Serious debate was underway about reform of financial institutions regulation. In the first week of December, the President delivered a nationally televised prime-time address from West Point to announce his decision to commit 30,000 new troops in Afghanistan, hosted a White House forum on job creation, and visited metalworkers in Allentown, Pennsylvania.

Meanwhile, news attention to Iraq has dropped a level not seen since 2002¹ and both military and civilian deaths in Iraq reached the lowest levels since the US 2003 invasion.²

Assisted by a massive stimulus package passed in February, in the 3rd quarter, the economy began to recover from a deep recession. The effects of the recession lingered. Unemployment in November remained in double-digits at 10 percent, but was still lower than the 10.8 percent peak under Reagan in November 1982. Real estate markets seemed to stabilize but consumer spending was little changed from a year earlier.

In this update to our “Obama-in Action” series, we continue our reports comparing Obama to eight predecessors who took office following a change in partisan control of the presidency: Franklin Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Nixon, Carter, Reagan, Clinton, and G.W. Bush. As we show, Obama’s "political capital" is not particularly great. So his successes will be chalked up to recognition of the need to respond to crises and to his own leadership skills.

1. Obama’s Electoral Margin was not particularly strong.
Of all 47 presidential elections starting with 1824, 18 have received larger popular vote margins (Obama = 52.9%), and 26 produced larger electoral vote margins (Obama = 67.8%). In short, by standards of “popular mandates” Obama had modest beginnings. (see Figure 1)

2. The supporting Democratic majorities in House and Senate are not particularly large by historical standards.
Compared to Democratic presidents starting with Woodrow Wilson, Obama’s proportion of Democratic members of the House and Senate (both .59) are almost precisely average. FDR, Kennedy, Johnson, and Carter all had stronger majorities for one or more Congress. (see Figure 2)

3. Obama’s public approval ratings are just about average for presidents Nixon through Clinton.
Excluding George W. Bush, who set approval records following 9/11/2001, the approval trend for Obama was above average for 5 of the first 6 months in office, and almost precisely average since. There is really no interesting story about public approval. (see Figure 3).

4. Obama avoided getting derailed by early term errors. But had no unexpected positive events early in his term.
Despite the embarrassment of having appointees who had not paid their taxes or were tainted by political contributions scandals, Obama was not thrown off stride as Carter and Clinton had been.

5. Unilateral Action
Obama has set records for the number of unilateral actions he has taken—including Executive Orders, Proclamations, and use of published Memoranda and Directives. (see Figure 4). However, when these are disaggregated, the differences are striking. Compared to the reference group, Obama has been least active in use of Executive Orders (see Figure 5) and most active in issuing Memos and Determinations (see Figure 6). He is matching the pace of G.W. Bush and Clinton in use of proclamations (see Figure 7)—suggesting a keen eye to symbolic policy valued by interest groups.

The shift from EOs to Memos has not been carefully studied, but visibility may have something to do with it. Executive Orders seem to draw more media attention.

6. Communication Strategy
Obama has won praise for his oratorical skills. However, his number of major national addresses is no greater than average. He has been active in use of news conferences (see Figure 8) and he has also relied significantly on interviews with journalists (see Figure 9). But in both cases, he has done less than Clinton—perhaps seeing the need to avoid over-use. Obama has managed to devise new ways to get attention—for example, appearing on late-night television, and appearing on all Sunday morning talk shows on the same morning as he did in September 2009.

In the health care debate, an object lesson for the White House was the loss of control of the public debate in late summer. Part of the time, Obama was on vacation on Martha’s Vineyard. Remember “death panels?” But Obama used the vehicle of a speech to a Joint Session of Congress on September 9, 2009 to dismiss a number of criticisms, and immediately shifted the dynamics of the public discussion.

7. Travel
Obama has not matched G.W. Bush or Clinton in the number of US domestic events he has staged outside of Washington, DC (see Figure 10). However, Obama has overshadowed all his predecessors in the number of events outside the US (see Figure 11).

¹ Estimates from graphics posted at Google Trends.
² On military deaths: http://icasualties.org/; on civilians see http://www.iraqbodycount.org/