New York Times
Oct. 15, 1998.
Congress's Rating Continues to Slip in Inquiry's Wake
By ALISON MITCHELL with JANET ELDER
With the mid-term elections less than three weeks away, support for the Republican-controlled Congress has eroded significantly in the aftermath of the House vote to open a formal impeachment inquiry into President Clinton, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll.
The 105th Congress is now widely perceived as having invested too much political capital in impeachment and having accomplished little on a broad array of issues of importance to voters, from protecting Social Security to improving managed health care.
Approval of Congress has dropped from a high of 56 percent in September to 43 percent as the House has been consumed by the charges leveled against the president by the independent counsel, Kenneth Starr. Forty-eight percent of the public now disapproves of the job that Congress is doing.
Nearly half of all voters said that the Republican-controlled Congress had accomplished less than a typical Congress. Most Americans could not name one accomplishment of this Congress this year. Of the minority who could cite something Congress had done, most mentioned the impeachment issue. The poll was conducted before a budget agreement was struck last night.
Clinton's support, by contrast, remains as strong as it has ever been in his presidency, with 63 percent of the public approving of how he is doing his job. On foreign policy, 60 percent approve of his presidency, and 70 percent approve of his stewardship of the economy.
While no national survey can measure what will happen in individual congressional districts, the latest poll suggests that Democrats may not be facing the rout in the mid-term elections that they were fearing just a month ago.
Yet the polling also shows that, as many strategists have predicted, the election will swing on which group of voters proves the most motivated to come to the polls. Looking at registered voters, the survey found that if turnout is similar to the last mid-term election in 1994, the two parties are in a dead heat, a far better position for Democrats than they could have imagined just a few weeks ago.
But if, as many political strategists expect this year, November proves to be a low-turnout election, drawing to the polls only the most devoted voters, then Republicans do slightly better, favored 48 percent over 44 percent for the Democrats. Registered voters are split on whether their own member of Congress deserves re-election.
What is clear is that the political landscape is unsettled. In contrast to past months of sustained optimism, Americans are now divided on whether the country is moving in the right direction.
In another sign of trouble for Republicans, Clinton was widely perceived as trying harder than the congressional majority to find an acceptable compromise in the budget standoff that has dominated the closing days of this Congress. Fifty-three percent of the public said that the Republicans in Congress were not trying to find a solution in the negotiations, while 58 percent credited Clinton with seeking to find a way out of the impasse.
Those are almost the same perceptions that the public had during the fierce budget struggle of 1995, which led to the government shutdown, although at that point Congress was held in far lower esteem. In December 1995, during the height of the fiscal showdown between the president and Congress, 64 percent of the public disapproved of how Congress was doing its job.
Still, conservative anger at Clinton's behavior helps explain why the Republicans chose to press ahead with authorizing an impeachment inquiry before the election in order to energize their core supporters. While 75 percent of the American public thinks that Starr's investigation was not worth the time and money, 55 percent of Americans who describe themselves as conservative Republicans say the investigation was worthwhile.
Republicans have to take care that they do not set off a backlash that energizes the Democratic base vote as well as the conservative one. The survey shows that should there be a high turnout election, 42 percent of those voting say they would favor a Republican candidate and 47 percent a Democrat.
It may well be that the Clinton scandal has far less of an effect on the election than anyone anticipates. Sixty-five percent of registered voters say the scandal will have no effect on which candidate they support in House elections.
Still, there is a longer-term risk for Republicans that they could damage their credibility as they move through the impeachment process across the next months. Although most Americans now believe that Clinton probably committed perjury before a grand jury investigating his relationship with Monica Lewinsky, there is little public support for impeachment.
Nearly seven in 10 Americans see the impeachment inquiry as political rather than an investigation into serious crimes. And a majority of Americans say Republicans pushed through the inquiry into Clinton to damage him and the Democrats, not because they think the charges are serious enough to warrant further investigation.
There are many indications that Americans would like the scandal to go away. More than a majority of Americans think it is preventing the president and Congress from doing work that needs to be done.
Republicans, Democrats and independents alike expressed profound discontent with the focus on the Lewinsky matter and several people in
follow-up interviews after the poll pointed to the budget standoff, which was resolved Wednesday night, as a sign of partisanship and
disarray in Washington. The nationwide telephone poll of 926 adults was conducted Monday and Tuesday and has a margin of sampling error
of plus or minus three percentage points.
Pat Hobbs, a retired secretary in Sonoma, Calif., who is an independent, said, in a follow-up interview: "I think they're all too mixed up with
the scandal in Washington and they're not doing anything else. They should be working on things that really concern the country like the
economy, education, crime, Social Security, Medicare reform, you name it." She said she had not yet decided whom she would support in
her local House race.
Fred Taylor, a 58-year-old minister from Plant City, Fla., who is a Republican, was frustrated as well.
"We're facing another government shutdown," Taylor said, "and we're playing politics again. We spent a lot of time getting Clinton cornered
and it really should have been a side issue for some committee instead of taking it up with the whole Congress. They need to look more into
domestic issues like the minimum wage and how our kids are going to make a living, as well as with Bosnia and the global economic
situation."
Taylor said he would vote for the Republican House candidate, but portrayed his vote as a vote for change. "They probably all need to be run
out," he said.
Gretchen Nielsen, a Democrat in Tucson, Ariz., vowed that she was going out this election day and voting "for every Democrat I can find."
"I feel like Congress has been trying to shoot down everything that Clinton has been trying to do," said the 66-year-old writer. "I think
Congress has a personal vendetta against Clinton in more ways than just the Starr report. They've killed things like campaign financing and
the minimum wage, things that are really important."
And Mike Stivila, 53, an unemployed food service salesman from Colts Neck, N.J., longed for the sense of direction the Republicans had
when they swept into control of Congress on the "Contract with America." He described that "as the first time a congressional body actually
laid out what they were going to do and the time it would take to accomplish it. You don't hear that coming from Congress today."
Stivila, an independent, said he was not a supporter of Clinton. "What he did was reprehensible," he said, "but impeachment would throw the
whole country into additional chaos. There are a lot of things that Congress should be addressing. We don't have a budget agreement. If
they'd spend less time politicking, they'd be able to concentrate more on what the country needs."
In fact, forty-seven percent of voters said that this Congress had accomplished less than a Congress typically does across a two year period.
Only 28 percent said that the 105th Congress had accomplished more than past ones.
Asked about specific issues, majorities of Americans said Congress had not made progress on making sure Social Security and Medicare are
preserved for future generations, on significantly changing the way political campaigns raise and spend money, or on protecting the rights of
patients.
But in one bright spot for the Congress, a majority said it had made progress on significantly improving the nation's economy.
When Americans were asked to name something noteworthy that Congress had done in the past year, 16 percent mentioned the impeachment
investigation while 72 percent could not name anything.
Public approval of Congress continued to slide from the high of 56 percent in September. In the last New York Times/CBS poll in late
September, Congress had an approval rating of 48 percent. Now, in the wake of the House vote to open an impeachment inquiry it is down to
43 percent. But that is still good for Congress.
In November 1994, just before the last mid-term election when Republicans took control of Congress for the first time in nearly half a
century, only 20 percent of Americans approved of the way Congress was doing its job.
A year later there was a sharp backlash against the Republican Congress because of its budget confrontation with Clinton. With Americans
holding Congress responsible for shutting down the government, approval of Congress fell to 26 percent.
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