Has McCain poisoned the well for Obama?

One of the most important questions confronting Barack Obama is how he will be treated by Republicans in Congress and the electorate after the afterglow of his victory fades.

During the campaign, John McCain riled up the base to think that Obama is a terrorist sympathizer who "doesn't put country first." McCain tried to back away from that position during his concession speech, which was generous and conciliatory, but ended up having to quiet his supporters, who booed Obama. The mood at GOP campaign rallies this fall suggests that McCain unleashed something he could not control.

As Kevin Drum wrote during the campaign, "[t]he danger is that John McCain is setting us up for a repeat of the 90s" in which conservatives "treat President Obama as not just an opposition leader, but as a virtual enemy of the state, as they did with Bill Clinton." Paul Krugman expressed similar fears and predicted that the treatment of Obama "will be even worse than it was in the Clinton years."

To understand what happened to Clinton, it's important to note that he came into office with relatively low approval among opposition party identifiers compared with other presidents in the contemporary era:

Partly as a result, Clinton never had a presidential "honeymoon," Republicans in Congress sought to undermine his agenda from the beginning (especially health care), and incessantly promoted scandal allegations like the Whitewater affair.

Will the Republican base and conservatives in Congress follow McCain's lead in their treatment of Obama? It's an important question with implications that seem to generalize beyond Clinton. For instance, my research on presidential scandal suggests that low opposition approval is an important predictor of increased presidential vulnerability to scandal in the contemporary era (1977-2006).

The evidence we have thus far suggests that Obama may face a similarly hostile GOP (though it's obviously very early). First, there is a hardcore group of conservatives who strongly dislike Obama and are unlikely to view his administration with an open mind. A post-election USA Today/Gallup poll found that 27% of Americans and 56% of McCain voters are "afraid" as a result of Obama's election -- a response that is directly consistent with McCain's campaign rhetoric. Similarly, 26% of Americans were found to strongly disapprove of Obama's performance as president-elect in a Rasmussen Reports poll (though he hasn't even taken office yet!).

The outrage machine is likely to start ginning up these voters very soon. This is the banner ad that I saw on Drudge the day after the election:

And here's one I saw today:

The forces in contemporary politics that push us toward hyper-partisan confrontation from day one are very, very strong. Obama may be their next victim.

Update 11/10 9:39 AM: Here's a similar poll result from Gallup, which finds that Obama's favorability ratings are currently 70% favorable, 25% unfavorable, which is up from 61% favorable in the Nov. 1-3 poll. The question is how soon the Republicans and GOP-leaning independents will shift into negative views of Obama, which will largely depend on how soon conservative elites start criticizing him. He does start from a strong position -- Gallup notes that the 61% favorable rating was the highest for a presidential candidate in the 1992-2008 period.

Comments

[Rob]

Speaking of the opposition treating the President as a virtual enemy of the state, have you been living in America for the last five years? Notice anything?

Of course poll respondents who were asked to rate Obama's performance as President-elect are judging him even though he isn't President yet. Isn't that what they were asked to do? It is odd that 26% strongly disapprove of his performance, since he has said and done very little. Equally odd is the 42% who strongly approve. What exactly is it they strongly approve of?

[David]

The conservative hatred of Clinton was personal. We disapproved of his dishonesty more than his policies.

The liberal hatred of Bush began as personal, but it was so strong that it became political, too. Liberals hated everything he did, even policies that liberals normally support, such as NCLB, nation-building in Iraq, and expansion of Medicare. (I sometimes wonder if liberal hatred of Bush was stronger because he had stolen some of their issues.)

The conservative fear of Obama is his policies, not so much personal. Conservatives are worried that he'll make changes that they believe will be bad for American and the world. If they fight against many of his policies, as I hope they will, it will be because they believe they're mistakes.

Luckily for Obama, he'll have the media behind him. The media found it was amusing when Bush was called a chimp. They didn't mind too much when the Clinton's were called liars. However. anyone who says anything like that about Obama will be branded a racist. In fact, I suspect that any criticism at all of Obama will be branded as racist by some.

It seemed to me that McCain ran a remarkably nice campaign. He didn't focus on Wright, nor on Obama's relationship with Rezko. He took pains not to allow any mention on Obama's middle name. Yet, Brendan and other liberals blame Mcain for poisoning the well. It illustrates the adage that no good deed goes unpunished.

Without meaning to, Brendan has made an argument that Republicans should run the nastiest campaign possible. They're going to get blamed for being mean no matter what they do, so they might as well get the benefits of being mean.

[rone]

That's some fascinatingly twisted logic, David. Nation-building might be something that many liberals embrace, but the way the US went into Iraq was so wrongheaded from the start that the end was so predictable, i called it the very day of the invasion, and i'm no foreign policy wonk. NCLB is also a mockery of liberal education policies. Maybe it's what "conservatives" think liberals actually want ("conservatives" because there was nothing actually conservative about Bush's presidency, except for the Jesus stuff).

A "remarkably nice campaign"... hilarious. You're calling it "remarkably nice" because McCain didn't pull out all the stops on the pipe organ of hate and spite? I guess that's part and parcel of the insanely and continually lowered standards over the last eight years.

[David]

rone, I don't agree the final end in Iraq was predictable 5 years ago. In fact, it's not even predictable today. Nobody knows whether the huge improvement over the last 15 months will continue, or whether things will fall apart.

You must admit that Bush has attempted to establish democracies in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is quite a turnaround from 50 - 60 years ago when we supported friendly dictators. E.g., we helped to overturn an elected leader in Iran and substitute a dictator.

NCLB included a huge increase in federal funds to schools and an emphasis on improving the eduction of minorities. Both are liberal goals. BTW tests show that NCLB has had a measure of success, even though the teachers hate it.

[rone]

I wasn't really talking about the "final end", but rather the current end we're experiencing. The insanely heightened expectations ("greeted as liberators") are merely a cherry on top of the failure cake.

I guess if you want to call what's happened an attempt, sure. A superficial and mismanaged attempt, but an attempt for certain.

"Tests" show a "measure of success" for NCLB? Got a link or three?

[David]

rone - See NCLB editorial in the Washington Post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/01/AR2007070100905.html

[rone]

Call me crazy, but that editorial says that while the NCLB framework is sound, the implementation has been suboptimal, which sounds a whole lot like what i said.

[skeptical]

Oh, dear, David, it really is the case that parents want NCLB out of their children's schools, too, because it puts all of the emphasis on the middle to raise test scores because failure to move middle punishes the entire school. That means no education happens except test prep for the middle.

For those of us who believed invading Iraq was destined to be an unnecessary disaster, believe me, we wish we'd been listened to first. wrong second, and heeded when we advocated getting out as quickly as possible. Perhaps Iraqis can work out their differences, but right now the groups and leaders we've been paying not to attack us are currently on the lists to be arrested by the Maliki government. "Nation building" isn't a liberal good in and of itself if the nation is an enemy of the U.S., or if the reason for nation building was completely preventable and unnecessary.

Neither is legislation as convoluted and confusing as the prescription medicine benefit that was passed with utterly false numbers promulgated by the administration. I see conservatives routinely claiming that Bush wasn't a "real" conservative because everything he touched led to disaster or exhorbitant costs, as though Rush Limbaugh's garbage that all liberals want is bigger government, more taxes, and that liberals hate America.

Yes, for anyone who hates America, Bush is your man. But don't confuse the liberal agenda with the gobblety gook of the legislation of the last eight years. Neither was that convoluted immigration reform bill anything like what would have made sense for the country. Just because a piece of legislation is overly burdensome, convoluted, bureaucratic, and signed by Kennedy doesn't make it liberal.

If you steal your opponent's agenda and muck it up for a generation, that doesn't mean you've really done what they wanted. It just makes fixing it take much, much longer.

[David]

rone, here's the difference: You said NCLB wasn't working and needed fixing; WaPo said NCLB was working and needed fixing.

skeptical, I agree with you that prescription drug coverage in Medicare is overly burdensome, convoluted, and bureaucratic. What else is new? Most federal programs are overly burdensome, convoluted, and bureaucratic. IMHO if Bill Clinton had implemented the identical program, liberals would have cheered it.

By the way, in practice it's not overly complex. Signing up for drug coverage under Medicare and obtaining benefits is straightforward. Millinos of seniors have done so. There was some confusion at the beginning, but today we don't see news stories about frustrated seniors who are entitled to this coverage but have been unable to sign up for it.