Obama's first news conference

Sat down tonight to watch Obama's first news conference. I was impressed with the give and take, and learned a lot.



I remarked to my wife that it was nice to have a president who wasn't afraid of the facing the media in a news conference, thinking that Bush was loathe to do this. Well, turns out he wasn't as loathe to do a news conference than I had thought.

According to the American Presidency Project at UC-Santa Barbara, Bush held a total of 209 news conferences during his presidency, averaging just a shade more than 26. In 2008-09, Bush 29 news conferences alone.

While much fewer than Presidents Coolidge through Truman, Bush fares well compared to his contemporaries. He held more on year, on average, than Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, and Clinton. Only his father exceeded the yearly average, holding more news conferences on average than any president since Truman.

Boy, was I wrong! And it just goes to show you that sometimes an impression fostered by the media (Bush as syntactically challenged and afraid of facing the media in unscripted events) can lead to the wrong conclusions about a president/presidency. Check out all the nifty graphs and charts at the website.

$700 Billion: Where's the Fireside Chat?

I was reading the Washington Post this evening, as I typically do, and I noted a piece on the front page where folks in Manassas Park, VA were asked what they thought about the government's proposed bailout of banks. Manassas Park is notable because it is apparently a part of Prince William County that's been hit hard by foreclosures. It's one of those exburb type communites--30 miles from DC--where subdivisions have cropped up over the past decade and where gas prices hit commuters hard. Read the piece here.

In any case, despite the desperate straits folks find themselves in, hardly anyone expressed support for the government's bailout plan.

Then it dawned upon me: Where's the Fireside Chat?

If this is the greatest economic crisis since the nation faced the Great Depression, why hasn't the President appeared on national television to explain the crisis in detail so the average person could understand it? If this is so important to the national well being, shouldn't the President at least try to get public opinion behind it?

Let's put this into some historical perspective. Banks were failing all over the country in 1933, right before FDR was inaugurated. The average level of educational attainment was much lower than today-perhaps an 8th or 9th grade education. People did not understand why banks were failing, and why the federal government had called for a Bank Holiday. People were scared about losing their life savings. And so FDR, in the first of his fireside chats, spoke plainly and directly to the nation, putting them at ease, explaining how banks work and why the Bank Holiday was necessary. After the Bank Holiday ended, bank deposits soared. FDR had created a sense of national confidence despite the dire situation.

Listen to the first Fireside Chat here:



The educational attainment of Americans has gone up dramatically over the past 70 plus years. And yet, the crisis facing the mortgage and banking industry is much more complex. The average American simply doesn't understand what's going on--and yet we are expected to pledge more money than the government has spent on Iraq in an apparent bid to save those who lived outside their means. While there might be a very good reason to do this, it is absolutely necessary for the President to exercise leadership on this and to explain, carefully and patiently to the American people, why this is necessary--and necessary fast.

The bailout is no sure thing. Democrats are putting conditions on their support (some of those conditions are reasonable, while others are not) and Republicans in return are calling for their own conditions. If it is truly important to get this through Congress before they recess for the fall elections, and to do so without conditions, then the President must act and act forcefully. Maybe the President does not want to do so for fear that his low approval ratings might actually make the prospects of passage even worse. I'm not sure I agree.

But sitting back, without explaining to the nation why we should trust him, his Secretary of Treasury, his appointee to the Federal Reserve Chairmanship, and Capitol Hill's leadership, is abdicating one of his greatest responsibilities as an executive.

Does Experience Matter? What does Skowronek think?

My students don't know it yet, but they will have to read this blog and comment on the post once they read Yale University political scientist Stephen Skowronek's influencial essay in Studies in American Political Development. The March 10th edition of Time Magazine has two fascinating articles on the relationship between experience and presidential success (see here and here). Unfortunately, the fantastic chart outlining the political experience each president had before achieving the Oval Office is not available online (I'm going to try and scan it and post it soon).

To quote from the first article ("Does Experience Matter in a President"): "At the same time, the value that voters place on resume is constantly shifting. James A. Baker III is an authority on this. In 1980, he managed the campaign of his well-credentialed friend George H.W. Bush, under the slogan 'A President we won't have to train.' But the public mood was sour on Washington, and victory went to an outsider, Ronald Reagan, who had never served in Washington."

How does this relate to Skowronek? Skowronek emphasizes that presidential success is less a function of individual skills and more a function of a president's place in historical and political time. In other words, great presidents don't make history but rather history makes great presidents.

The presidents with the most opportunity to transform the political landscape and implement a new governing regime, according to Skowronek, are the reconstructive presidents. Looking at the Time experience chart, what do all but one of the reconstructive presidents share? Very little previous political experience. Skowronek's reconstructive presidents are Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, FDR, and Reagan. Jefferson had the most governmental experience: 27 years. But the others had only 5, 10, 6, and 8 years respectively. That is to say that in periods of great political transformation, when the public wants to radically alter the path away from a crumbling regime, they turn to political outsiders.

What about the failed presidents, the disjunctive presidents that precede a reconstructive president? They are John Adams, John Quincy Adams, James Buchanan, Herbert Hoover, and Jimmy Carter. The years of public service of each prior to obtaining the presidency was 24, 30, 35, 8, and 8. The election of Jefferson is the only time a reconstructive president had more prior political experience than man leaving office.

Another way to look at this is to look at the candidate rejected during the moment when politics shifted from disjunction to reconstruction. And in every case, less experience won out if we count the time served as president. Compare the following:

Adams' 28 years to Jefferson's 27.
JQA's 34 to Jackson's 5.
Stephen Douglas' 20 odd years to Lincoln's 10.
Hoover's 12 to FDR's 6.
Carter's 12 to Reagan's 8.

Obama's campaign is prefaced on the politics of transformation and change. And he's a fresh face with comparatively little political experience. Should he win election, is possible that we may witness one of those rare moments in political time where great political change is possible and, more importantly, the nature of the political debate shifts in such away that future politicians for a number of years will have to respond to that shift? It would also mark one of the shortest tenures of a dominant political regime (the Reagan conservative regime) in American political history. It would also mean that George W. Bush would become the first two term disjunctive president--a president who was in office while the public roundly rejected the set of ideas upon which the president was elected and upon which a existing regime is predicated.

As a political scientist and a fan of Skowronek's work, I find this election to be absolutely fascinating.

And by the way, if Obama is elected president, that's 10 years of political experience compared to George W. Bush's 14.