{"id":37892,"date":"2019-10-12T08:56:02","date_gmt":"2019-10-12T15:56:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=37892"},"modified":"2019-10-12T08:56:02","modified_gmt":"2019-10-12T15:56:02","slug":"everyday-erinyes-187","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2019\/10\/12\/everyday-erinyes-187\/","title":{"rendered":"Everyday Erinyes #187"},"content":{"rendered":"

Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto<\/span><\/strong>, Megaera<\/span><\/strong>, and Tisiphone<\/span><\/strong>. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”<\/p>\n

So, the House of Representatives is full-on investigating Donald John Trump with the intent of impeachment. If you, or someone you know, hasn’t noticed, that’s because Trump is stonewalling on allowing either documents or testimony to be provided to the committees concerned (in itself an impeachable offense, of course. All this is quite frustrating. It won’t, of course, derail the investigation, but it may – it is intended to – delay it substantially So when I found this Creative Commons article which discusses the effect of delay, along with other factors, I thought it was well worth sharing.<\/p>\n

There are many who are clamoring for immediate, or at least speedy, results. My take is that, to be blunt, if there may end up being face-eating leopards around, we should at the very least be aware that we also have faces which could be eaten.
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Investigations usually hurt a president’s public reputation \u2013 but Trump isn’t usual<\/h1>\n

Douglas L. Kriner<\/a>, Cornell University<\/a><\/em> and Eric Schickler<\/a>, University of California, Berkeley<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Will the House impeachment inquiry of President Donald Trump ultimately have any effect?<\/p>\n

Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi had long resisted calls for impeachment, arguing that it is \u201cjust not worth it<\/a>.\u201d However, the Trump administration\u2019s initial refusal to release to Congress documents concerning the intelligence community whistleblower\u2019s complaint<\/a> about the administration\u2019s treatment of Ukraine encouraged the Speaker to cross that line.<\/p>\n

We<\/a> have explored<\/a> the relationship between hearings into alleged executive branch misconduct and public opinion in our 2016 book, \u201cInvestigating the President: Congressional Checks on Presidential Power<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Investigations often damage a president\u2019s reputation in the public eye \u2013 but that may not matter to a historically unpopular president like Trump.<\/p>\n

A check on the presidency<\/h2>\n

The power to oversee the executive branch is among Congress\u2019 most important powers. Investigations have historically afforded Congress a meaningful check on an increasingly powerful presidency.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the most important way that investigations check presidential power is by lowering public support for the president. By eroding the president\u2019s reserve of political capital, investigators can change how politicians behave<\/a>, both in Congress and in the White House.<\/p>\n

This can create momentum for new legislation, encourage presidential concessions, or simply weaken the president\u2019s political position with broad consequences.<\/p>\n

In our book, we built a comprehensive data set of all congressional investigations of the executive branch from 1898 through 2014.<\/p>\n

We then merged it with presidential approval data, which first became regularly available in 1953, to see how investigations affected approval ratings from Eisenhower to Obama.<\/p>\n

Even after statistically accounting for the possibility that low approval ratings might also encourage Congress to investigate an administration more aggressively, we found that investigations systematically eroded public support for the president.<\/p>\n

Historically, every 20 additional days of investigative hearings cost the president roughly 2.5% in the polls.<\/p>\n

So a short-term investigation is survivable. But a long-term investigation could seriously diminish the president\u2019s political capital and even threaten his or his party\u2019s electoral fortunes.<\/p>\n

How Trump is different<\/h2>\n

Will the current impeachment inquiry have the same corrosive effect on support for President Trump? The allegations of abuse of power are more serious than those driving many of the investigations in our historical data.<\/p>\n

However, there are reasons to believe that support for Trump may be more resilient.<\/p>\n

President Trump\u2019s approval rating has been remarkably stable<\/a> over the past three years. This suggests to us that the power of events to move public opinion has diminished substantially.<\/p>\n

President Trump has had both a lower ceiling -\u2013 his first term approval ratings were historically low, given the strength of the economy \u2013 and a higher floor than his predecessors.<\/p>\n