Ah, the power of the press.
After weeks of speculation in print and over the air about whether President Clinton was and/or is a conniving land developer, the crony of a sleazy banker, perhaps a compulsive philanderer and possibly a liar, look what has happened to his standing with the public.
It’s gotten better.
The latest round of polls put the president’s approval rating in the 55 to 60 percent positive range, higher than a few months ago, and higher than almost any other recent president’s at the end of his first year in office.
So what’s going on here? Don’t people believe what they’ve read, seen or heard? Have they not been paying attention? If not, don’t they care?
According to the accepted political wisdom, they must care. When it comes to the presidency, “character” is more important than issues, policy or party. In the words of that estimable gentleman, Mark Shields, “the choice of a president is the most personal decision a voter makes.”
The choice is considered personal more than political or ideological because the presidency is unique. Senators make laws, governors raise taxes and all of them get on television. But the president does more than run the government, make proposals and set policies. He embodies the nation. His role is not just governmental but magisterial, which the dictionary calls “characteristic of a master or teacher.”
For proof there was Ronald Reagan, so superb at the magisterial part of the job that he won votes from many who disagreed with him on the issues, so many that he became the most popular president of the last half-century.
Well, actually, he didn’t. Reagan always had a hard core of intense support, and he was popular enough when it counted, in November of 1984. But his median approval rating was just about average for post-war presidents, and not as high as Clinton’s is now.
Besides, Reagan’s popularity itself defied his own weaknesses of character and intellect, weaknesses well-known to the electorate. Voters knew that Reagan got confused about facts, fell asleep at meetings and had invented part of his biography.
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But as long as he was a successful president-as long as the country was strong, the economy was prosperous and he didn’t violate any rules of conduct as president, they didn’t really care. His approval rating suffered only in the recession of 1982 and again in 1987, when it turned out that he had indeed violated rules of conduct as president.
Nor were the voters who so easily elected George Bush in 1988 convinced of his personal probity. Few believed that he had been “out of the loop” during the arms-for-hostages plotting of the Iran-Contra mess. But they voted for him anyway, even though they were convinced that he had lied to them.
All this raises an extraordinary possibility. Maybe voters don’t really expect their leaders, even their president, to have been perfect all their lives. Maybe what they really want the president to do is run the government. Running the government is a pretty big job.
Given a choice, no doubt people would rather have a president who had never gotten drunk, puffed a joint, cheated on his wife (or, one day, her husband), made a deal with an unsavory buddy, finagled his way out of the army, told a lie or spit on the sidewalk.
But for two reasons, these transgressions no longer seem disqualifying, if they ever were. The first reason is that voters rarely get that choice, and they know it. In a world of flawed mortals, the choice is invariably between two flawed mortals, and most people will choose the one more likely to improve their lives over the one who comes closer to sainthood.
The other reason is that Americans have usually given a new president a clean slate. Whatever he did earlier. . .well, that was earlier. So it was that Harry Truman’s debt to the corrupt Kansas City machine, Lyndon Johnson’s unconventional path to wealth and Richard Nixon’s dishonest congressional campaigns were all but forgotten once they were elected president. Until now, at least, presidents have gotten in trouble only for post-inaugural transgressions.
There are, no doubt, limits to this retroactive tolerance. Had any president committed a serious crime in the past, there would have been political consequences. In the unlikely event that credible evidence connects Clinton with a real crime in Arkansas, his popularity will suffer. If it turns out simply that he had acted in an unwise or unseemly manner, or had done something he “shounta oughta” have done, as they used to say in some circles, the public reaction is likely to be. . .”oh, well.”
You don’t suppose we’re growing up, do you?