The Cult of the Presidency by Healy Gene Cato Institute

Author:Healy, Gene,Cato Institute.
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-933995-19-9
Publisher: Cato Institute

The ‘‘Sixth-Year Curse’’

September 11 worked radical changes in our politics; but it did not change Americans’ tendency to weary of their presidents. George W. Bush’s second-term political difficulties were part of a pattern seemingly endemic to the modern presidency. All two-term presidents in the modern era have been plagued by some form of the ‘‘Sixth-Year Curse,’’ characterized by ‘‘scandals, weakened political coalitions, and mid-term electoral defeat.’’20 Starting as it did in his fifth year, George W. Bush’s curse came a little early, but it did not wane going into his sixth, and showed no signs of fading as his second term came to a close.

With few exceptions, the public has greeted each post–World War II president with an initial burst of enthusiasm, followed by dashed expectations and declining popularity. Thus, modern presidential approval graphs strung together look like an EKG on a patient being repeatedly shocked to life—‘‘clear!’’—and then fading out again. Just as popularity tends to fade within each president’s tenure, average approval ratings have been in decline from one president to the next for most of the era of the modern presidency.21

Some political scientists attribute declining presidential popularity to the ‘‘expectations gap’’—the vast distance between what the public expects of the president and what he can realistically deliver.22 The office cannot bear the weight of the expectations placed upon it, nor, in most cases, can the officeholder, who often responds to the dilemma with behavior at once imperious and petulant. That behavior tends to worsen his predicament, and thus it’s little wonder that we want most presidents’ shows cancelled by their sixth season, if not before.

But whether he’s loved or hated at any given stage of the news cycle, the president remains ‘‘our perennial main character, occupying center stage during almost all dramas in national political life.’’23The president’s dominance of the news coverage of nearly any largescale national incident likely leads us to overestimate his control over events. The fact that the president is front and center on the nightly news whenever there’s a significant economic downturn, a hurricane, or a terrorist attack reinforces the view that he is the man in charge—responsible for, and capable of dealing with the emergency of the week, whatever it may be.24

Daunting as meeting public expectations can be when it comes to events like natural disasters or national security threats, the president’s responsibility goes beyond the merely corporeal; as some see it, he’s also the steward of the national soul itself. As Thomas Cronin put it in his classic 1970 essay ‘‘Superman: Our Textbook President’’:

On both sides of the presidential popularity equation [the president’s] importance is inflated beyond reasonable bounds. On one side, there is a nearly blind faith that the president embodies national virtue and that any detractor must be an effete snob or a nervous Nellie. On the other side, the president becomes the cause of all personal maladies, the originator of poverty and racism, inventor of the establishment, and the party responsible for a choleric national disposition.25

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