House – which nearly became twenty-four (or twenty-eight) – for a political columnist to endorse a pointless escalation of dynastic politics because it fulfills the fairy-tale mythos her generation spun around a mediocre, tragically-murdered President and his good-looking family isn’t “girly”; it’s an embarrassment.

You can apply similar logic to the prospect of Chris Matthews using his celebrity and cable news platform to get the Democratic nomination against Arlen Specter in 2010 (or Al Franken, etc.). I should start a bipartisan anti-celebrity/dynasty PAC.

You have to admit it’s pretty funny that the executive director of the “United States Justice Foundation”, which is pushing (PDF) the Obama birth certificate myth, is named Gary Kreep. He’s right up there with the anti-Obama robocaller Orson Swindle.

PS Make sure to read the histrionic USJF email (PDF) calling Obama a “Usurper.”

Isn’t there some irony in the McCain camp leaking an unaired Wright ad with the tagline “Character matters, especially when no one’s looking” and then suggesting it illustrates McCain’s virtuous behavior?

Wouldn’t “character … when no one’s looking” suggest that you should keep quiet about the ad instead of taking credit for something you did in private? This could be a hot new political gambit — maybe Obama will release all the nasty ads he didn’t run against McCain so he can look like a nice guy too…

Breaking news from the Washington Times: fewer people are watching online videos of Barack Obama now that the campaign is over. Who would have guessed that interest in politics would decline after an election?

FYI to commenters: I have turned on the TypePad Connect beta, which offers some improved commenting features (threaded comments, better spam detection, no CAPTCHA, etc.). Please let me know if you have problems with it.

I’m quoted in a Chicago Tribune story today on the persistence of the myth that Barack Obama was not born in the United States and is therefore ineligible to serve as president:

This is a story that won’t go away.

Five weeks after the State of Hawaii vouched for the authenticity of President-elect Barack Obama’s birth certificate, the controversy over allegations that Obama is not eligible to take office next month has reached the Supreme Court, which is expected to announce Monday whether it will consider the matter.

The fight is unusual because it thrives outside the so-called mainstream media…

This is a different army at work, in an environment increasingly influenced by the Internet.

“It’s only being mentioned by a relative few, by the real die-hard, anti-Obama crowd,” said Michael Harrison, editor and publisher of Talkers magazine, the trade bible of the talk-radio industry. “On mainstream talk radio, it’s not a big deal right now. I think it’s run its course.”

“But,” Harrison added, “we live in a time that, because of the Internet, all points of view can live forever.”

Just as there is a split on the legitimacy of the legal claims, there is also a split within the media on the merits of the story. Is it the last gasp of opposition from opponents of Obama who have a found community of like-minded believers on the Internet, or is there a legal question to be resolved? The court will answer the latter question this week.

The campaign challenging the legitimacy of Obama’s 1961 birth certificate or the legality of his taking office is chronicled by WorldNetDaily, a popular, politically right-leaning site that was the 26th most-visited news and media Web site during November, according to Hitwise, which monitors Net traffic.

…If the Supreme Court decides not to consider the case, [New Jersey lawyer Leo] Donofrio said there “won’t be any beating on the drums saying there wasn’t any justice.”

But that will not be the end of the matter, Farah vowed.

“It’ll plague Obama throughout his presidency. It’ll be a nagging issue and a sore on his administration, much like Monica Lewinsky was on [ President Bill] Clinton,” Farah said. “It’s not going to go away and it will drive a wedge in an already divided public.”

That may underscore a landscape change in the media, where the Internet is playing a bigger role in setting the agenda. In 2004, the so-called swift boat campaign against Sen. John Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee, began on the Internet. In fact, the co-author of “Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry,” Jerome Corsi, also wrote “Obama Nation,” a book critical of Obama, published earlier this year.

Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at Duke University, said the Internet’s role in forming public opinion is gaining strength. WorldNetDaily, for instance, has one of the faster-growing audiences on the Internet, up 62 percent in the past year, according to Hitwise.

Nyhan co-wrote a study this year that said journalists’ attempts to correct misinformation is unlikely to sway public perceptions because many people want to believe the misperception.

“People often have a strong bias for believing the evidence they want to believe and disbelieving what they don’t believe,” Nyhan said. “There is less of a sense that we all have a common set of facts we can agree on. There’s a polarization, and we can’t even agree on the basic factual assumptions to have a debate.”

I’m trying to decide what the appropriate analogy would be to a debunked Clinton scandal that festered outside the media mainstream — maybe the rumor that Vince Foster was murdered? The difference, however, is that supporting “evidence” for the rumor is now just a Google search away. This factor has certainly played a major role in the 9/11 “truth” movement, which continues to promote its discredited theories via an elaborate online ecosystem.

Update 12/8 10:46 AM: Unsurprisingly, the Supreme Court turned down the case.

Brad DeLong has written a nasty post attacking Jim Rutenberg of the New York Times as having “neither memory nor morals” and suggesting he be used as “a cosmetics testing subject”:

Why oh why can’t we have a better press corps? Jim Rutenberg of the New York Times demonstrates once again that he would be more useful to society as a cosmetics testing subject. Rutenberg regards the famous dog-eating Jew-counter Fred Malek as “noncontroversial.” He may be noncontroversial to Rutenberg because Rutenberg has neither memory nor morals. Fred Malek is not controversial to me. He is very controversial to me. Personally, my guess is that Rutenberg has a memory but has no morals.

What’s incredible is that Rutenberg did not actually call Malek “noncontroversial” as DeLong suggests. Rutenberg simply wrote that Malek’s appointment to an obscure federal board “provoked no complaint”:

Mr. Bush appointed a longtime family friend and former
business partner, Fred V. Malek, to the board of visitors of the United
States Military Academy. Mr. Malek, who was a partner with Mr. Bush in
the Texas Rangers baseball team, will serve for three years. A West
Point graduate, he has donated generously to its campus; his
appointment, like the others, provoked no complaint.

Rutenberg’s claim is empirical, not normative. He did not say Malek is a “noncontroversial” public figure; he reported that no one had complained about Malek’s appointment. Rather than challenge that empirical claim, however, DeLong paraphrases Malek inaccurately, puts his paraphrase in quotes, and proceeds to demonize Rutenberg on the basis of the inaccurate quotation. It’s reminiscent of the process by which Al Gore was falsely attacked for claiming to have “invented the Internet.”