Few ideas are as ingrained in political pundits as the idea that foreign crises unite Americans around their president. This is called the “flag rally effect” and commentators take it for granted and the White Houses have been chasing it for decades.
But it’s also something of a political urban legend. While there are examples of presidents seeing public approval rise during times of crisis, there is also evidence that improvements are minimal and fleeting—and perhaps becoming less common in our hyper-polarized politics.
That hasn’t stopped the presidents from trying. On Tuesday evening, President Biden used his address to Congress to urge Congress to support him and condemn the invasion of Ukraine by Russian President Vladimir Putin. “He thought he could separate us here at home,” Biden said. “Putin is wrong.”
On the one hand, the president was right: Biden has solid bipartisan support for his policy of isolating Russia and supporting Ukraine.
Foreign policy experts of all stripes have praised the administration for its skillful handling of European politics, which has led to crippling sanctions against Russian oligarchs and financial institutions, and for using intelligence to expose the Kremlin’s plans for Ukraine.
And while many questions about US strategy remain unanswered, even Senator Mitch McConnell, the Senate’s top Republican, said on Tuesday that the president has “broad support for what he’s doing now.”
But Democrats who expect voters in both parties to give Biden credit are likely hoping in vain.
“If the crisis is just fodder for normal partisan debate, then it’s unlikely the president will see his approval rating go up much,” said John Sides, a political scientist at Vanderbilt University.
Rally effect
The term “flag rally effect” was coined by John Mueller, a political scientist who studied the relationship between the actions of presidents and public opinion.
In a 1970 article, Müller argued that, under certain conditions, many voters would give up their party affiliation during foreign policy crises and support the commander in chief.
In the years that followed, the concept became mainstream and seemed to hold true during conflicts such as the Gulf War in 1991, when President George W. Bush saw his approval rating skyrocket.
It even inspired the movie Dog Wag, a 1997 comedy in which a cynical politician fabricates a war in Albania to divert attention from a presidential sex scandal. The phrase “wagging the dog” has since become shorthand for experts’ opinion that the president can distract the public from troubles at home by focusing on the conflict abroad.
However, more recent studies have shown that the effect of the rally is minimal.
In 1995, when scholars John R. Oneal and Anna Lillian Bryan counted 41 foreign policy crises between 1950 and 1985, they found that the average change in a president’s approval rating was only 1.4 percent. (Interestingly, one of the variables they tracked was coverage in The New York Times, and front-page headlines in particular.)
Since then, American politics has become even more polarized, meaning that voters’ opinions of the president are likely to be fixed and approval ratings won’t fluctuate as much as they used to. For example, Donald Trump’s approval ratings have been remarkably stable despite his presidency being marked by overwhelmingly negative press coverage. During his first two years in office, Jimmy Carter’s approval rating fluctuated by 36 percentage points. Trump remained in the 10 percentage point range.
Part of what’s going on here, according to public opinion researchers, is that Republicans tend to support their own leaders and are also prone to harshly condemning Democratic presidents.
“Republicans have always been less inclined to support a Democratic president than Democrats were to a Republican president during a crisis,” said Matthew Baum, professor of global communications at Harvard’s Kennedy School.
Baum found that when a Republican becomes president during a foreign crisis, the average increase in approval ratings among Democrats is nearly 8 percent. But when a Democrat is president, the effect of the rally is “smaller and negligible,” he wrote in a 2002 article. Those numbers included George W. Bush, whose support increased by 35 percentage points after 9/11.
“It’s a little tricky to make comparisons for specific events, as every conflict is unique,” Baum said in an email. “But the differences in the size of the rally are quite stark.”
And just because both parties support what the administration is doing to help Ukraine doesn’t mean Biden will get credit for it. As Julia Azari, a political scientist at Marquette University, told us, “Presidents are polarized even when the issues and actions are not polarized.”
Republicans are not going
Despite occasional words of support from McConnell, other Republican lawmakers have been highly critical of Biden’s handling of the crisis.
Those comments that McConnell made? They came during a press conference in which a group of Republican senators accused the president of driving up energy prices by restricting new oil and gas leases on public land.
Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming said that Biden’s policy “has provided an opportunity for Vladimir Putin to do what he did and give him courage.” He added: “It’s like Vladimir Putin being Joe Biden’s energy secretary.”
It’s a little more difficult. The president has little control over oil prices, which are set by global market forces. There is little evidence that Biden’s drilling policy has affected domestic crude oil production, which is up 4.4 percent in 2021.
However, with gas prices skyrocketing and set to rise, energy can be expected to be a top talking point for Republicans as the 2022 midterm elections approach.
What the polls say
The White House pointed to a poll that shows American views on Ukraine are in line with the president’s policies.
For example, a CBS/YouTube poll of American adults found that 76 percent support economic sanctions against Russia, 65 percent favor arming Ukraine, and 63 percent want him to send troops to protect NATO allies.
But this did not lead to the support of the President. The same poll showed that only 41% of Americans approved of his attitude towards Russia and Ukraine.
Other polls are even more negative. A University of Suffolk/USA Today poll released Monday showed that only 34 percent of registered voters approved, versus 49 percent who disapproved. Worse for Biden: When asked if he is a strong leader, only 32 percent answered yes, while 63 percent answered no.
And in a Quinnipiac University poll released Monday, 57 percent of Americans said the administration wasn’t tough enough on Russia, and only 29 percent said Biden was right.
All this suggests that the war in Ukraine is not only a humanitarian tragedy, but also not a political gift to Biden.
“We may see some modest revival in public opinion, but mostly it will be the result of the return of Democratic voters,” said Alan Abramowitz, a political scientist at Emory University. “I don’t think we will see a significant increase in support for Biden among Republican voters. The country is too polarized.”
What to read
Anti-lockdown protester fails in Texas primary
Shelley Luther, a Dallas salon owner who was jailed in 2020 for violating lockdown orders, lost the Texas House primary on Tuesday, showing that even within a Republican base there are limits to the effectiveness of Covid policies.
Luther came to national attention in the spring of 2020 when she was jailed for contempt of court after she reopened her barber shop in defiance of Gov. Greg Abbott’s order that non-essential businesses must remain closed. Armed protesters gathered outside the salon in her defense, and national figures such as Sarah Palin marched in support. Just two days after her seven-day detention, she was released thanks to Abbott himself, who retroactively revised his lockdown orders to eliminate jail time as a penalty for noncompliance.
With almost all of the votes counted, Luther won 41 percent of the vote in her race against Representative Reggie Smith, according to the Associated Press. Smith has held the seat since 2019.
At a recent candidate forum, Luther said she wants to change the range of politically acceptable views on the right in the same way that representatives of the left, such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, have done. She called Abbot a “tyrant”.
Abbott easily won his nomination despite facing several contenders from the right.
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