The Teflon President and the Velcro President: A Comparison of Public
Opinion Media Coverage and Approval Ratings During the Reagan and
Obama Administrations
Working Paper prepared for the Western Political Science Association Meeting, Portland, OR
Anne Pluta, Department of Political Science, University of California Santa Barbara
Emiliana Patlan, Department of Political Science, University of California Santa Barbara
A common refrain in mainstream American politics is that Ronald Reagan was the
“Teflon” president. This moniker implies that criticism did not stick to him and his popularity
remained high. Conversely, Barack Obama is sometimes called the “Velcro” president, as
criticism seems to stick to the 44 th president (Nicholas and Hook, 2010). The aim of this paper is
two-fold: to determine if evidence from Reagan’s terms and Obama’s term so far support the
Teflon/Velcro dichotomy and secondly to seek to explain what is behind this phenomenon.
What, if anything, does Obama have to learn from Reagan when it comes to avoiding criticisms
that stick?
The economic and partisan characteristics that the Reagan and Obama presidencies have
in common permit a comparison of how presidents are treated in the media and how they are
thought of by the public. In this paper, we focus on how presidential approval ratings change
over the course of: a given presidential term, periods of united and divided government, changes
in media coverage, and economic fluctuations. While the specific mechanisms may not yet be
known, the presence of relationships among some of these factors and presidential approval is
fairly certain. Most of the studies on presidential approval are based on aggregate data that does
not provide information on individual behavior (Edwards et al., 1995). For instance, it has been
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found that lower presidential approval rates accompany high unemployment, but the mechanism
for why this is true is not clear. The association does not tell us if the unemployed are rating the
president poorly because they lost their jobs, or if it is others who are worried about the
economic effects of unemployment on them.
The Importance of Presidential Approval
People tend to think that presidential approval ratings are very important. After all,
organizations spend a lot of time and money conducting polls and media spend a lot of time
dissecting their meaning. The president also spends resources trying to improve his numbers.
However, not much thought is given as to why presidential approval ratings are important. One
reason might be that the president can more effectively pursue his agenda. This is true at times,
but the media, Congress, and the public also play a role. The public salience and issue
complexity, framed by the media and Congress, determine if a president can capitalize on his
strong approval ratings (Canes-Wrone and de Marchi, 2002). Furthermore, presidential approval
rating are positively correlated with legislative influence (Ostrom and Simon, 1985), and it
increases the president's ability to sustain vetoes (Rohde and Simon, 1985). Ironically, approval
ratings can affect a president's job performance and subsequent ratings.
Congress and Presidential Approval
The link between united or divided government and presidential approval involves
congressional-presidential relations. We plan to include congressional approval rates in a future
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version of this work, but some discussion of the literature is needed to understand the link
between united or divided government and presidential approval.
Evidence shows that low levels of Congressional approval decrease re-election rates for
incumbents in Congress (Born 1990) and members of the majority party (McDermott and Jones
2003; Patterson and Monson 1999). Mark D. Ramirez (2009) finds that partisan conflict in
Congress has a negative effect on the public's evaluation of the institution. The public may not
want a “responsible party” government, but rather bipartisan cooperation. This would suggest
that in times of extreme Congressional polarization, the public may prefer a unified government.
Ramirez concludes that members of Congress may choose to decrease their partisan behavior
when elections are near. This suggests that united and divided government may have the opposite
effect than what is expected. We would expect that in a united government the President would
be able to see more of his agenda passed in Congress. This would help to strengthen approval
numbers. But according to these findings, in a divided government, if the majority party of
Congress has more members up for reelection they will moderate their partisan behavior and
make nice with the President. And in a united government, members of Congress would want to
distance themselves from the President, possibly resisting his agenda.
This conclusion is echoed by Nicholson et al. (2002) who find that divided government
significantly increases the likelihood that a respondent will approve of a president's job
performance. They also come to the same conclusion at the aggregate level: there is higher
aggregate approval rates during times of divided government. But the mechanism behind their
finding differs from that of Ramirez. They argue that presidents lose less in credit-claiming than
they gain in blame avoidance. In divided government, the president may not be able to claim
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quite as much of the credit for legislation, but he greatly gains in ability to shift blame to
Congress.
The Economy and Presidential Approval
The state of the economy is often thought to effect the publics' evaluations of the
president, and partisan conflict, including divided government, is often thought to effect the
president's ability to realize his agenda. Economic characteristics of a presidency, such as
unemployment and interest and inflation rates have been closely linked to presidential approval.
The rate of unemployment is most closely tied to fluctuations in approval, and the general health
of the economy is often cited by the public as the most important concern of the nation and its
leadership. But covariation of approval rates with economic or divided-government variables
does not explain what causes changes in approval rates (Edwards, Mitchell, Welch 1995). While
we do not claim to say anything about how the economy affects individual assessments of
presidential approval, it is an important variable to include. Luckily, it has been found that unlike
foreign policy, which ebbs and flows, economic policy has a consistent impact over time
(Mcavoy 2006). While the state of the economy may differ in salience from one person to
another, aggregately we will assume that it is constant through time.
Changes in Media Coverage and Presidential Approval
While there are a lot of similarities between the Reagan and Obama presidencies, mass
media have changed greatly, namely the rise of the internet and cable news networks. We also
expect that the coverage of opinion polls has changed. While opinion polls were well into their
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hay-day during Reagan's administration, public opinion polls are quicker to conduct, if not easier
and cheaper. It may be that the public is told what they think about the president much more now
that during Reagan's years in the White House.
The press can also effect the public's evaluation of the president through the amount and
tone of the coverage. Edwards et al. (1995) find that the salience of issues effects whether they
are used in evaluating the president, and salience varies over time. Brody (1991) would argue
that this variation is due to changes in the media. He finds that because the press's coverage of
political issues changes over time, the public's basis for evaluation changes over time. There are
many other factors that effect this variation, but the media certainly plays a role.
The reason that the public is so reactive to what is covered in the media and is because
individuals use “satisficing” (Simon, 1957) to assess the president's performance in a small
number of policy spheres and then generalize that assessment to his overall job performance. It is
too difficult to keep in mind all of the president's job responsibilities and how he has preformed
them. In order to take advantage of needed cognitive short-cuts, individuals rely heavily on the
media for cues. People rely on the media to tell them what issues are important (Graber 1978;
Iyengar, Peters, and Kinder 1982). They exert influence by providing a frame of reference for
political and economic issues. Individuals base evaluations of the president on issues that they
find important and salient. Since not all issues can be thought of together, people judge issues to
be important that are on the top of their heads (Converse, 1964). The issues that they are familiar
with are the issues that are important. And familiarity with issues is related to the duration and
amount of coverage of those issues in the media (Page and Shapiro, 1992).
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Methodology and Case Selection
The main object of this paper is to compare the approval rates of Reagan and Obama, but
Nixon is included for comparison. As this is a work in progress, we also plan to include Carter,
H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and W. Bush. The data set includes newspaper coverage of public
opinion polls specifically regarding the president. We searched major newspapers (LA Times,
Wall Street Journal, NY Times and Washington Post) using the key words “President”, the last
name (such as “Obama”) and “poll” for each term. Then the headline and date were recorded.
Next, we coded the headlines as positive, negative, or neutral. We had an additional category for
headlines that began positively or negatively but ended with a qualifier that suggested the
opposite. We also coded whether the headline referred to the economy, the administration’s
performance in general, the president personally or the president’s policy. The president's
approval rating at the time of the article was recorded, along with the unemployment level at the
time and whether it was under a united or divided government.
Data and Results
Our results do not support the assertion that the media has increased it's coverage of
public opinion polls concerning the president. In most cases, we find that newspapers report the
results of a poll once (the day of or perhaps the day after). There is little evidence that major
newspapers repeatedly discuss the results of public opinion polls for any of our chosen
presidents. However, the same topics are repeatedly polled. This makes sense when the subject is
policy oriented. For instance, it was important to see how public opinion shifted throughout the
healthcare debate. It is more troubling when this repetition occurs with personal subjects, such as
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the birthplace of a president. The results also do not support the idea that criticisms stick to
Obama more than they did to Reagan.
Below, Table 1 summarizes the percent of negative headlines, average unemployment and
average approval rating during the Nixon, Reagan, and Obama presidencies. Nixon has the
lowest percentage of negative public opinion headlines, the highest average approval rating, and
the lowest average unemployment rate, while Reagan's first term and Obama's current term are
very similar.
Table 1
Percent Negative
Headlines
Average
Unemployment
Average Gallup
Approval Rating
Nixon (1/1969 – 7/1971)
27.5%
4.46%
59.5%
Reagan (1/1981 – 7/1983)
53.5%
8.839%
48.9%
Reagan (1/1985 – 7/1987)
42.15%
6.9%
56.5%
Obama (1/2009 – 7/2011)
53.10%
9.34%
50.73%
Table 2 breaks things down even further and includes percentage of the time that the
House and Senate is controlled by the Democratic Party and the percentage of time that the
government is divided. The base is the combination of the four presidential terms analyzed. In
line with the literature, more positive headlines about public opinion of the president occur in
times of divided government. In all cases, negative public opinion headlines occur more when
there is on average lower presidential approval rates. This seems logical and what we would
expect. And with the exception of Reagan's second term, there is also higher unemployment rates
during the publication of negative public opinion headlines. The exception might be an artifact of
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second terms in general. The public and the media may be more forgiving of a “lame duck”
president who they know is on his way out.
Table 2
Base
Negative
Positive
Obama
Negative
Positive
Reagan
Reagan1
Negative
Positive
Reagan2
Negative
Positive
Nixon
Negative
Positive
Approval
53.9
50.41
58.47
50.73%
49.05%
55.32%
52.35
48.97%
47.56%
53.00%
56.57%
53.55%
59.23%
59.51%
55.20%
61.60%
Unemployment
7.23
7.94
6.34
9.34%
9.49%
8.92%
7.99
8.84%
8.97
8.43%
6.93%
6.76%
7.07%
4.47
5.17%
4.05%
House
95% Dem
95.00%
94% Dem
78.00%
85.00%
68.00%
100.00%
100.00%
100.00%
100.00%
100.00%
100.00%
100.00%
86.00%
66.00%
97.00%
Senate
51.00%
44.00%
61.00%
100.00%
100.00%
100.00%
0.00%
0.00%
0.00%
0.00%
0.00%
0.00%
0.00%
86.00%
66.00%
97.00%
Divided
81.00%
74.00%
87.00%
22.00%
15.00%
32.00%
100.00%
100.00%
100.00%
100.00%
100.00%
100.00%
100.00%
86.00%
66.00%
97.00%
Below, are preliminary histograms of 1) negative headlines by months, 2) positive
headlines by month, 3) negative headlines by quarter, and 4) positive headlines by quarter. For
the combined 4-year terms, the occurrence of negative public opinion headlines are
approximately normally distributed across the months, with a peak at the one year mark and a
second smaller peak at the two year mark. The positive public opinion headlines occur mostly at
the beginning of the term and quickly decline in number. The approval ratings follow a similar
pattern. This is in line with Brace and Hickley's (1991) finding. They conclude that presidencies
follow a cycle of deflation and partial restoration. Approval ratings dip from around month seven
until the approach of the next election.
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Preliminary Histograms
Conclusion
This analysis shows little support for the notion that the print media was less critical of
Reagan than Obama during his time in office and suggests that other explanations need to be
explored. And there was a much lower percentage of negative public opinion headlines for Nixon
than for Reagan or Obama. This may not be so surprising given the very low rate of
unemployment during the Nixon administration. Another caveat is that the time period when
Watergate became really interesting is not included.
If data do not support the Teflon and Velcro characterizations, why is it so popular in the
media? There are several other possible explanations that can be explored in future research. It
may be that partisan press (including Fox News, MSNBC, and the internet) makes criticism of
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Obama stick around more than those against Reagan. Another explanation is that it is an accident
of historical memory: people always admired Reagan personal and this admiration outweighs
any dislike of his policies. Additionally, people may feel sympathetic towards Reagan because
of his illness once leaving office.
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