Approval ratings change in hindsight
WASHINGTON — The statues keep moving in the hall of recent American presidents. John F. Kennedy retains the paramount place of honor. No recent U.S. leader commands a higher approval rating — JFK’s remains in orbit at 83 percent — or lower disapproval than his ground-level 7 percent.
But three other former White House occupants have risen in approval as the country looks back on their records. Ronald Reagan climbed from 54 percent approval to 73 percent, George Bush from 58 to 69 percent and Jimmy Carter from 45 percent way up to 60 percent.
In the same decade of Gallop polling, three other presidents — Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford — have failed to climb.
Three forces are causing this correction in national hindsight:
First: the facts.
Kennedy’s ratings remain high because he did things. He launched the Apollo project that put a man on the moon within a decade. He created the Peace Corps and personally inspired several generations to care about politics and public service. He got the country through the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, the worst moment of nuclear danger in the Cold War.
Kennedy does well in retrospect for the same reasons that Harry Truman’s achievements — the Truman Doctrine to oppose Soviet expansion, the Marshall Plan — won him his belated but high estimation.
The same is true for former President Reagan. From today’s perspective, he is the guy who brought down the Iron Curtain. For those who lived through it, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” continues to echo in our ears and calm our hearts. With his strategic defense, he sent Gorby the closing Cold War message: America was going for the win, not the tie.
Nixon, on the other hand, suffers from hard facts. Every June 17 stirs yet another reunion of shared national embarrassment. That word “Watergate” is written in indelible ink.
Second: the post-presidency.
It matters what you do afterwards.
Ronald Reagan sent us that Lincolnesque letter telling us he had Alzheimer’s Disease. Nancy Reagan has won the country’s heart as his steadfast, heroic caregiver.
George Herbert Walker Bush has one son in the White House, another as governor of Florida. He strikes most people as a good dad, a man who helped his boys become men.
Jimmy Carter has spent every year since 1980 doing good deeds.
He builds houses for poor people, tends to the diseases of Africa and tries to solve conflicts. It’s hard to dislike a guy who sports a nail apron and seems to be having the time of his life.
Third: You Had to be There.
Luckily for Reagan, Iran-contra is so weird a scandal as to be unintelligible 16 years later. Try explaining to a 16 year-old how important the thing was.
Shakespeare was wrong. In this optimistic country, the good that men do lives on; we try to forget the bad — if it isn’t too bad. We want to be proud of our former presidents for the basic and admirable reason that we want to be proud of our history.
Message to Bill Clinton, whose positive and negative numbers are both hugging 50 percent: You made some money with all those speeches, now go out and do some good.