What Drives Presidential "Approval"
Media pundits are already talking about the impact of Biden’s “historically low” approval ratings on the 2022 congressional contests.
Generally, the president’s party suffers congressional losses in mid-term elections, and the Democratic margins in both the House and the Senate are razor thin.
In his first year Joe Biden has not enjoyed any honeymoon in regards to his approval ratings. Never higher than 57 percent, his numbers since September have hovered between 42 and 43 percent according to Gallup.
What is to blame for the apparent dissatisfaction with Biden’s performance as the nation’s chief executive? One obvious factor is the deep political divisions among Americans, not only between the two major parties, but also within the parties.
Biden came into office having won his party’s nomination in a contentious series of primaries. He was not the first choice of a significant number of Democrats, but he managed to unite the party in the general election and to produce the greatest number of votes any US presidential candidate has ever received.
His victory, however, was not graciously received by the incumbent president and his supporters. Donald Trump continues to claim the election was stolen, and fear of his hold on GOP voters has exacerbated the natural obstructionism of congressional Republicans.
Still, Biden has managed to hold together the competing elements within his party and to pursue a legislative agenda bolder than most objective observers had anticipated. His greatest challenge has been in working with the evenly divided Senate where the filibuster makes normal legislating nearly impossible. Some matters may be approved by a majority vote, but with GOP minority leader Mitch McConnell keeping his troops almost completely corralled, Biden cannot afford to have any Democratic senators go astray.
Covid has presented an unusual set of problems. Even though since March 2020, more than 50 million cases of Covid have been reported and nearly 800,000 Americans have died from the disease as of December 15, the pandemic has been and continues to be more than a “health” issue.
In the beginning the reality of Covid and fear of the virus resulted in a shutdown of much of the US economy. Although conditions are much better today than they were in the fall of 2000, Americans do not go out to eat, to movies, to shop or to travel as they did in 2019. Schools and colleges have returned to more normal operations, but they continue to face the possibility of having to occasionally rely on “remote learning,” which may come to be considered an oxymoron.
Biden had to depend upon Democrats entirely to enact his aggressive American Rescue Plan passed in March 2021. The ARP authorized $160 billion for national vaccinations, but it spent far more on relieving the economic fallout resulting from the pandemic. There was money to help schools reopen safely, to extend unemployment benefits, to provide direct aid to a broad section of the population, to expand aid for children, to increase SNAP benefits and to lower health insurance costs under the Affordable Care Act. There was also significant direct help for state governments.
When passed, the ARP was denounced as overreach and wasteful by right-wing “think tanks,” like American Enterprise Institute, Cato Institute and Heritage Foundation. The general view today is that the ARP helped the US avoid another Great Depression. Employment grew an average of 555,000 jobs each month in 2021, and the unemployment rate has fallen to 4.2 percent.
The GDP in 2021 grew 5.6 percent, compared to an average of less than 2 percent during the entire decade before.
Staying true to his commitment to bipartisanship, Biden did manage to secure some GOP help in passing the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act in mid-November 2021. Nineteen Republicans voted for measure, including McConnell and three of the GOP senators from the Carolinas. Only Tim Scott of South Carolina voted nay.
A companion bill known as the Build Back Better bill is currently in limbo. The $1.75 billion measure contains a number of initiatives popular with a majority of voters. Included is a one-year extension of the advanced child tax credit payment implemented last summer and which is estimated to have cut child poverty in America almost in half. Among other items in the bill are multi-year funds for universal pre-k for 3- and 4-year olds, for expanding Medicare services and for addressing climate change.
Republicans in the Senate are united in their opposition to the Build Back Better bill which makes it imperative that Biden receive the unanimous backing of Democratic solons. This is not the case at the moment, illustrating the precarious state of a president’s agenda in our federal system.
The reality is that members of congress and the president do not have a common constituency base. Representative and senators are elected by a much smaller slice of America. They are also frequently at the mercy of the most extreme elements within their party thanks to the primary nomination system.
Although Biden came into the presidency with greater foreign policy experience than any president since Richard Nixon, his foreign policy acumen was called into question by the chaos that occurred as the US withdrew from Afghanistan. Few complained about pulling US troops out of that quagmire, but there has been concern about the safety of those Afghans who had worked with US forces.
But much of the disorder during our departure was the result of the ineptness of the Afghan leadership that the US had spent twenty year propping up. While his administration continues to try to assist Afghan allies in leaving the country, Biden was blunt in stating his view of the withdrawal, “We no longer had a clear purpose in an open-ended mission in Afghanistan.”
Biden has shifted his attention to the challenges to America’s long term interest from China, Russia and Iran. His recent face-to-face sessions with Vladimir Putin underscore Biden’s belief in the importance of active diplomacy.
Finally, as president Biden has attempted to reduce the political temperature both domestically and internationally. He does not “tweet” his opinion, relevant or not, every day. The media may find Biden boring, but he takes his job seriously. He seeks opportunities to collaborate, not to eviscerate.
It would be useful to remember that approval ratings are a one-day snapshot of public support for a president. They can turn on a dime. George H. W. Bush enjoyed an approval rating of 89 percent following the successful Gulf War in early 1991. His son enjoyed a 90 percent approval rating following 9/11. The senior Bush lost re-election in 1993 and the final approval rating for his son in January 2009 was 34 percent.