Congress as Public Enemy: Public Attitudes toward Political Institutions

Congress as Public Enemy: Public Attitudes toward Political Institutions. By John R. Hibbing and Elizabeth TheissMorse. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995. $54.95 cloth, $16.95 paper.

Stephen C. Craig, University of Florida

Following the Republican sweep in the 1994 midterm, as Bill Clinton was awkwardly proclaiming his continued "relevance" to the process of national policymaking, few would have predicted not only that the president would be reelected two years later but also that he would win handily in a one-sided contest whose outcome never seemed in doubt. There were many factors that contributed to Clinton's success, but one of the most important of these stemmed from the miscalculations made by GOP congressional leaders during their battle with the White House over the 1996 federal budget. House Speaker Newt Gingrich and his allies apparently felt that by drawing a line in the sand and refusing to pass stopgap spending legislation, they could either force the president to make policy concessions or else allow a government shutdown that would cripple his administration once and for all. It did not work. When Clinton's refusal to bend led to a suspension of all but essential government services on two separate occasions during late fall and winter 1996-97, the American public did indeed react with alarm. Most did not, however, blame the president for what had happened. Most blamed Congress and its Republican leadership in particular.

According to John Hibbing and Elizabeth Theiss-Morse, this should not have come as a surprise. In their provocatively titled Congress as Public Enemy, the authors suggest that the legislative branch is viewed by citizens as the central institution of contemporary democratic politics (especially in nonparliamentary systems). As a result, it is dissatisfaction with Congress which supposedly drives the overall lack of trust in government that is so widespread among the American public in the 1990s. And what do people so dislike about Congress? Not its partisan or ideological makeup and (for the most part) not its policy outputs. For Hibbing and Theiss-Morse, the problem lies...