Think it Through

The latest polls showing that President Obama is more popular than some of his policies are a sure sign that meaningful health care reform with a public option should be a slam dunk for Obama.

The intangibles of leadership, not the specifics of policies, usually determine whether or not the country will accept large scale change like health care reform.

If Franklin Roosevelt had lived through his fourth term in office, the country would have heard him call for national health insurance as part of a Second Bill of Rights he was preparing. After FDR’s death, President Harry Truman took the first step by calling on Congress to provide universal health care coverage. But in 1945, Truman was not popular, and the American Medical Association and others crushed Truman’s plan.

Twenty years later, President Lyndon Johnson had just won a landslide election and he enjoyed a national consensus behind his leadership. He move quickly in January of 1965 to ask Congress to send him a Medicare bill. He faced the same bitter opposition as Truman, as the AMA fought back hard with lobbyists and money. The AMA even offered an alternative it named Bettercare, a voluntary program run by the private insurance companies. None of this mattered in the face of LBJ’s popularity. Just 204 days after LBJ asked for a Medicare bill, he signed it into law on July 30, 1965, in Independence, Missouri with former President Truman at his side.

President Obama’s personality and style of leadership is polar opposite that of LBJ. Yet, Obama has the same level of trust at a time of hope and anticipation that he will accomplish great things for the country.

Obama’s consistently high job approval ratings — 65% in the latest ABC/Washington Post poll — reflect the public’s general trust in his leadership. This high level of trust is much more important than the fact that somewhat fewer Americans like his specific policies.  For example:

• 61% approve of the way Obama is handling foreign affairs
• 57% approve of his handling of the threat of terrorism
• 56% approve of his handling of the economy
• 53% approve of how he is handling health care

President Clinton’s health care reform did not unravel due to the details of his plan as much as the public doubts about his leadership and voters’ disgust at Congressional behavior. The infamous “Harry and Louise” ads did not focus on the particulars of the president’s plan as much as they argued that something as important as your personal health could not be entrusted to the government at a time when Clinton had stumbled during his first year in office and Congressmen were bouncing checks and playing the float at the House Bank.

Although the history of health care reform covers decades of defeats, the level of trust the public has for Obama should make health care reform achievable.

Yet, there are some things he can do to lose:

• He can lose if he relies on men and women of good faith to come together to do what is right for the country. For the insurance, hospital, medical and trial attorney lobbies, health care reform is about money, and they will oppose every dollar they are asked to sacrifice for the common good.

• He can lose if he depends on selling the details.  Flow charts did more to hurt than help the Clinton plan’s presentation to the public. The devil is not in the details, it is in his determination. If the issue is reduced to one of who do you trust: the President or the insurance industry, who do you think will win?

• He can lose if he talks more about how he will pay for the plan rather than how we will benefit. Obama’s best line so far on health care has been “we cannot afford not to do it.” He must describe for us the pay-off, not the process of how to get there.

Like LBJ, Obama has the opportunity to either convert or roll over the naysayers and enact a program that will benefit hundreds of millions of Americans for years to come.

Health care reform is his to lose.

It was Ronald Reagan who returned from a trip to South America and told reporters, “you can learn a lot by just listening.” I was reminded of Reagan’s revelation when an April Pew Research survey of the nation found that “the proportion saying that abortion should be legal in all or most cases has declined to 46% from 54% last August.” This finding took many of us by surprise because abortion attitudes have been incredibly stable over the last 15 years.

While it will take time to learn whether this shift becomes a trend and why it occurred, the change points out the importance of listening closely to the people who respond to your surveys. The commitment to listening closely led Belden Russonello & Stewart to change the way we measure opinions on abortion, to reflect more closely the questions people ask themselves about abortion.

For many years BRS measured abortion opinions by using a standard question that Pew asked in April and which is used by other media polls such as Washington Post/ABC News. The question is:

Thinking about abortion, do you think abortion should be legal in all cases, legal in most cases, illegal in most cases, or illegal in all cases?

Four years ago, we noticed that when our interviewers asked this abortion question, many respondents objected to the categories. They told us they did not think of abortion in terms of how widely illegal it should be, but rather how much we should limit abortion. There were many who could not say that abortion should be illegal most of the time, but rather that it should be legal with many restrictions. We changed our abortion question to read:

Thinking about abortion, do you think abortion should be legal in almost all cases, legal in most cases, legal in just a few cases, or never legal?

We placed both of the above questions on a survey in 2004, using a split sample, and found that the numbers at the extremes stayed about the same :

• legal in all cases (19%) and legal in almost all cases (19%);
• illegal in all cases (18%) and never legal (21%).

The middle positions shifted, however.

• The new language told us that 20% chose legal in most cases and 36% chose legal in just a few cases.
• The traditional version had it flipped: 28% saying illegal in most cases and 32% saying legal in most cases.

The traditional wording can be misleading because it suggests that abortion opinions are an either-or proposition, when in fact, they are on a continuum. The legal vs. illegal frame for the abortion question pushes pollsters and news people to collapse the first two categories vs. the second two categories, so you report so much support FOR abortion and so much support AGAINST abortion. As the Pew release stated: “Currently 46% say abortion should be legal in most cases (28%) or all cases (18%); 44% believe that abortion should be illegal in most (28%) or all cases (16%).” This leads people to think half the public is for abortion and half is against, when it is a lot more interesting than that.

Between 56 and 60 percent of Americans count themselves somewhere in the middle on abortion. Unlike other issues, such as global warming, school vouchers, or economic stimulus programs from the federal government, there is no muddled middle on abortion. Rather, we see a firmly-ambivalent, or comfortably-conflicted middle. From our own research we know that these are people who do not subscribe to an ideological pro-women’s rights or anti-abortion sentiment but rather have made a conscious decision to take a middle position because they believe the circumstances matter.

Thinking about abortion opinions in this way does not answer the question – what is the reason behind the shift in Pew’s numbers on abortion? It does suggest that the movement detected by Pew is not so much a drop in overall support for abortion but some kind of shift in opinions on restrictions of one type or another.

The Pew question leads me to three suggestions: 1) change the four-way question to reflect how the public approaches abortion, by not placing things in a strictly legal vs. illegal mode, 2) stop emphasizing the collapsed categories, so that the news media must report abortion opinions on a continuum, not one side versus the other side; and 3) look more closely at the people taking a middle position. They are a majority of Americans.

As Ronald Reagan would have put it, “you can learn a lot by just listening.”

Here is a suggestion for President Obama to overcome Republican objections to a cap on executive pay on the grounds that it interferes with the internal decisions of businesses: instead of proposing a cap on executive pay, borrow a theme from Ronald Reagan, who used the themes of individualism, freedom, and self-determination to employ the tax code as an incentive and a substitute for government regulation.

I propose the Democrats give up on the idea of a cap and instead offer a government incentive for merit pay for corporate executives. This would come in the form of disincentive for businesses to pay billions to executives who have failed. Here’s how it would work: a corporation that loses money but chooses to pay bonuses to its top executives at the end of the year must pay the federal government a large tax equal to ten times the bonus – call it surtax on corporate stupidity and gluttony.

It is a conservative approach to good behavior. Do not dictate. Incentivize. Who would be affected?

• Insurance giant AIG would have thought twice about paying its directors $38 million in bonuses when it was losing $99 billion last year. If they were that determined to give the bonuses, the federal government would not have stopped them, but they would have had to pay $380 million for their decision.
• Citigroup might have balked at paying its top execs $60 million in bonuses when they led the company to become $18 billion in the hole; and
• General Motors might have hesitated before paying its top officers $26 million in bonuses last year while it was losing nine billion dollars.

Merit pay. What a concept. It works in small businesses and in corporations at the lower levels. Why stop there? It is an idea that both Democrats and Republicans could embrace.

The Republican message guru of the 80’s, and into the 90’s, Arthur Finkelstein of New York, built a successful career on one simple idea. If his candidate was trailing in the polls, he would call the opponent a liberal. His formula had two main advantages: simplicity and portability: FILL IN YOUR OPPONENT’S NAME HERE is too liberal for FILL IN YOUR STATE HERE. With this advice, he helped Republicans win many elections, because the liberal label meant favoring big government and higher taxes, being soft on crime, and social permissiveness.

Today you see these ads far less often. Even though the opinion polls have consistently shown almost no increase in the number of Americans who describe themselves as politically “liberal,” I believe there is solid evidence that the liberal bashing has lost its punch because over the last two decades Americans have gradually become more liberal. My conclusion derives from listening to hundreds of focus groups over the last two decades by our firm, Belden Russonello & Stewart, as well as an analysis of public opinion surveys. The latest Pew values survey describes the current phenomenon as a return to “centrism,” but whatever you call it, the move in public opinion is leftward. A look at public opinion polls on government, taxes, civil rights and gay rights supports what we have heard in focus groups.

More liberal on taxes and government

Perhaps nothing has separated liberals from conservatives more over the past several decades than attitudes towards taxes. The idea that government takes too much of our personal income is central to the conservative position in the country, and the liberal position has been that taxes pay for things we need, therefore we do not begrudge them.

The data over the last 15 years indicate a shift away from the conservative position on taxes. Since 1994, the proportions of Americans who think their federal income taxes are too high declined from 66% to 46%, according to Gallup. The Gallup polls also show that more Americans today than ten years ago think the income tax they pay is fair (51% in 1997 and 61% in 2009); and fewer think that “middle income people” are paying “too much” of federal taxes than thought so in the past (57% in 1994 compared to 43% in 2009).

Opinions about government generally track the difficulties of the nation. When the nation is troubled economically or because of a security threat, the public is more supportive of government action in general. When times are good overall, Americans tend to forget what government does for them and claim to be rugged individualists.

After 9/11 attacks, the public’s confidence in government to make the right decisions shot up to its highest level in decades.

When NORC’s General Social Survey asked Americans if the “government should do everything possible to improve the standard of living of all poor Americans,” or if they believe “it is not the government’s responsibility and everyone should take care of himself,” the numbers in favor of government help rose during the recession of 1990 and ‘91, then dipped until 2000, when they shot back up and stayed up.

These and other surveys indicate an increasing openness to government helping people in need and a public that is stepping away from the taxophobia that fueled the Reagan revolution.

More liberal on crime

A look at the public opinion data on crime adds fuel to the idea that Americans are becoming more progressive. Several polls show that the death penalty is becoming less popular, and that more Americans believe the government should spend more money attacking the causes of crime than on law enforcement through more prisons, police and judges. Also, several polls have shown that although legalizing marijuana still is rejected by a majority of Americans, support for legalization has grown in the past few years.

More liberal on rights

Perhaps the largest shift leftward in public opinion on liberal-conservative issues over the last 15 years has been the rise in support of individuals’ exercising their rights and the growing tolerance for people who are different. Gay rights are the most dramatic, but not the only example of this increased tolerance. Gallup studies show that from 1996 to the present, Americans have moved steadily in favor of calling “homosexuality” an “acceptable alternative life style” (44% in 1996, 57% in 2009), as well as more in favor of “marriage between same sex couples being recognized by the law as valid with the same rights as traditional marriages” (27% in 1996, 40% in 2009).

Our own BRS polls for the ACLU have shown that a majority of Americans now support a “gay or lesbian couple” being able to adopt a baby legally (46% in 1998, 53% in 2007).

Also, ABC News/Washington Post surveys have indicated a 31-point rise from 1993 to 2009 in the belief that “homosexuals who do publicly disclose their sexual orientation should be allowed to serve in the military.” (44% in 1993, 75% this year)

Beyond gay rights, a general question about individual rights, which BRS has asked since 1998, shows a slight but steady rise in the number of Americans who think “generally, in this country we do not go far enough “to protect liberties and rights (from 31% to 36%), ” and a corresponding drop (from 29% to 24%) who think we “go too far” to protect rights.

The policies of President George Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney catapulted civil liberties to the front burner of American politics in the same way that Reagan and his interior secretary James Watt built widespread national support for environmental causes. A public that had been previously asleep to threats of civil liberties now has been awakened by government action on Guantanamo, incarceration of people indefinitely without showing evidence, illegal wiretapping, etc. A recent BRS poll reveals that “protecting civil liberties and the Constitution” rates near the top of the public’s issue concerns, just below the economy and the war in Iraq, at the same level as protecting the country from terrorists, and ahead of health care reform and improving education.

Conclusion

The data on individual rights, government, taxes, and crime do not offer a complete picture of how Americans think about these issues, but taken together they add credence to the idea that the American public opinion is moving gradually to the left in many ways. How far we do not know. It is likely, however, that the trend will continue.

Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Center for People and the Press, astutely points out that much of the turn leftward on issues such as gay rights is due to cohort replacement: the younger generations hold more liberal views than their elders, and as the older generations disappear, they will be replaced by their more liberal children and grandchildren.

It may be hard to imagine now, but some day soon a media consultant will make his or her name with the following formula: FILL IN YOUR OPPONENT’S NAME HERE is too conservative for FILL IN YOUR STATE HERE.

Having just returned from a blog-free, almost e-mail free three weeks in Umbria, Italy I have learned that the President named Sonia Sotomayor as his choice to replace David Souter on the Supreme Court, and that the Republicans in the Senate and elsewhere are making noises about opposing her on the grounds that she is too Hispanic.

Sotomayor’s critics start by admitting that she is “qualified.” She has a law degree from Yale University, was appointed to the federal district court by Republican President Bush in 1991, then elevated to an appeals court judgeship by President Clinton in 1998. Her critics argue that being qualified is not enough. They question her judgment, because she would see the law through the eyes of a Puerto Rican woman from New York City. Essentially she is too Hispanic-urban-northeastern-female.

The nominee’s critics would have a legitimate point if her record showed that her personal opinion caused her to mangle the Constitution and distort the law.  But if that were true, they would be making the case that she is unqualified.  Judge Robert Bork had a distinguished career as a federal judge and legal scholar before the Senate decided he was unfit to serve on the Supreme Court.  In the 1989 debate, the Senators stated that Bork’s views of the Constitution were so out of the mainstream as to make him unqualified to sit on the Supreme Court.  The Senate did not say “he was qualified, but…”

This issue of qualifications is not merely one of semantics; it goes to the heart of the debate over Supreme Court nominees. During the debates over the nominations of John Roberts and Samuel Alito the Republican Administration did an outstanding job creating the assumption that a Supreme Court nominee is qualified if he or she meets the following criteria: attended a reputable law school, has had experience as judge, looks good in a blue suit, has a loving family to sit in the front row at the hearings, and does not have a criminal record.

The Senate Democrats, including Senator Obama, went along with this definition. This led some Senators, like Obama, to oppose someone they believed was qualified. The National Journal quotes Obama’s Senate remarks on the Roberts nomination: “I have no doubt in my mind Judge Roberts is qualified to sit on the highest court in the land. …. The problem I had is when I examined Judge Roberts’ record and history of public service , it is my personal estimation that he has far more often used his formidable skills on behalf of the strong in opposition to the weak.”

The narrow definition of qualifications to be a Supreme Court judge is a mistake. It also contradicts public opinion. Research that our firm, Belden Russonello & Stewart, has conducted, indicates Americans would expand the definition of qualified to mean that the nominee’s views on the Constitution are in keeping with our traditions and laws and norms of the day.

In the case of Sam Alito, his consistent rulings which ignored precedent and facts to side with institutions of authority over claims of individual rights placed him at odds with the framers of our Constitution. I would argue that John Roberts’ qualifications were unknown because he refused to hand over all of his legal opinions when he worked at the Justice Department for President Reagan.

I cannot remember any Senator claiming Roberts was unfit for the Supreme Court because of his midwesterness, or that Alito was too Italian — although I could offer plenty of pros and cons on the latter, based my own Italian-American upbringing a few miles away from Alito’s in Essex County, New Jersey.

Sotomayor’s ethnicity can only be a plus on the Supreme Court, which needs the Constitution to be interpreted by people who know the law and know our country.

The public has it right. We should have a broader definition of qualifications, and from what we know about Sonia Sotomayor, she certainly seems to pass that test.