“President Reagan, White House Lobbying, and Key Votes: A Reassessment”*
Richard S. Conley
Assistant Professor
Department of Political Science
University of Florida
234 Anderson Hall
Gainesville, FL 32611
(352) 392-0262 x 297
[email protected]
* Paper prepared for the International Conference on the History of the Presidency of Ronald
Reagan, University of California, Santa Barbara, March 27-30, 2002. Author gratefully
acknowledges a grant provided by the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, University of Florida,
for this research.
Abstract
“President Reagan, White House Lobbying, and Key Votes: A Reassessment”
This paper reexamines Reagan’s leadership of Congress in 1981 from an “insider”
viewpoint and proposes a new methodological approach for evaluating presidential success. A
multivariate probability model is developed to establish a baseline measure of expected legislative
coalitions for conservative economic votes from 1973-80. To gauge presidential influence, the
forecasts from the baseline model are compared with actual support on 16 “key votes” which,
according to archival records, the White House considered critical to Reagan’s domestic agenda
in 1981. Reagan prevailed more often than expected on these key votes in large part because the
level of Republican unity was higher than anticipated. The study challenges some of the
conventional wisdom regarding the importance of southern Democrats in Reagan’s winning (and
losing) coalitions. Support from moderate Republicans and moderate northern Democrats was
more central to the president’s victories than scholars have emphasized.
Introduction
Upon taking the oath of office in 1981, Ronald Reagan used a broad brush to paint the
contours of his approach to governance and the policy agenda he would pursue. “It is no
coincidence,” the president contended in his inaugural address, “that our present troubles parallel
and are proportionate to the intervention and intrusion in our lives that result from unnecessary
and excessive growth of government.” Over the course of the next year, Reagan successfully
cultivated public and congressional support for the central themes of his electoral campaign—tax
cuts, a reduction in the size and scope of federal domestic programs, and a massive increase in the
defense budget. The swiftness of Reagan’s legislative successes may well have renewed public
confidence in the potential for strong executive leadership.1
Yet scholars disagree on the reasons for Reagan’s legislative successes—and even if the
president’s support in Congress was indeed exceptional. Some emphasize his reliance on the
“rhetorical presidency” and his use of the bully pulpit to fashion a “mandate” and control the
policy agenda.2 Samuel Kernell observes that it is difficult to “imagine an individual better suited
by experience, temperament and ideology to lead by going public than Ronald Reagan.”3 Others
apply elements of Neustadt’s model of bargaining and persuasion to argue that Reagan melded
skillful negotiation and a willingness to compromise with going public as a means of reinforcing
legislative support and prevailing in Congress.4
Still other scholars question whether Reagan’s level of success was extraordinary. In an
important quantitative analysis of presidential support scores, Richard Fleisher and Jon Bond
argue that Reagan’s support on Capitol Hill was not remarkable given his popular approval and
the institutional setting in Congress that he inherited in 1981.5 Stressing the president’s
mobilization of a “natural” coalition of Republicans and conservative southern Democrats,
1
Fleisher and Bond posit that “his early victories earned him the reputation as a skillful legislative
leader even though his success relative to a reasonable baseline is no better than expected.”6
Fleisher and Bond’s assertion raises several important questions about Reagan’s early
legislative victories that their analysis cannot address with annual presidential support scores.
When the point of departure shifts to specific roll-call outcomes and the exact nature of coalitions
in support of the president’s domestic agenda priorities, it is an open question whether Reagan
prevailed more or less often than we might have expected. Moreover, presidential support scores
cannot indicate which legislators held the balance over policy outcomes. Did the “Great
Communicator” obtain far more votes than expected on his early agenda to substantiate the
“rhetorical presidency” and Neustadtian perspectives on his skillful leadership of Congress? Just
how “natural” was support from conservative Democrats and Republicans? How many legislators
were already poised to vote with the president by virtue of their ideological pre-dispositions?
These questions call for a reassessment of Reagan’s first-year legislative record.
This research proposes a new methodological approach for evaluating presidential
coalition-building efforts in Congress and reexamines Reagan’s leadership of Congress in 1981
from an “insider” viewpoint. The analysis follows two tracks. First, a multivariate probability
model is developed to establish a baseline measure of members’ expected support for conservative
economic votes from 1973-80. A forecast of aggregate legislative support for conservative issues
was then derived for the 97th Congress using the estimated probabilities for individual members.
The forecast coalition is compared with the actual number of supporting legislators on 16 “key
votes” which, according to archival records uncovered at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley,
California, the White House considered critical to the president’s domestic agenda in 1981. This
methodology makes it possible to evaluate whether Reagan’s coalition support was greater or less
2
than expected given the ideological makeup of Congress. Second, White House lobbying efforts
were particularly well-documented for one of the most important votes of Reagan’s presidency:
The Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981. Lobbying data are integrated into a logistic regression
model of support for the bill. Controlling for members’ ideological leanings and institutional
position, the analysis gauges the net effect of contact of members by Administration officials,
including the president, in the bid to forge a winning, and de rigueur, cross-partisan coalition in
the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives.
The results of the analysis of coalition-building show that Reagan did, in fact, prevail more
often than he should have on his agenda early in his first year. Reagan won seven of nine votes
that he should have lost. From the perspective of the baseline model, scholars have overstated the
importance and level of Democrats’ support on Reagan’s agenda. On several winning votes
Reagan’s margin of victory was quite narrow because many southern and other moderate
Democrats who should have voted with the president were brought back into the party fold. His
position was carried to victory on the heels of Republicans who were forecast not to support
select votes. On the agenda votes Reagan was forecast to lose and did, his supporting coalitions
were weaker than expected—largely because moderate Republicans in Congress who were not
inclined to support conservative issues became less susceptible to the president’s influence as time
progressed, and Democratic support was fragile.
White House lobbying did make the difference on the Economic Recovery Tax Act of
1981. The president’s position should not have prevailed, yet Reagan marshaled substantially
more members’ support than expected. The case study of White House lobbying efforts on the
tax cut bill emphasizes the importance of securing legislators’ commitment for the bill at the point
of contact. Yet the extent to which undecided legislators held the balance over passage of the bill,
3
even at the time of the roll-call vote, is remarkable. All told, the analysis yields little evidence of a
presidential “mandate” in terms of congressional support, but modest levels of presidential
influence over voting alignments in Congress in early 1981.
The article is organized in four parts. The first section places Reagan’s strategic position
and the institutional setting in Congress in 1981 into context vis-à-vis perspectives on presidential
coalition-building in Congress. The second section surveys the data and methods used to
establish the baseline probability model of congressional support of the president. The results of
the empirical analysis follow in the third part. The concluding section reflects upon Reagan’s
legacy for relations between the branches.
Reagan’s Presidency and Coalition-Building in Congress
Presidents’ coalition-building success for their legislative agenda, Roger Davidson notes,
“hinges on whether the president’s party controls the House and Senate, as well as how many
votes the parties and their component factions command.”7 The relative fluidity of voting
alignments in Congress, coupled with unified or divided party control of national institutions,
shapes the ways in which presidents approach building support on Capitol Hill. When the
president’s party has a majority in Congress, success may depend, in large part, on his ability to
maintain unity within the ranks of his own co-partisans. Seldom is partisan support alone enough
for winning coalitions. The working majority of liberal Democrats under President Johnson in the
85th Congress (1965-66) was atypical. More frequently presidents have been forced to solicit
support for their legislative agendas on both sides of the aisle.8 Even in an era of stronger party
cohesion in Congress, for example, President Clinton’s winning coalitions from 1993-94 were
sometimes possible only because of support from the Republican minority.9
4
Presidents have no choice but to reach across the aisle when divided party control occurs.
The definition of a winning coalition necessarily includes cross-partisan support. The task is
facilitated when weak parties with large numbers of moderates holding the balance over outcomes
produce broad, shifting policy coalitions in Congress from which presidents may benefit. For
much of the post-War period, Republican presidents such as Eisenhower and even Nixon were
sometimes able to broker legislative support across party lines by allying themselves with different
factional elements on Capitol Hill. In particular, the “conservative coalition” of southern
Democrats and conservative Republicans often formed a de facto policy majority on many issues
of importance to Republican presidents. Only in the last several decades has party-unity voting
and a much more centralized setting in Congress robbed presidents of frequent opportunities for
cross-party support under divided government, whatever the partisan configuration of national
institutions.10
Presidents may choose from “outsider” and “insider” strategies in their bid to forge
winning coalitions for their agendas. Popular presidents are often drawn to the bully pulpit and
seek to exploit the media resources of the office. “Going public” and appealing over the heads of
members of Congress is aimed at mobilizing public opinion and bringing grassroots pressure to
bear on members. The potential drawback, as Kernell posits, is that going public violates
bargaining and may provide little incentive for members to comply.11 George Bush’s failed
attempt to enlist public support for the 1990 budget agreement is a poignant example of the
dangers of going public.12
Regardless of whether presidents choose to “stay quiet”13 altogether or work behind the
scenes in combination with a strategy of “going public,” they can build support in Congress by
maximizing organizational resources and engaging in personal lobbying to win over members.
5
Their party’s whip organization in Congress may be integral to building support among the
membership. The whip organization acts as a conduit for the gathering and transmission of
information between rank-and-file members, party leaders, and by extension, the White House.14
Whip checks can clarify which members’ support of the president is firm, uncertain, or lacking
and help the White House target members for lobbying. Scholars have used archival data to
document how Presidents Ford, Kennedy, and Johnson used the party whip organization in just
such a way to build legislative coalitions.15 Presidents also depend heavily on the staff of the
Office of Congressional Relations (OCR) to keep tabs on legislative developments and engage in
coalition-building activities.16 Finally, presidents may also engage in personal lobbying of
members of Congress. Tactics range from Lyndon Johnson’s “treatment,” or direct persuasion
through personal confrontation, to Reagan’s phone calls and individual meetings with legislators.
Ronald Reagan’s strategy of melding “going public” with an intensive behind-the-scenes
lobbying effort to build cross-party support for his agenda befit the institutional setting in
Congress he faced in 1981. His electoral defeat of Jimmy Carter, combined with Republican
control of the Senate, created momentum for his agenda and left House Democrats in disarray.17
Unlike his predecessor, Jimmy Carter, Reagan was careful not to clutter up the legislative docket.
He made his agenda priorities known to the public, and more importantly, to Congress by
selecting and emphasizing only a select number of issues. He also streamlined the White House
liaison apparatus to Congress, hiring veteran director Max Friedersdorf to head up the OCR and
staffing the office with professionals who knew the folkways of Capitol Hill.18 Reagan also was
careful to court members of both parties with the trappings of the Oval Office to generate as
much goodwill as possible on both sides of the aisle.19
6
The Reagan White House looked to the institutional setting in Congress with optimism.
The legislative offensive was aimed at maximizing partisan and cross-partisan support. At the
beginning of the 97th Congress, Republicans held 192 seats to the Democrats’ 242 seats in the
House of Representatives. Reagan hoped to capitalize on the support of forty-four “crosspressured” Democrats, mostly but not exclusively from the south, whose ideological positions
were closer to the Republican party in the House, to build winning coalitions in combination with
the support of his Republican base.20 As Barbara Sinclair contends, party cohesion among
Democrats had declined in the 1970s, and southern Democrats frustrated the Democratic
leadership with frequent defections on conservative votes.21 Moderate Republicans were
nonetheless a potential counterweight to cross-party support for Reagan. The thirty-one crosspressured GOP House members, mostly from the northeast and mid-west, might need convincing.
The level of uncertainty surrounding Reagan’s support in Congress should therefore not be
understated. His success in forging winning coalitions with the aid of moderates in both parties is
detailed in subsequent sections through an examination of actual and forecast legislative support
on his first-year agenda.
Data and Methods
Archival research at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library uncovered a list of sixteen
votes in the House of Representatives that the White House considered critical to the president’s
agenda in 1981.22 Table 2 in the next section gives a vote key with the bill numbers, date of the
vote, and the roll-call outcome in the House of Representatives. All of the White House “key
votes” dealt with domestic economic issues such as the budget, agency appropriations, and tax
cuts. This set of votes contrasts to Congressional Quarterly’s more extensive list of “key votes”
for 1981 that includes issues on which the president did not take a position.23 Reagan prevailed
7
on nine of sixteen (56%) of the White House key votes, a success rate considerably lower than the
82.4 percent mark for all of his position votes in 1981.24 But success on all roll-calls may not be
the best benchmark for comparison of agenda votes. The multi-step process employed to
evaluate Reagan’s agenda success rate and appraise his relative influence over supporting
congressional coalitions on the White House key votes is elaborated below.
Constructing a Baseline Logit Model of Presidential Support
Prior studies have used ordinary least squares regression of presidential support scores, or
the percent of times individual legislators’ supported presidents’ positions in some prior period, to
establish a benchmark and evaluate the foundations of presidential success. Bringing party,
ideology, and public approval to bear as predictors, scholars have then compared actual and
estimated support scores for individual legislators or sub-groupings of legislators.25 The forecast
errors from the regression models have been used to evaluate over- and under-support of the
president and infer levels of presidential influence.
Unfortunately, regression analysis is less appropriate for this analysis of the subset of votes
prioritized by the White House in 1981. Aggregate presidential support scores convey little about
the president’s success in building legislative coalitions for specific bills connected to his agenda.
A more suitable approach entails the development of a pooled probability (logit) model of
legislative support of the president, with legislators’ decisions coded as a binary dependent
variable (1=support, 0=oppose). Using a set of predictors on prior roll-calls similar to support
score analyses, a predicted probability of legislators’ vote choice on each of the White House key
votes may be derived. If the predicted probability of voting with the president’s position passes
the threshold of .50, it is assumed the legislator would have backed the president’s stand.
8
Conversely, if the predicted probability of voting with the president falls below .50, it is assumed
the legislator would have voted against the president.
The major advantage of this approach is that expected “headcounts” on the White House
key votes may be constructed. Juxtaposing the estimated probabilities with actual support reveals
how many and which members were (hypothetically) poised to vote for the president’s agenda,
and whether those who voted actually carried through in their floor decisions. Similarly, the
comparison of forecast and actual support for legislators positioned against the president’s stance
pinpoints which members “switched” to vote with the White House, and which members were
most “pivotal” on floor outcomes.26
To construct a benchmark probability model of support for Reagan, prior congressional
votes on conservative issues, and economic matters in particular, are required in order to match
the ideological thrust of his agenda. American Conservative Union (ACU) votes constitute a
nearly ideal set of votes for this purpose. The ACU describes itself as “the umbrella-lobbying
group of the conservative movement” that “tracks a wide range of issues before the Congress,
ranging from taxes to abortion.” Each year since 1971 the ACU has chosen votes that “reflect a
clear ideological distinction in Congress.”27 The votes typically fall into four general categories:
Economic and budget matters, social and cultural issues, defense and foreign policy, and issues of
institutional reform.
ACU votes from 1973-80 are most appropriate for the establishment of a baseline model
of expected support for Reagan’s first-year agenda. First, economic issues clearly dominated
ACU’s annual pool of votes over this time period. More than 90 percent of the 194 votes over
the eight-year span concerned the federal budget or appropriations to various departments and
agencies. Second, it is during this intense period of institutional reform and economic uncertainty
9
that the House of Representatives, under Democratic Party control, attempted to reassert control
over the budget by establishing a new and elaborate process with the 1974 Budget and
Impoundment Control Act.28 The consequences were far reaching. Budget issues began to divide
the leadership and rank-and-file of both parties more frequently, exposing fundamental ideological
differences that paved the way for heightened party-unity voting in the 1980s and 1990s.29 Third,
presidents of both parties (Nixon, Ford and Carter) took supporting and opposing positions on 37
percent of all ACU votes from 1973-80. It is thus possible to examine the relative effect of the
direction of presidents’ position-taking on members’ voting decisions. Finally, six of the twelve
votes identified by the interest group for 1981 were on the list of White House key votes, and
Reagan’s position matched the ACU’s stance exactly.
The equation for the baseline model assumes that the probability of members’ support of
ACU positions is a function of ideology, members’ institutional position, and the president’s
stated position on the vote. The logit model estimation is specified as follows:
pÖ = " + $1(IDEOL) + $2 (DLEAD) + $3(RLEAD) + $4(CHAIR) + $5(RANKM) + $6(PYi) +
$7(PNi) + ε
Where:
pÖ is the probability of support, or the outcome variable, coded 1 if the member supported the
ACU position and 0 if the member opposed the ACU position
IDEOL is the member’s ideological placement on Poole and Rosenthal’s NOMINATE
scale
DLEAD is coded 1 for Democratic House leaders, 0 otherwise
RLEAD is coded 1 for Republican House leaders, 0 otherwise
CHAIR is coded 1 for Democratic committee chairs, 0 otherwise
RANKM is coded 1 for Republican ranking committee members, 0 otherwise
PYi is coded 1 if president’s position is in support of the ACU position and the member is of the
president’s party, 0 otherwise
PNi is coded 1 if president’s position is against the ACU position and the member is of the
president’s party, 0 otherwise
10
The dependent variable in the model is individual members’ support of or opposition to
ACU positions. Legislators’ positions on the roll-call votes were pooled, yielding a total of 435
cases for each vote, assuming all House members voted. The total number of actual positions on
the eight year span of 194 ACU votes is 76,477.
Poole and Rosenthal’s DW-NOMINATE scores were brought to bear in the model to
gauge legislator’s ideological predispositions.30 These scores are comparable across
congressional periods and range from +1 to –1, with positive scores indicating conservatism and
negative scores indicating liberalism. Poole and Rosenthal contend that a single ideological
dimension accounts for nearly 80 percent of legislators’ decisions.31 If the unidimensionality
thesis holds, legislators’ ideological placement should exert a powerful influence on support of
ACU votes, and on Reagan’s first-year agenda. Legislators positioned to the right of the
ideological scale should be most supportive. It should be noted that members’ partisan
identification was excluded from the analysis because of colinearity with the ideology measure.
The correlation between NOMINATE scores and a dummy variable for party (1=Democrats,
0=Republicans) was -.70 for the eight year period. Substituting party for ideology produces
fewer correctly predicted cases in the model.32
Dummy variables were employed to identify members of the extended leadership
organization, including majority and minority leaders and whips, as well as committee chairs
(Democrats) and ranking minority committee members (Republicans) across the eight year period.
Leadership position should have the greatest effect on Democrats. Watergate and Nixon’s
impoundment of funds prompted Democrats to undertake extensive organizational reforms to
bolster party-unity and better control the legislative agenda, including an expansion of the party
whip system in the 1970s.33 Liberal Democrats also sought to check the monopoly of power of
11
conservative committee “barons” in the party, beginning with the Hansen reforms of 1971 and
continuing with the “subcommittee bill of rights” and other leadership reforms following the
election of the “Watergate babies” of 1974.34 Members’ leadership position should therefore have
a considerable impact on support for conservative positions. Democratic leaders from more
solidly liberal stock in the 1970s should be less likely to support conservative issues than rankand-file Democrats.
The president’s public stand on legislation reflects the issue’s priority status to the White
House and signals resolve. The president is one of the most important cue-givers to members of
Congress.35 On conservative economic issues, a public position by the president is most likely to
have greater influence his co-partisans’ decisions to support or oppose the bill. Opposition
members may be more inclined to look to party leaders or their reelection constituencies for
voting cues. Since presidents Nixon, Ford, and Carter did not take positions on all the ACU
votes, an interaction term between the president’s position and members of his party in Congress
is the most appropriate method to weigh the effect of presidential cues.
Logit coefficients for the explanatory variables in the model are not directly interpretable.
The change in the likelihood of support for ACU positions is not a linear function as in ordinary
least squares regression.36 In order to convey the substantive significance of each predictor, the
“mean” or “marginal” effect was calculated and reported in the analysis. The mean effect is the
difference in estimated probabilities from each predictor’s highest and lowest values, letting the
other independent variables assume their mean or “natural” values.37
Analysis and Discussion
Table 1 shows the parameter estimates for the pooled logit analysis of legislators’ support
of ACU votes from 1973-80. All told, the analysis correctly classifies more than three-quarters of
12
members’ positions.38 The direction and impact of the explanatory variables are generally
consistent with theoretical expectations, with only a few exceptions.
[Table 1]
Legislators’ ideological pre-dispositions are the chief determinant of voting on
conservative economic legislation. The mean effect of 98.6 percent confirms that support is
particularly sensitive to members’ placement on the left-right scale. Moving .10 to the right from
0, or center on the NOMINATE scale, increases the likelihood of support by approximately 13
percent. The significance for Reagan, or other Republican presidents hoping to build legislative
support for a conservative agenda, is that success thus depends on the ideological make-up of the
congressional membership over which chief executives have little control. Legislators’ positions
are not immutable, but their basic ideological preferences do not change.
Members’ institutional position reinforces ideological predilections, and presidents are
hard-pressed to change even their co-partisans’ positions. Democratic leaders were about 7
percent less likely to support conservative votes, and committee chairs about 4 and a half percent
less likely. Interestingly, ranking minority (Republican) committee members were slightly less
inclined to vote in favor of ACU positions. Though the substantive impact is slight, the result
may be a product of the somewhat more moderate Republican members who served on
committees over the eight year span of the analysis.39
The model shows that the president’s public stance on ACU votes has little bearing on
members’ vote decisions. When presidents take a stand against conservative votes, their copartisans are somewhat more inclined oppose the bill (effect=-6.7%). Yet the model does not
provide evidence that presidents are able to sway members in any systematic way. The interaction
term for a “yea” position by the president and his co-partisans is signed incorrectly, and the
13
substantive impact (effect=-2.1%) is minimal. Substituting interaction terms in the model for
presidents’ positions and opposition members, individual presidents by partisanship, or the
president’s position and level of public approval at the time of the vote (not shown), also yields
incorrectly signed coefficients and substantively insignificant effects. Close examination suggests
that the results are not related to colinearity.
From 1973-80 ACU votes were frequently carried to victory via the “conservative
coalition” of southern Democrats and Republicans who united to pass conservative legislation—
sometimes to the benefit of Presidents Nixon and Ford, and at other times to the chagrin of
President Carter. In the 1970s, “cross-pressured” Democrats with ideological positions closer to
the median Republican legislator numbered between fifty-one and sixty-one. These Democrats,
many of whom were from the south, were anywhere from 50 to 90 percent more likely to vote in
favor of ACU positions. But an important, though smaller, contingent of moderate Republicans
numbering just less than twenty acted as a counterweight to the strength of the conservative
coalition. The fifteen to twenty moderate Republicans were 15 to 48 percent less likely to
support ACU positions.
Alas, Presidents like Reagan who have a conservative domestic legislative agenda must
play the hand which they are dealt in Congress. The fluid voting alignments in the 1970s created
more uncertainty about legislative outcomes compared to the late 1980s and 1990s when partyunity voting escalated dramatically. Presidential success was contingent on skillful manipulation
of voting alignments on Capitol Hill, which provided some opportunities for Republican
presidents to build cross-partisan coalitions under opposition control of Congress. The baseline
model reinforces the importance of careful headcounts and strategic targeting of members in
Reagan’s coalition-building efforts. Of critical importance was the need to reach out across the
14
aisle to Democratic members, retain the support of “fence-sitting” partisans, and convert
recalcitrant moderates in the ranks of the GOP. How successful the Reagan White House was in
that effort is the subject of the next section.
Baseline Predictions and White House Key Votes in 1981
Estimated coalition support from the baseline model suggests that Reagan faced a greater
uphill battle on his agenda than many scholars may have presumed. In addition, the estimates
challenge some of the conventional wisdom about which legislators were most pivotal in Reagan’s
victories and defeats. Reagan’s agenda success was scarcely assured if the number of expected
“yeas” and “nays” is arrayed using baseline model forecasts. At the beginning of the 97th
Congress there were 434 voting members of the House of Representatives.40 Assuming all
members cast floor votes, the baseline model predicts that conservative economic issues would
fail by a six vote margin, 212-222. This estimate includes a net “cross-partisan advantage” of
twenty-one votes for the president. The White House could expect to lose twelve moderate
Republicans and gain thirty-three Democrats.
In hypothetical terms, then, to build a minimum winning coalition Reagan had to retain all
moderate Democrats and manage to convert at least six co-partisans or Democrats positioned to
vote against the bill (assuming all members voted). Additional losses in either camp could pose a
major setback to coalition-building. In reality, of course, the situation was even more complex.
Not all members vote on every issue to reach the floor and the White House cannot control who
actually votes.41 Moreover, members may change their positions under pressure from party
leaders, constituents, or interest groups even after committing to support the president. These
factors introduced an ample amount of uncertainty into the White House’s coalition-building
efforts.
15
It is essential to note that moderate Democrats were not a “sure bet” to back Reagan’s
positions. Of the thirty-three Democrats projected to support the president’s agenda, less than
half (all southern Democrats) were forecast to do so at a .60 probability or better. Five members’
support probability was .51. Interestingly, the majority of these fence-straddling, moderate
Democrats were not from the south, but from the northeast and mid-west. Similarly, of the
twelve Republicans slated to vote against conservative issues, the vast majority were from the
northeast (the exception was McCloskey of California). Their expected probability of support
ranged from .38 to .50. The White House also faced a contingent of six more northeastern
Republicans who were inclined to back the president but whose support on conservative issues
remained uncertain (pÖ > .50 but < .55).
The significance of these estimated probabilities for White House coalition-building is
twofold. First, support of the core of fifteen or so conservative, southern Democrats who were
strongly inclined to back the president—while clearly critical to his congressional strategy—was
not sufficient, per se, to carry Reagan’s agenda positions to victory. To complicate matters, the
White House then had to worry about attrition by non-southern, moderate Democrats. Their
support could not be taken for granted, and even if retained, still did not constitute enough votes
to cross the threshold of victory. Second, contrary to Fleisher and Bond’s assertion, the baseline
estimates confirm that not all House Republicans were “naturally” poised to support the
president’s agenda. It was not simply a matter for the White House to “minimize” losses among
the party faithful. Rather, the White House had to win over more than a dozen legislators whose
support could not be expected. All told, the baseline probability estimates suggest that
northeastern and midwestern moderates in the two parties—and particularly cross-pressured
16
Republicans—held the balance over legislative outcomes on Reagan’s agenda to a degree that
scholars have not emphasized.
Forecast and Actual Coalitions for Reagan’s Agenda Priorities
Table 2 arrays detailed information on the sixteen White House key votes against which
the baseline forecasts are compared. The first four columns provide the president’s position, the
vote number (with the vote key below), the actual number of yeas and nays, and the number of
votes Reagan needed to prevail based on those legislators who actually cast a vote on the roll-call.
The fifth column shows the margin by which the president won or lost.
[Table 2]
The three right hand columns of Table 2 provide the forecast data on the roll call votes.
Column six shows the sum of all members expected to vote with the president (of those who
actually did cast a roll call vote) if their probability of support was greater than .50. Column
seven gives the expected outcome based on the forecast model, and shows that Reagan should
have prevailed on only five of the votes for a victory ratio of 31 percent—compared to his actual
success rate of 56 percent. Thus, in percentage terms Reagan did quite a bit better than
anticipated. The caveat is that several of the winning coalitions were by the “skin of his teeth”
and he also lost two votes that the model forecast he should have won (votes 8 and 11).
The last column shows the difference between the predicted and actual number of votes
supporting Reagan’s position. These data furnish a measure of the president’s relative influence
over supporting coalitions. Reagan prevailed on the debt increase (vote 1) with ninety-seven
more votes than expected—the greatest surplus of any of the White House key votes. On the
subset of votes Reagan was forecast to lose but won, however, his position barely prevailed
17
(votes 4-8). And on other votes he was forecast to lose and did, legislative support was weaker
than anticipated (votes 11-14). These votes are examined more closely below.
The dynamics of the passage of HR 1553, the debt ceiling increase, were rather atypical.
Reagan’s first legislative request of his presidency was the product of necessity, not preference.
The president could not move Congress on the core of his domestic agenda without approval of
an increase in the national debt of $50 billion to keep the government operating. Recalling
Republican ads during the 1980 campaign that chided them for past debt increases and alleged
profligacy, Democratic members in the House and Senate demanded reassurance that Republicans
would, in fact, support the increase.42 Of the twenty-two debt ceiling increases requested by
Democratic and Republican presidents since 1973, a majority of congressional Republicans failed
to support these requests in every instance, leaving Democrats to carry the bills to victory.43
Reagan went to Capitol Hill to lobby members on both sides of the aisle. He took the opportunity
to lay out his broader tax cut and spending reduction plan as a means to win bipartisan support.
When the debt increased reached the floor of the House, many Democrats withheld their votes
until it became clear that Republicans made good on their pledges. Reagan won the vote handily,
though the “victory” was, at best, anticlimactic. Members of both parties described the vote as
“discomforting” and “distasteful.”44
Reagan won his first substantive agenda victory three months later with the adoption of
the Gramm-Latta substitute amendment for the budget resolution of fiscal year 1982. The
resolution for the $689 billion budget comprised Reagan’s tax and spending cuts and set new
limits that would force congressional committees to “reconcile” programmatic outlays with
budget targets (discussed below). Reagan had campaigned publicly for his economic recovery
18
program from the outset of his presidency, addressing the nation in early February and appearing
before joint sessions of Congress later that month and again at the end of April.
The baseline model predicted that Gramm-Latta should have gone down to defeat in the
House by several votes. However, the president’s position prevailed with the support of forty
additional members. The vote on Gramm-Latta came after two substitute bills that called for a
restoration of funds to domestic programs went down to defeat by wide margins.45 Before the
roll-call on the Administration-backed proposal, Robert Michel, House Minority Leader, said “Let
history show that we provided the margin of difference that changed the course of American
government.”46
Which legislators actually provided that margin of difference? Sixty-three Democrats and
all Republicans voted for the package. Comparing actual and expected support using the baseline
estimates, it was Republican unity that pushed the vote across the threshold of victory. The
White House won the support of all of the Democrats expected to support the bill, save for two
(Patman of Texas and Watkins of Oklahoma). The conversion of the twelve GOP moderates
disinclined to support the bill therefore proved critical. The other thirty-one surplus Democratic
votes came from a smattering of legislators not expected to back the bill. Less than half were
from the south. These members provided “bandwagon” support and some apparently feared
electoral retaliation for opposing the president. One of the Democrats who voted for the
package, Pat Schroeder of Colorado, put her support of the bill this way: “You can always tell
people that you did it because your constituents told you to do it.”47
The budget resolution vote emphasizes the key sources of Reagan’s early influence in
Congress. Southern Democratic support was a crucial anchor in cross-partisan coalition building,
but insufficient for victory. When the president was able to win over moderate Republicans and
19
retain the midwestern and northeastern moderates in the Democratic Party, his positions had an
excellent chance of prevailing. Such influence, however, was short-lived.
The four White House key votes on the Omnibus Reconciliation Act (OBRA) were much
more narrow victories that evidenced less presidential influence over voting alignments. The
president’s position prevailed by no more than two votes on any of the roll-calls. And he did not
receive a surplus of any more than three votes using the baseline estimates. As with GrammLatta, the White House’s ability to woo moderate Republicans and retain fence-sitting Democrats
was critical. The slender margins of victory nevertheless bring to light initial cracks in Reagan’s
support in Congress that were a harbinger of problems for key votes later in 1981.
What became OBRA emerged as an alternative budget fashioned by House Republicans and
moderate Democrats dissatisfied with the lower level of cuts to entitlements proposed by the majority
leadership. Mounting a challenge to the Democratic budget, Republicans and a contingent of
Democrats defeated a rule to bring the majority budget to the floor (vote 3). The majority rule would
have forced separate votes on programmatic cuts supported by the White House and hamstrung
Reagan’s crafty use of reconciliation to achieve such cuts.48 The coalition then joined together to force
a vote on the substitute bill (Gramm-Latta II), which prevailed by a single vote.49 Reagan had intensely
lobbied the sixty-three Democrats who had supported the budget resolution, ultimately convincing
twenty-nine of them to back the alternative budget (vote 5), which cut more than $5 billion from
entitlement programs like Social Security and welfare.50 The final White House key vote (vote 6) on
OBRA was a procedural motion by Republican Delbert Latta to kill a motion instructing the budget
committee to provide twice yearly cost-of-living adjustments for federal employees.
Amidst the flurry of lobbying by the White House and Democratic majority leadership,
Reagan lost an important core of Democratic support on the OBRA votes that explicates the
20
extremely narrow margins. The uncertainty surrounding the votes, and the hurried manner in
which Gramm-Latta II was adopted without ample debate on the details, were certainly factors.51
But careful examination of coalition support reveals a more general pattern. An important group
of twelve to fifteen southern Democrats expected to vote with Reagan on conservative economic
matters rather consistently defected to the side of their party leaders on these votes—and would
do so on other presidential agenda priorities in the future.52 On each of the OBRA votes the
White House prevailed only with the unanimous or near unanimous support of moderate
Republicans coupled with a scattering of three to nine Democrats who were positioned against the
bills according to the baseline estimates, but who converted to the president’s side.
The dynamics of coalition support on the OBRA votes were a forerunner to Reagan’s
losses on the HUD appropriations bill (vote 8), recommittal (tabling) of the Labor-HHSEducation appropriations bill (vote 9), and the roll-calls on the second continuing resolution for
FY 1982 (votes 11-14). Keeping in mind that the baseline model forecast losses for the president
on these votes, he still received less legislative support than expected. Reagan’s inability to
convert moderate Republicans and hold the support of moderate Democrats robbed him of
winning coalitions. On the majority of these votes the president failed to marshal the support of
more than four of the moderate Republicans poised against conservative economic issues. He
also lost a substantial number (>10 or more) of the fence-sitting Republicans identified earlier.
These losses, in addition to attrition by southern Democrats who were expected to vote with the
president, were not sufficiently offset by support from other Democrats who switched to back the
White House’s stance. Save for the motion to recommit the conference report on the second
continuing resolution and the bill’s adoption (votes 13 and 14), the baseline estimates accentuate
that the conversion of just a few of the northeastern moderates in the GOP or the retention of
21
Democratic or Republican fence-straddlers would have carried Reagan’s positions to victory on
all of the other votes.
The return to “normal” voting alignments in Congress by late 1981—normal in the sense
of the outcomes and individual support predicted by the baseline model—marked a decisive shift
in Reagan’s strategy. Executive-legislative relations took on a more confrontational air as the
president’s influence over supporting coalitions waned. Reagan negotiated budget issues far more
frequently under the veil of veto threats. He threatened to veto the HUD bill, and that measure—
like the Labor-HHS-Education bill—stalled in the Senate. By November 1981 only one of the
fourteen regular appropriations bills for FY 1982 had been enacted. The situation forced
Congress to pass a second “continuing resolution” or stopgap measure to keep the federal
government in operation. Reagan’s eventual veto of that measure confirmed how the loss of
coalition support had begun to affect his legislative presidency.
The White House and Capitol Hill could not reach agreement on spending levels in light of
a worsening economy. In a nationally televised speech in September 1981 Reagan had called for
additional cuts to those he had won in the first budget resolution in May.53 In the ensuing battle
between the White House and Congress over economic assumptions, congressional Democrats
were more eager to trim defense spending while the president proposed further reductions in
domestic programs.54 Reagan also encountered resistance from moderate Republicans. Silvio
Conte of Massachusetts summed up the frustration of some in the ranks of the GOP by arguing
that “There is no justification for backdoor, meat ax cuts in the continuing resolution.”55 Despite
coming close to a compromise with the House, Reagan forced the issue to the brink as a symbol
of resolve over government spending.56 He made good on his threat to veto the bill—the first of
his presidency—and precipitated a brief government shutdown. The president could not find the
22
votes to defeat the bill outright, but the narrowness of the vote adopting the second continuing
resolution, 205-194, ensured that his veto could be sustained. Congressional leaders quickly
extended the previous continuing resolution through the new year.57 Reagan signed that bill,
leaving the budget stalemate indefinitely unresolved.
Which factors explain Reagan’s loss of the vital legislative support in the House that
proved so critical early in 1981? To be sure, the White House did not engage in the same type of
steadfast lobbying of members on the HUD, Labor, or continuing resolutions bills as it had on the
first budget resolution or the tax cut (discussed momentarily). Nor did Reagan’s public appeals
elicit a groundswell of grassroots support for trimming domestic programs further. But perhaps
the greatest impediment to Reagan’s proactive coalition-building on the HUD, Labor-HHSEducation, and continuing resolution bills was the nature of the congressional debate about
programmatic cuts. The president had won support for OBRA by folding spending cuts into an
“omnibus” bill that undermined the leverage of the Democratic leadership to veto individual program
items in the proposal.58 Later in 1981 the economy continued to slow and the discourse in Congress
shifted to programs directly affecting constituents. Democratic leaders won back some of their
leverage and cleavages in the GOP were exposed. Speaker O’Neill and other Democratic leaders
rejected Reagan’s calls for cuts to specific “entitlement” programs from Social Security or Medicare.59
Republican “Gypsy Moths” like Carl Pursell of Michigan argued that bills such as the Labor-HHSEducation appropriations should not be used “to balance the whole federal budget.”60 Facing greater
resistance in the ranks of both parties, Reagan found that he could more easily ward off challenges to
the basic contours of his budget-cutting targets adopted earlier in the year through the veto
power.
23
White House Lobbying and Coalition Support on the 1981 Tax Cut
Reagan’s losses later in 1981 were clearly overshadowed by his stunning successes
between May and July. During that brief period, his public overtures and the White House’s
intensive lobbying of members of Congress appeared to pay off considerably. One of the most
significant votes of Reagan’s presidency was the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981, also
known as the Conable-Hance bill (vote 7). Analysis of the unique archival data documenting
Reagan’s extensive coalition-building efforts on this vote complements our understanding of
White House strategy and success in early 1981. The baseline model forecast that Conable-Hance
should have failed by two votes. Instead, the measure passed by twenty-one votes, and Reagan
got twenty-three more votes than anticipated.
Scholars and observers have emphasized several factors in this legislative victory, as with
the first budget resolution and OBRA. Reagan’s skillful negotiation and willingness to offer
“sweeteners” to win over recalcitrant Democrats was thought to be quite important.61 Another
factor was the president’s live television appearance two days before the vote, which yielded a
significant grassroots response that gave moderate Democrats reason to vote for the president’s
program without fear of alienating their constituencies.62 Speaker O’Neill, notably frustrated in his
attempt to keep Democrats together against the massive tax cuts, noted in the days leading up to the
floor vote that “We are experiencing a telephone blitz like this nation has never seen. It’s had a
devastating effect.”63
What is less understood is the effect of the behind-the-scenes lobbying of individual
members in which the White House actively engaged prior to the vote. While it is impossible to
know or quantify all of the contacts between Administration officials and members of Congress
prior to the vote, archival records documented whip counts of Democrats and Republicans, as
24
well as calls by Cabinet secretaries and the president to individual members of Congress in July
1981 for the Conable-Hance bill.64 The president also invited a select group of fifteen Democrats
to Camp David several days before the vote to lobby personally.65 These records provide a good
indication of which members were targeted by the White House and came under the greatest
pressure in the days preceding the vote. The records also reveal members’ positions on the tax
cut at the last time a recorded contact took place, making it possible to integrate these data into a
systematic analysis of the effect lobbying ultimately had on legislators’ voting decisions.
Analysis of the key votes in Table 2 stressed the importance of the White House’s winning
over moderate Republicans. A closer examination of Republicans lobbied by Cabinet members on
Conable-Hance bears out this wisdom. The White House correctly identified the most likely
defectors on the bill and sought to shore up support elsewhere in the ranks of the GOP. Denardis
(CT-3), Marks (PA-24), Fenwick (NJ-5) were contacted two or more times prior to the vote.
Jeffords (VT), Heckler (MA-10), Green (NY-18), who were thought to be leaning in favor of the
bill, were also contacted by Cabinet members. The White House then targeted other legislators
apparently thought to be vulnerable to defection to the Democratic alternative. Rinaldo (NJ-12),
Roukema (NJ-7) and Gilman (NY-26) indicated they were undecided on Conable-Hance or the
Democratic tax cut bill. When the vote took place on July 29 all Republicans except Jeffords
supported the president’s position.
On the Democratic side of the aisle Cabinet members made a good faith effort to build
support from members with relatively low probabilities of backing the tax cut vote. Thirty three
of the legislators contacted had expected probabilities of .40 or less. The White House did
manage to convert five of these Democrats. The most intensive effort, however, was focused on
fifteen members whose probabilities of support ranged from .45 to .55. These were the fence25
sitting Democrats the White House either wanted to convert or could not afford to cede to the
Democratic party leadership on the roll-call. Their support, coupled with near unity in the GOP,
was enough for the president’s position to prevail. All told, the White House retained all of the
legislators the baseline model expected to support the bill, save for four. And of the sixteen
members who converted, records indicate twelve were lobbied by the president or Cabinet. These
surplus votes provided a comfortable margin of victory, seemingly vindicating the indefatigable
lobbying effort.
To weigh the impact of White House lobbying more systematically on the tax cut vote, the
contact information was integrated into a logit model of legislative support for the bill. The logit
model of members’ support for (coded 1) or opposition to (coded 0) the tax cut bill employs the
same independent variables as the baseline model, with the addition of contact dummy variables.
Members were identified in the model as “leaning for or decided for,” “leaning against or decided
against,” or “undecided” on the bill at the time of the last recorded contact by the White House.
A separate variable was used to identify the fifteen legislators invited by the president to Camp
David. This approach makes it possible to estimate the effect of White House lobbying on
members’ ultimate decision on the bill, holding constant their ideological pre-dispositions and
institutional position.
[Table 3]
Latching onto the basic idea of the tax cut plan fashioned by Republican Senators Kemp and
Roth in 1977, the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981 slashed individual tax rates by 25 percent over
three years at a cost of $749 billion. The bill, as Table 3 shows, split members along ideological lines.
Members’ placement on the left-right scale has the strongest mean effect in the model. Democratic
leaders hoped to fashion an alternative tax cut plan to lure away moderates in both parties.66 When the
26
Democratic alternative was defeated, the party leadership still held the line against the White House
plan. Democratic leaders were nearly 32 percent less likely to support the bill.
White House lobbying did have an impact on support for the bill. When Cabinet members
whipped legislators of either party and were able to secure a firm commitment or got them to lean
in favor of the bill, those legislators were 17 percent more likely to follow through with support
on the roll-call. However, the effect of White House lobbying must not be overstated. The
majority of Democrats contacted by the Cabinet staff who were leaning against the bill were
seemingly unaffected by White House lobbying or Reagan’s grassroots appeals. Legislators
leaning or decided against the bill at the point of contact rarely changed their mind: They were 57
percent less likely to vote for the tax cut. And most of the Democrats polled by the White House
who were undecided were brought back into the party fold and voted against the bill, as the
baseline model forecast.
In the final analysis, only eight of the twenty-two Democratic undecideds voted for the tax
cut, and three of those eight had received special lobbying by the president at Camp David. In
fact, Reagan’s personal lobbying helped to solidify the support of eight members and convert four
others. Democratic members invited to Camp David were nearly 23 percent more likely to vote
for the bill. The most important effect of the hot-dog cookout at the Maryland presidential retreat
was apparently on Mazzoli (KY-3), Hatcher (GA-2), McCurdy (OK-4), and Mottl (OH-23), who
sided with the president on the vote but were not expected to do so according to the baseline
estimates.
Reagan’s surplus of twenty-one votes on Conable-Hance nevertheless belied the
uncertainty surrounding the vote outcome. The tax cut vote was considered by the White House
and Democratic leadership as a toss-up, even as the clerk of the House called the roll and
27
members gathered on the floor to cast their votes.67 The eventual victory for the White House
illustrates how hard-fought and ostensibly narrow Reagan’s winning coalitions in Congress were,
despite targeting and lobbying of pivotal members and the “Great Communicator’s”
unquestionable mastery of the bully pulpit to rally popular support. The vote also accentuates the
central importance of Republican unity for Reagan’s most successful agenda coalitions.
Conclusions
This study began with two main objectives. The first was to develop a different
methodological approach for evaluating presidential success in Congress. Using a pooled logit
model of members’ positions on prior votes enabled a comparison of forecast and actual support
of Reagan’s positions—both in the aggregate and at the individual level—to infer levels of
presidential influence over specific legislative coalitions. Future research may refine elements of
the baseline model and its predictive capacity. While this research utilized conservative economic
votes to establish a baseline, it is also possible to extend the basic approach to other specific
policy areas (e.g., foreign/defense policy, social policy, etc.) or presidential positions more
generally. Such a methodology provides a new lens through which to evaluate presidential
success in Congress.
The second objective of this research was to meld the systematic analytical approach with
archival data on Reagan’s first-year agenda. The goal was to reassess his influence over
supporting coalitions on Capitol Hill and test whether his victory ratio on key votes was better
than anticipated. Reagan’s victory ratio was better than expected compared to a reasonable
baseline of coalition support, and the results clarify the basis for his early successes and losses in
late 1981. The analysis of the subtleties of coalition support for Reagan also challenges some of
the conventional wisdom about which legislators were most pivotal in carrying key agenda votes
28
to victory. The results are also clearly at odds with the thesis that Reagan’s electoral popularity
and levels of approval translated into levels of support in Congress that might be associated with a
“mandate.” Congressional support was fragile and often uncertain, and his most important
victories were often by thin margins and required a sustained lobbying effort.
While emphasizing the importance of southern Democrats to Reagan’s first-year agenda
successes, scholars have underestimated the importance of Republicans’ unity. The baseline
model showed that southern Democrats were a central component of Reagan’s supporting
coalitions. The point, although perhaps subtle, is nonetheless worth reiterating: Reagan should
have won the support of these legislators by dint of their ideological positions and often did. But
southern Democrats’ support was not sufficient, per se, for success on roll-calls. And as time
progressed, Reagan began to lose an important core of southern Democrats for his policy
positions. Converting fence-sitting northeast and mid-western Democrats to compensate for such
losses became vital, but success was uncertain.
Reagan’s most important agenda victories were owed to unity in the ranks of House
Republicans. As Hedrick Smith notes, “So much attention has focused on Reagan recruitment of
Democratic dissidents that an even more impressive feat has been largely overlooked—the near
perfect party-line support among 53 Republican Senators and 191 House members.”68 Contrary
to the common thinking on the matter, all Republicans in the House were not “naturally” poised
to support Reagan’s conservative domestic agenda. When Reagan was able to use his party in
Congress as a resource and convert GOP members disinclined to support conservative economic
issues, these members carried his positions to victory with the aid of moderate Democrats.
Indeed, the loss of moderate Republican support, more than any other factor, accounts for
Reagan’s declining success rate on key votes later in 1981. As the battle of the budget shifted
29
from general principles of smaller domestic programs and tax cuts to reductions in specific,
constituency-oriented programs Reagan’s command of moderates decreased. This dynamic
explains Reagan’s increased reliance on veto politics toward the end of 1981 and may suggest one
of the underlying reasons for the more general decline in his success rate over his two terms.
None of Reagan’s post-War Republican predecessors—Eisenhower, Nixon, or Ford—
experienced such a steep drop in legislative support in Congress after his first year.69
Reagan’s first year also marked a critical period of transition for executive-legislative
relations in other ways. His polarizing agenda was a key factor in reshaping the internal
organization of Congress. Democrats launched a series of institutional reforms to bolster partyunity. These reforms coincided with an ongoing geographic realignment in the electorate.70 The
result was a more internally cohesive Democratic (and Republican) party in Congress and much
less fluidity in voting alignments on Capitol Hill as the base of southern Democrats vanished. In
an era of quasi-permanent structural deficits, the competition for scarce resources left little room
for new programs or the expansion of old ones, and drew even sharper distinctions between the
parties’ policy objectives.
Under conditions of nearly continuous divided government in the late 1980s and 1990s,
Reagan’s successors, Bush and Clinton, faced far more assertive opposition majorities in
Congress. They were unable to manipulate voting alignments in Congress in the way that Reagan
had, if only briefly in 1981. Facing opposition majorities in the House and Senate Bush and
Clinton were placed in far more defensive strategic positions. Party labels on Capitol Hill became
meaningful. Reinvigorated parties in Congress contributed to heightened levels of executivelegislative discord and presidents’ increased reliance on the negative power of the veto to block
30
objectionable policies advanced by the legislative majority. In this regard presidents continued to
stand in the shadow of Reagan’s first-year legacy at the close of the twentieth century.
31
Notes
1
Dilys M. Hill and Phil Williams, “The Reagan Legacy,” in The Reagan Presidency: An
Incomplete Revolution? Edited by Dilys M. Hill, Raymond A. Moore and Phil Williams (New
York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990, p. 233).
2
Barbara Sinclair, “Agenda Control and Policy Success: The Case of Ronald Reagan and 97th
House,” Legislative Studies Quarterly 20 (1985), pp. 291-314; Patricia H. Conley, Presidential
Mandates: How Elections Shape the National Agenda (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
2001).
3
Samuel Kernell, Going Public: New Strategies of Presidential Leadership (Washington, DC:
Congressional Quarterly, 1993), p. 121, my emphasis.
4
Richard Neustadt, Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents (New York: Free Press,
1960); John W. Sloan, “Meeting the Leadership Challenges of the Modern Presidency: The
Political Skills and Leadership of Ronald Reagan,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 26 (1996), pp.
798-99; Mark A. Bodnick, “‘Going Public’ Reconsidered: Reagan’s 1981 Tax and Budget Cuts,
and Revisionist Theories of Presidential Power,” Congress and the Presidency 17 (1990), pp. 1328.
5
Richard Fleisher and Jon R. Bond, “Assessing Presidential Support in the House: Lessons from
Reagan and Carter,” Journal of Politics 45 (1983), pp. 745-758.
6
Ibid., p. 757.
7
Roger H. Davidson, “Presidential-Congressional Relations,” in Understanding the Presidency,
edited by James P. Pfiffner and Roger H. Davidson (New York: Longman, 1997), p. 339.
8
Richard Fleisher and Jon R. Bond, “Partisanship and the President’s Quest for Votes,” in
Polarized Politics: Congress and the President in a Partisan Era, edited by John R. Bond and
Richard Fleisher (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly, 2000).
9
Leroy N. Rieselbach, “One Vote at a Time: Building Presidential Coalitions in Congress,” in
Rivals for Power: Presidential Congressional Relations, edited by James A. Thurber
(Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly, 1996).
10
See Bruce I. Oppenheimer, “The Importance of Elections in a Strong Congressional Party Era:
The Effect of Unified vs. Divided Government,” in Do Elections Matter? 3rd edition, edited by
Benjamin Ginsberg and Alan Stone (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1996); also Fleisher and Bond,
“Partisanship and the President’s Quest for Votes.”
11
Kernell, Going Public.
32
12
Barbara Sinclair, “Governing Unheroically (and Sometimes Unappetizingly): Bush and the
101st Congress,” in The Bush Presidency: First Appraisals, edited by Colin Campbell, S.J., and
Bert A. Rockman.(Chatham, NJ: Chatham House Publishers, 1991).
13
Cary R. Covington, “‘Staying Private’: Gaining Congressional Support for Unpublicized
Presidential Preferences on Roll Call Votes,” Journal of Politics 49 (1987), pp. 737-55.
14
Lawrence C. Dodd, “The Expanded Roles of the House Democratic Whip System: The 93rd
and 94th Congresses,” Congressional Studies 7 (1979), p. 32.
15
Cary R. Covington, “Congressional Support for the President: The View from the
Kennedy/Johnson White House,” Journal of Politics 48 (1986), pp. 717-728; Terry Sullivan,
“Headcounts, Expectations, and Presidential Coalitions in Congress,” American Journal of
Political Science 32 (1987), pp. 567-89; Richard S. Conley, “Presidential Influence and Minority
Party Liaison on Veto Overrides: New Evidence from the Ford Presidency,” American Politics
Research 30 (2002), pp. 34-65.
16
See Kenneth E. Collier, Between the Branches : The White House Office of Legislative Affairs
(Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997).
17
Norman J. Ornstein, “Assessing Reagan’s First Year,” in President and Congress: Assessing
Reagan’s First Year, edited by Norman J. Ornstein (Washington, DC: American Enterprise
Institute, 1982), pp. 90-95.
18
Stephen J. Wayne, “Congressional Liaison in the Reagan White House: A Preliminary
Assessment of the First Year,” in President and Congress: Assessing Reagan’s First Year, edited
by Norman J. Ornstein (Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute, 1982).
19
Hedrick Smith, “The President as Coalition Builder: Reagan’s First Year,” in Rethinking the
Presidency, edited by Thomas E. Cronin (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1982), pp. 27779.
20
The term cross-pressured is attributed to Jon R. Bond and Richard Fleisher, The President in
the Legislative Arena (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990).
21
Barbara Sinclair, “Coping with Uncertainty: Building Coalitions in the House and Senate,” in
The New Congress, edited by Thomas E. Mann and Norman Ornstein (Washington, DC:
American Enterprise Institute, 1981), p. 202.
22
These data were located in the M.B. Oglesby Files, Ronald Reagan Library, Simi Valley,
California. Oglesby worked in the Office of Legislative Affairs from 1981-86.
23
Congressional Quarterly Almanac 1981, pp. 8C-11C.
24
Ibid., p. 18C.
33
25
Richard Fleisher and John Bond, “Assessing Presidential Support in the House”; Mark R.
Joslyn, “Institutional Change and House Support: Assessing George Bush in the Postreform Era,”
American Politics Quarterly 23 (1995), pp. 62-80.
26
The term is borrowed from Keith Krehbiel, Pivotal Politics: A Theory of U.S. Lawmaking
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998).
27
American Conservative Union Vote Archive. Available at http://www.conservative.org.
28
James L. Sundquist, The Decline and Resurgence of Congress (Washington, D.C.: Brookings
Institution, 1981).
29
Fiona M. Wright, “The Caucus Reelection Requirement and the Transformation of
House Committee Chairs, 1959–94,” Legislative Studies Quarterly 15 (2000), pp. 469-80.
30
Keith T. Poole and Howard Rosenthal, Congress: A Political-Economic History of Roll Call
Voting (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).
31
Ibid., p. 54.
32
The inclusion of party and ideology in the same equation inflates the standard errors of both
variables, and the sign for party changes—telltale signs of colinearity. Altering party and ideology
in the equation, the model with the NOMINATE scores correctly classifies more of the cases
(77% ) compared to 71% for the model with party.
33
Dodd, “The Expanded Roles of the House Democratic Whip System”; David W. Rohde,
Parties and Leaders in the Postreform House (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991).
34
Lawrence C. Dodd and Bruce I. Oppenheimer, “The House in Transition,” in Congress
Reconsidered, edited by Lawrence C. Dodd and Bruce I. Oppenheimer (New York: Praeger,
1977); Rohde, Parties and Leaders in the Post Reform House, pp. 20-23; Robert L. Peabody,
“House Party Leadership: Stability and Change,” in Congress Reconsidered, 3rd edition, edited
by Lawrence C. Dodd and Bruce I. Oppenheimer (Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly,
1985).
35
Aage R. Clausen, How Congressmen Decide: A Policy Focus (New York: St. Martin’s Press,
1973).
36
Scott Menard, Applied Logistic Regression Analysis (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1995).
37
Tim Futing Liao, Interpreting Probability Models: Logit, Probit, and Other Generalized
Linear Models (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1994), pp. 16-21.
34
38
The percent of cases correctly classified by the model is analogous to the “explained variance”
or R2 statistic reported in most ordinary least squares regression analyses.
39
An alternative thesis is that Republican leaders, in the minority in the House since 1955,
suffered from countervailing pressures associated with a “minority mentality.” See Charles O.
Jones, The Minority Party in Congress (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1974).
40
Gladys Noon Spellman (MD-5) was reelected in 1980 but suffered a heart attack and was not
sworn in as a member of the 97th Congress. The House of Representatives adopted a resolution
declaring her seat vacant. See Congressional Quarterly Almanac 1981, p. 5.
41
See Patrick J. Fett, “Vote Visibility, Roll Call Participation, and Strategic Absenteeism in the
U.S. House,” Congress and the Presidency 23 (1996).
42
Helen Dewar and Caroline Atkinson, “Democrats Turn Tables, Press GOP to Support Rise in
Debt Ceiling,” Washington Post, February 5, 1981, p. A2.
43
Margot Hornblower and Helen Dewar, “GOP in House Finally Backs Debt Increase,”
Washington Post, February 6, 1981, p. A1.
44
Martin Tolchin, “Reagan is Winner in House to Raise Debt Limit,” New York Times, February
6, 1981, p. A13.
45
Martin Tolchin, “2 budgets Proposed by House Liberals Suffer Solid Defeat,” New York Times,
May 7, 1981, p. A1.
46
Congressional Quarterly Almanac 1981, p. 253.
47
Martin Tolchin, “2 budgets Proposed by House Liberals Suffer Solid Defeat,” New York Times,
May 7, 1981, p. A1.
48
Congressional Quarterly Almanac 1981, p. 262.
49
Congress and the Nation 1981-84, p. 43.
50
Congressional Quarterly Almanac 1981, p. 263.
51
See Congressional Quarterly Almanac 1981, pp. 263-64.
52
These legislators included Fuqua (FL-2), Bennett (FL-3), Jenkins (GA-9), Bouquard (TN-3),
Watkins (OK-3), Bowen (MS-2), Atkinson (PA-25), English (OK-6), Fountain (NC-2), Patman
(TX-14), Brinkley (GA-3), and Hall (TX-1).
53
Congressional Quarterly Almanac 1981, p. 267.
35
54
Helen Dewar, “Congress, Reagan Deadlocked on Spending Bill,” Washington Post, November
23, 1981, p. A1.
55
Martin Tolchin, “Democrats Defeat an Attempt to Cut Spending Measures,” New York Times,
November 17, 1981, p. A1.
56
Steven R. Weisman, “Congress Votes Budget Bill as Reagan Warns of a Veto; President
Summons Cabinet,” New York Times, November 23, 1981, p. A1.
57
Congressional Quarterly Almanac 1981, p. 301.
58
Richard P. Nathan, “The Reagan Presidency in Domestic Affairs,” in The Reagan Presidency:
An Early Assessment, edited by Fred I. Greenstein (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
1983), p. 52; Alan Schick, “How the Budget Was Won and Lost,” in President and Congress:
Assessing Reagan’s First Year, edited by Norman J. Ornstein (Washington, D.C.: American
Enterprise Institute, 1982), p. 26.
59
Helen Dewar and Lee Lescaze, “Reagan Rules Out Social Security Cut to Reduce Deficit;
Issues Veto Threat on HUD Fund Bill,” Washington Post, September 16, 1981, p. A1.
60
Helen Dewar, “House Defies President, Passes Money Bill for Social Program,” Washington
Post, October 7, 1981, p. A2.
61
Congressional Quarterly Almanac 1981, p. 100.
62
Stephen J. Wayne, “Congressional Liaison in the Reagan White House: A Preliminary
Assessment of the First Year,” in President and Congress: Assessing Reagan’s First Year, edited
by Norman J. Ornstein (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute, 1982), p. 58.
63
Congressional Quarterly Almanac 1981, p. 103.
64
M.B. Oglesby Files, Telephone Calls - Cabinet [1 of 2] and [2 of 2]; M.B. Oglesby Files, Box 1,
“Lists - Whip Checks” Folder; President’s Handwriting File, Folder 7 (7/25/81-7/28/81) and
Folder 8 (7/28/81-7/31/81), Ronald Reagan Library, Simi Valley, California.
65
Jane Seaberry, “Democrats Hold Line on Taxes; Reagan Fails in Lobbying Democrats,”
Washington Post, July 27, 1981, p. A1.
66
Edward Cowan, “Democrats Adopt Tax Offensive,” New York Times, July 14, 1981, p. D1.
67
Edward Cowan, “Battle Goes on for Tax Votes; House Test Today Called Toss-Up,” New
York Times, July 29, 1981, p. A1.
36
68
Hedrick Smith, “The President as Coalition Builder,” p. 281.
69
Charles O. Jones, “A New President, A Different Congress, A Maturing Agenda,” in The
Reagan Presidency and the Governing of America, edited by Lester M. Salamon and Michael S.
Lund (Washington, D.C.: The Urban Institute Press, 1984), p. 283.
70
See Rohde, Parties and Leaders in the Postreform House, pp. 83-118.
37
Table 1
Logistic Regression Analysis of
Congressional Support for Conservative Economic Legislation, 1973-80
Variable
Coefficient/
Standard Error
Mean
Effect
Ideology
5.39****
(.042)
98.6%
Democratic Leaders
-.296***
(.126)
-7.0%
Committee Chairs
-.186****
(.044)
-4.5%
Republican Leaders
.004
(.088)
Ranking Minority Members
-.077**
(.041)
-2.2%
President’s Position Yea x Co-Partisan
-.086**
(.040)
-2.1%
President’s Position Nay x Co-Partisan
-.277****
(.027)
-6.7%
Constant
.173****
(.011)
----
.1%
Number of Cases
76,477
- 2 x Log Likelihood
75,417.37
29,877.25****
Model χ2
Pseudo-R2
.28
Cases Correctly Predicted
.77
Null
.55
**** p < .001 *** p < .01 ** p < .05 * p < .10 (one-tailed tests)
Entries are maximum likelihood coefficients. Standard errors in parentheses.
Dependent variable is whether the legislator supported (1) or opposed (0) the American Conservative Union’s
position on the vote.
Table 2*
White House Key Votes for 1981 (First Session of the 97th Congress, House of Representatives)
President’s
Position
Roll-Call
Votes
Difference:
Predicted Votes for
Expected Outcome
Difference:
Outcome
Needed
Actual Vote and
President’s Position
(^ denotes expected and
Predicted and
yeas nays
Votes Needed
actual outcome differed)
Actual Vote
(Σ p× > .50)
Yea
1
305 - 104
205
+ 100
208
Win
+ 97
Yea
2
253 - 176
215
+ 35
213
Loss
+ 40
Nay
3
210 - 217
214
+ 3
215
Win
+ 2
Yea
4
216 - 212
215
+ 1
213
Loss^
+ 3
Yea
5
217 - 211
215
+ 2
214
Loss^
+ 3
Yea
6
215 - 212
214
+ 1
213
Loss^
+ 2
Yea
7
238 - 195
217
+ 21
215
Loss^
+ 23
Nay
8
209 - 197
204
- 7
204
Win^
- 7
Yea
9
168 - 249
209
- 40
202
Loss
- 34
Yea
10
199 - 199
200
- 1
196
Loss
+ 3
Yea
11
189 - 201
196
- 7
196
Win^
- 7
Nay
12
195 - 187
192
- 5
188
Loss
- 1
Yea
13
184 - 215
200
- 15
196
Loss
- 12
Nay
14
205 - 194
200
- 6
202
Loss
- 8
Yea
15
221 - 176
199
+ 22
198
Loss^
+ 23
Yea
16
222 - 194
209
+ 13
210
Win
+ 12
* Source: M.B. Oglesby Files, “Memo for Ken Duberstein from M.B. Oglesby, Jr., Subject: Heckler Voting Record, 1/12/83,” 1982 Vote Information File,
Folder 1, Ronald Reagan Library, Simi Valley, CA.
Vote #
Vote Key:
#1: HR 1553, increase national debt, 2/5/81.
#2: First Budget Resolution for FY 1982, Gramm-Latta Amendment to H. Con. Res. 115, 5/7/81.
#3: Omnibus Reconciliation Act, original rule reported by the House Rules Committee, 6/25/81.
#4: Omnibus Reconciliation Act, substitute rule proposed by Representative Latta, 6/25/81.
#5: Omnibus Reconciliation Act, adoption of Gramm-Latta II, 6/26/81.
#6: Omnibus Reconciliation Act, previous question on the motion to recommit HR 3982 with instructions, 6/26/81.
#7: Economic Recovery Tax Act, passage of Conable-Hance II amendment to HR 4242, 7/29/81.
#8: HUD and Independent Agencies Appropriation Act for FY 1982, 9/15/81.
#9: Labor-HHS-Education Appropriation Act for FY 1982, Regula motion to recommit, 10/6/81.
#10: Interior Appropriation Act for FY 1982, Loeffler motion to recommit, 11/12/81.
#11: Second Continuing Resolution for FY 1982, motion to recommit H.J. Res. 357, 11/16/81.
#12: Second Continuing Resolution for FY 1982, passage of H.J. Res. 357, 11/16/81.
#13: Second Continuing Resolution for FY 1982, motion to recommit conference report of H.J. Res. 357, 11/22/81.
#14: Second Continuing Resolution for FY 1982, passage of the conference report of H.J. Res. 357, 11/22/81.
#15: Second Continuing Resolution for FY 1982, Conte motion to recommit H.J. Res. 368 to limit bill’s duration, 11/23/81.
#16: Third Continuing Resolution for FY 1982, Conte/Chappell motion to recommit H.J. Res. 370 with instructions, 12/10/81.
Table 3
Logistic Regression Analysis of White House Lobbying and
Congressional Support for Reagan’s Economic Recovery Tax Act, 1981a
Variable
Coefficient/
Standard Error
Mean
Effect
Ideology
19.21****
(2.36)
99.1%
Democratic Leaders
-1.32***
(.859)
-31.8%
Committee Chairs
-.497
(1.04)
-11.8%
Republican Leaders
----
----
Ranking Minority Members
----
----
Contact - Leaning or Decided For
.931*
(.617)
17.4%
Contact - Leaning or Decided Against
-2.63**
(1.19)
-56.9%
Contact - Undecided
-.358
(.651)
-8.6%
Camp David Invitee
1.35*
(.923)
22.5%
Constant
1.19****
(.338)
----
Number of Cases
433
- 2 x Log Likelihood
129.32
466.65****
Model χ2
Pseudo-R2
.78
Cases Correctly Predicted
.93
Null
.55
**** p < .001 *** p < .01 ** p < .05 * p < .10 (one-tailed tests)
Entries are maximum likelihood coefficients. Standard errors in parentheses.
Dependent variable is whether the legislator supported (1) or opposed (0) the Conable-Hance amendment to HR
4242 (Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981), July 29, 1981. The final vote was 238-195.
a
Republican leaders and ranking minority members were excluded from the equation because the variables
perfectly predict presidential support; the equation was estimated using STATA 6.0, which automatically dropped
the variables.