Barack Obama’s “Fight” to End Poverty: Rhetoric and Reality*
Richard C. Fording
(rcfording@as.ua.edu)
Joseph L. Smith
(josmith@as.ua.edu)
University of Alabama
Department of Political Science
303 ten Hoor Bldg
Box 870213
Tuscaloosa, AL 35487
*The authors‟ names appear in alphabetical order.
“I moved to Chicago more than two decades ago to lift up neighborhoods that were devastated by
joblessness and poverty when the local steel plants closed. And today, I can tell you that the fight I
waged then…will be a fight I carry into the White House for the next four years, because that fight
is not done. It has not even been started by this White House. We're going to have to change things
around, because we need to lift up every American out of poverty. That is one of the goals of the
Democratic Party. That's what we're going to be fighting for.” (Presidential candidate Barack
Obama, May 14, 2008)
During his campaign for president in 2008, candidate Barack Obama often spoke of
ending poverty, promising to take the “fight” to the White House. Indeed, in contrast to recent
presidential campaigns, poverty was a frequent topic of discussion among all the major
Democratic candidates during the 2008 campaign season, in part due to the early success of John
Edwards, who made poverty-reduction a central theme in his campaign platform. But Obama‟s
commitment to fighting poverty as president seemed credible given his background as a
community organizer in Chicago, as well as his liberal voting record in the U.S. Senate. For the
first time in decades, those who cared about poverty had good reason to be optimistic that the
election of Obama as president would lead to a significant reduction in the national poverty rate.
As President Obama nears the end of his first term in office, that goal has yet to be
realized. According to the most recent Census Bureau data, the national poverty rate stood at
15.1 percent in 2010. Since 1965, the poverty rate has exceeded the 2010 value only once, and
that was in 1983 during the presidency of Ronald Reagan. Even more disconcerting, however,
are recent trends in the poverty rate. Poverty has now increased for four successive years,
resulting in the addition of approximately 10 million people to the U.S. poverty population since
2006. More than 46 million people were officially “poor” in 2010, which is the highest total
since the Census Bureau started measuring poverty in 1959. And perhaps most damaging from a
political perspective, more people have become poor during Obama‟s first term in office than
during any other presidential term for which we have data.
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As one might expect, President Obama has increasingly come to be blamed, at least in
part, for the historic increases in poverty. Some of this criticism has come from the right, which
has used the poverty statistics to attack the President‟s “failed” economic policies.
“America is a poorer country under President Obama. Since last year, the ranks of America‟s least
well off grew by 2.5 million, according to the government definition of poverty, which includes a
family with income of less than $22,314 a year or an individual making less than $11,139. Onesixth of the country, 46.2 million, met this standard, according to figures released Tuesday. That‟s
the highest total since the Census Bureau began keeping track a half-century ago…The blame lies
squarely on Mr. Obama‟s policies, which have strangled the productive sector.” (Washington
Times editorial, September 14, 2011)
What is less expected, and perhaps even more problematic for Obama, is the fact that the
harshest and most vocal criticism has come from the President‟s progressive base. Members of
the Occupy movement have openly criticized Obama for not doing enough to halt rising levels of
income inequality that began during the Bush years. Black leaders, including members of the
black congressional caucus, have also criticized the President for abandoning the black
community and the problems of the urban poor. The most vocal and stinging criticism has come
from Tavis Smiley and Cornell West, who embarked on a national “poverty tour” in 2011 to
highlight the poverty issue and pressure the Obama White House to do make poverty reduction a
national priority. Like other critics on the left, West and Smiley have called for greater
investment in public programs to help the poor. Yet, their criticism goes further than most and
seems to call into question the President‟s leadership on the poverty issue.
“…it would be nice to hear the president say the word „poor.‟ To say the word „poverty.‟ We get
conversations about the middle class. Well, the new poor are the former middle class. But we can‟t
get this president or any leaders to say the words „poor‟ or „poverty,‟ much less do anything about
it.” (Tavis Smiley, announcing 15-city “poverty tour,” July 22, 2011)
This criticism of Obama‟s leadership would seem to be motivated by two important
assumptions concerning the modern presidency. First, Smiley seems to believe that it is a
president‟s duty to communicate his policy priorities to the public. Second, the criticism seems to
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connect presidential rhetoric and policy action in a way that suggests that rhetoric is at the very
least an indicator of policymaking effort, and perhaps even a cause of policy success. This
understanding of the importance of rhetorical leadership is consistent with much of the literature
on the evolution of the “rhetorical presidency,” where scholars such as Jeffrey Tulis have
described the strategy of “going public” as a “principal tool of presidential governance” for the
modern president (Tulis 1987, 4). The view that presidential opinion leadership is necessary in
the fight against poverty reduction also seems to have been shared by candidate Obama in 2008.
When he was asked by a reporter in 2008 if he would support a campaign to “cut poverty in half
in ten years” Obama responded:
“I absolutely will make that commitment…Understand that when I make that
commitment, I do so with great humility because it is a very ambitious goal. And we’re going to
have to mobilize our society not just to cut poverty, but to prevent more people from slipping into
poverty…” (Barack Obama. Democratic Candidates Compassion Forum, Grantham Pa. April 13,
2008) [Emphasis added]
As we approach the end of Obama‟s first term, it seems appropriate to bring some
empirical evidence to bear on the questions raised by Obama‟s critics. To accomplish this goal,
we focus on three sets of questions. In the first section of the paper, we examine the Obama
administration‟s record on poverty. Compared to other presidential administrations, has the
Obama administration‟s anti-poverty efforts been inadequate, and thus partly to blame for the
historic increase in poverty? Or have Obama‟s policies actually prevented poverty from
becoming much worse, much as Obama himself has claimed? In the second section of the paper
we examine President Obama‟s rhetorical leadership on the issue of poverty through a systematic
content analysis of presidential weekly radio addresses. Compared to other recent presidents,
how often has Obama talked about issues related to poverty and poor people? And when he has
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talked about poverty, how has he talked about it? In the final section of the paper, we discuss the
implications of our results for theories of presidential leadership.
PRESIDENTS AND POVERTY: OBAMA’S RECORD IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
We begin our analysis of Obama‟s record by comparing the average poverty rate during
President Obama‟s first term to the poverty rate witnessed during the administrations of several
recent presidents. Because the official poverty rate was not calculated prior to 1959, we limit our
analysis to the last 50 years (1961-2010), and thus include the last ten presidents. These
comparative data are displayed in Figure 1 and present a very compelling case for Obama‟s
critics. The poverty rate averaged 14.7% during Obama‟s first term, which is higher than the
average poverty rate seen for any president since Lyndon Johnson. It is also higher than the
average poverty rate witnessed for each of the five Republican presidents who served during the
1960-2010 period.
[Figure 1 here]
As compelling as these statistics might be, such a simple analysis has obvious limitations.
Most importantly, it assumes that these presidents have faced the same economic conditions
while in office; or at least that the economy is something that the president can easily control.
Obviously, economic conditions have varied greatly over the 10 presidential administrations
displayed in Figure 1. And despite the fact that voters generally hold the incumbent president
responsible for the performance of the economy, nearly four decades of research in political
science and economics on the political business cycle has found little empirical evidence that the
president can exert significant, immediate control over aggregate economic conditions that
strongly affect poverty rates, such as income growth and unemployment (Drazen 2001; Franzese
2002). We can therefore arrive at a more accurate comparison of presidential effects on poverty
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by removing the effects of the most important economic conditions that influence the poverty
rate. We present these results in Figure 2.
Specifically, Figure 2 presents two versions of the annual change in the official poverty
rate during the 1961-2010 period. The solid line in the figure represents the observed change in
the poverty rate, while the dashed line represents the predicted poverty rate based on the results
of a regression analysis in which the change in the poverty rate is regressed on the annual change
in the unemployment rate and the annual growth in real per capita income.1 Substantively
speaking, the predicted values from this regression model represent the expected change in the
poverty rate in light of current economic conditions. By comparing the two lines, we can
determine whether the actual change in poverty exceeded or fell short of expectations.
The results displayed in the figure tell a very different story than what we saw in Figure
1, and in some cases the story is more consistent with conventional wisdom. For example,
decreases in the poverty rate consistently exceeded the model‟s predictions during the
presidencies of Kennedy and (especially) Johnson. This is not surprising given the expansion of
social welfare programs that accompanied Johnson‟s War on Poverty. Increases in the poverty
rate consistently exceeded expectations during the presidencies of Ronald Reagan, George H.W.
Bush and George W. Bush, consistent with research which finds that government transfer
payments and taxes have a smaller redistributive effect under Republican leadership (Bartels
2008). There are some notable exceptions to this partisan pattern, however, with the Carter and
Clinton administrations often displaying increases in poverty that were higher than expected.
Under Nixon and Ford, on the other hand, changes in poverty appear to have been almost exactly
predicted by economic conditions at the time. Despite these anomalies, there is a modest partisan
effect overall. Across the entire sample, under Republican presidents the average observed
1
The full results of this regression analysis are presented in Table A-1 in the Appendix.
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change in the poverty rate is .20 points greater than predicted by economic conditions. Under
Democratic presidents, the average change in poverty is .24 points less than predicted.2
[Figure 2]
How does Obama fare? The results for Obama also depart significantly from the story
told by Figure 1, and now provide little evidence to support any claims that poverty has
worsened due to Obama‟s leadership. In 2009, the predicted poverty rate was about a half-point
higher than what was actually observed. The results for 2010 suggest that poverty increased
about as much as we would expect given the state of the economy. Although these results are
based on only two years of data, they provide modest evidence that Obama has behaved more
like a Democrat than a Republican.
Obama and the Great Recession: A Closer Look
Although presidents may not be able to exert significant control over aggregate economic
indicators such as unemployment and GDP growth, a president can have a significant effect on
government redistributive efforts through government programs that administer transfer
payments and the federal tax code. In turn, these redistributive policies may ultimately affect the
distribution of income (e.g. Bartels 2008) as well as the poverty rate.
A closer look at policymaking during the first half of Obama‟s presidency suggests that
there is good reason to suspect that the policies implemented during the first two years of
Obama‟s presidency may have had a significant antipoverty effect. The most important source of
this this effect has likely been the package of program expansions bundled within the American
Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), known more generally as the “stimulus.”
ARRA was signed into law by President Obama less than one month after he had officially
assumed the presidency; however, he began working on the legislation almost immediately after
2
This difference between Republican and Democratic presidents is statistically significant (p<.01).
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being elected. The primary goals of ARRA were to reduce unemployment, invest in
infrastructure, education, health, and „green‟ energy, and to provide relief to those most impacted
by the recession through an expansion of several social welfare programs. The Congressional
Budget Office estimated that the total cost of ARRA would be nearly $800 billion by 2019,
however, the majority of the spending was front-loaded and approximately $500 billion had been
spent by the end of fiscal year 2011 (CBO 2012).
The key poverty-reducing provisions of ARRA included measures to expand federal
spending for several important public assistance programs, in addition to changes to the tax code
that would benefit the working poor. Some of the most important specific provisions are listed
below (Sherman 2011):







an expanded Child Tax Credit for lower-income working families with children;
an expanded Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC)
additional weeks of emergency unemployment compensation benefits
an additional $25 per week for unemployed workers to supplement their unemployment
benefits;
a $250 one-time payment to elderly people and people with disabilities who receive
Social Security, SSI, or veterans‟ benefits; and
an increase in food stamp benefit levels.
Supplemental “emergency” funding for states to use for the Temporary Assistance to
Needy Families (TANF) program
The cumulative effect of these provisions could plausibly be quite significant. Yet, there
are several reasons why the full impact of ARRA would not be reflected in either Figure 1 or
Figure 2. Because the official poverty rate relies on pre-tax income, it cannot possibly be
affected by changes in the tax code, such as the expansion of the EITC. Although the official
income definition does count cash transfer payments, it does not count noncash transfers such as
Food Stamps and public housing. Finally, even though cash transfers are included in the Census
Bureau‟s definition of income, the analysis in Figure 2 controls for income, thus suppressing any
presidential effects on poverty that operated through changes in cash welfare programs.
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In Figure 3 we present the results of an analysis that relies on a more flexible definition
of income and therefore allows us to arrive at a more accurate understanding of the antipoverty
effects of ARRA. To conduct our analysis, we relied on two definitions of income to measure
poverty – a baseline version and a more inclusive alternative version. Our baseline measure of
income includes all cash market income, all government non-means-tested cash income (except
unemployment insurance), the effects of all taxes (except EITC), all government and nongovernment education assistance, and all contributions from outside the household. Our second
measure of income relied on all of the types of income in the baseline version, and then added all
income from the following sources: Unemployment Insurance, the EITC, all government meanstested cash benefits, and all government means-tested noncash benefits (except Medicaid). Note
that the only difference between the two income definitions is that the alternative version
includes income from several government programs that were expanded under ARRA. We then
calculated an estimate of the number of poor adults and children under each definition of income
and computed the difference. Finally, we computed the percentage of people lifted out of poverty
status by the alternative income definition (compared to the baseline definition) as follows:
% Poverty Reduction = (# poor: baseline definition – # poor: alternative definition) * 100
# poor: baseline definition
This statistic is plotted in Figure 3. Substantively speaking, the lines displayed in Figure 3
can be interpreted as representing the poverty-reducing effect of the following ARRA-targeted
programs: EITC, UI, and all means-tested cash and noncash programs (except Medicaid).
Unfortunately, we cannot provide data prior to 2004, but the availability of data for several years
prior to the implementation of ARRA allows for a reasonable test of ARRA‟s impact.
[Figure 3 here]
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In the years leading up to ARRA under the presidency of George W. Bush, this
collection of programs regularly removed approximately 25% of all people, and about 32% of all
children, from poverty. As can be seen, there is remarkable stability in this rate of poverty
reduction from 2004 through 2008, reflecting the relative stability of federal policies governing
these programs. Consistent with the timing of ARRA‟s implementation in 2009, both sets of
percentages increased substantially, to 33% and 41% respectively. Compared to 2008, these
statistics suggest that this collection of ARRA-targeted programs and policies lifted an additional
5 million people from poverty in 2009, of which nearly 2 million were children. The povertyreducing effect falls slightly in 2010, but the percentages are still significantly higher than what
was seen during the pre-ARRA period.
This abrupt increase in the poverty-reducing effect cannot be plausibly attributed to a
built-in “mechanical” response of these programs to growing need, as suggested by some of
Obama‟s critics. Indeed, as we can see in Figure 3, the poverty-reducing effect of these programs
remained virtually flat throughout 2008, despite the fact that the country was officially in the
midst of the recession during the entire year. Rather, it would seem reasonable to conclude that
the differences observed in 2009 and 2010 are largely due to ARRA.
In summary, although poverty has increased since President Obama assumed power, the
empirical evidence suggests that poverty would have increased between 2008 and 2011
regardless who was elected president in 2008 due to the slow recovery from the Great Recession.
Based on the historical relationship between macroeconomic conditions and the poverty rate, the
increase in poverty during Obama‟s first term was actually less than expected. Yet, the official
poverty rate understates the antipoverty effectiveness of the most important legislative success of
Obama‟s first term - the stimulus package. Even by our conservative estimates which only
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capture the effects of a portion of ARRA‟s impact, the stimulus lifted at least 5 million people
from poverty. This estimate does not include the effects of Medicaid expansion, nor does it
consider the jobs saved and created by investment in infrastructure projects or the billions of
dollars sent to the states to subsidize shrinking state budgets. While some critics may wish that
Obama and the federal government had done more to relieve poverty, ARRA certainly represents
one of the most significant pieces of antipoverty legislation since the War on Poverty. But if this
is the case, why have progressives been so critical of Obama? If Obama has not neglected the
poor in his policy efforts, has he neglected them in his rhetoric? And if this is the case, how can
we explain Obama‟s leadership style on this issue? We address these questions in the next two
sections.
POVERTY AND PRESIDENTIAL RHETORIC: OBAMA IN HISTORICAL
PERSPECTIVE
The modern presidency offers a powerful platform for influencing public discourse and
opinion. At the same time, the president‟s communications with the nation shape the popular
view of the president and influence presidential popularity. Presidents use their opportunities to
try to move public opinion toward support for their policies while trying to paint themselves and
their policy agendas in the most favorable light. In this section, we analyze President Obama's
use of the weekly address to discuss issues relevant to the poor and the near-poor. How often
does Obama discuss such issues? What terms does he use when discussing them? And how does
Obama's rhetoric concerning the poor compare to that used by other presidents? In short, has
Obama truly failed as a rhetorical leader when it comes to poverty?
The importance of presidential rhetoric was recognized by Cesar et al (1981), who called
it one of the president‟s principal tools for governing the nation. Presidential speeches are
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designed to accomplish two objects, not always compatible. First, they are intended to maintain
and increase public approval of the president. Presidents accomplish this by emphasizing values
with which they would like to be associated in the public mind (Edwards and Wood 1999, 340;
Sigelman and Whissell 2002) and by discussing the policy areas on which the public supports the
president (Druckman and Holmes 2004). Presidents use rhetoric to paint an image of themselves
that will be appealing to the public.
A second goal of presidential rhetoric is to build public support for the president‟s
policies among the mass public. Policy areas featured in presidential speeches increase in
salience among the public, and popular presidents can sometimes sway public opinion on
specific policies (Cohen 1995). Using rhetoric to build support for policies is an essential part of
governing. "Presidents explain problems to the public in ways that favor their administration's
solutions, and the members of the public in turn pressure their congressional representatives,
directly or indirectly, to support presidential proposals" (Beasley 2010, 10).
The president's weekly address is a five-minute message broadcast on the nation's major
radio networks. It was started by President Reagan in 1982 as a way to speak directly to the
American public in simple language (Sigelman and Whissell 2002). Presidents Reagan, Clinton
and George W. Bush addressed the nation almost every week, a tradition that Obama has
continued. President George H. W. Bush gave the address infrequently.
The live radio audience for these addresses is fairly small, estimated at 1.5 million
listeners (Han 2006). However, the address is timed to spur coverage on the Saturday evening
news, Sunday newspapers and the Sunday morning news programs, and is effective in generating
such coverage (Han 2006, Scacco 2011). The content of the weekly address is intended to
present a positive image of the president (Sigelman and Whissell 2002), focus public and elite
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attention on particular issues, and to set the terms in which those issues will be discussed (Han
2006). Weekly addresses often refer to bills pending in Congress and ask listeners to pressure
their representatives on those issues (Scacco 2011).
The two broad goals of presidential rhetoric, improving the president's image and
promoting the president's policy agenda, can sometimes conflict. If a president focuses on a
problem that is not relevant to a majority of the public or promotes policies that do not match the
values of the majority of the public, his public standing will suffer. Therefore, we would expect
presidents to focus on policies likely to be popular, and to frame their policy agendas in terms of
values likely to resonate with the politically involved public.
Analyzing Obama's Rhetoric on Poverty-Related Issues
We began this analysis by downloading a sample of presidential weekly addresses from
Reagan's initial weekly address on April 3, 1982 through Obama's April 7, 2012 address. 3 Our
data include the first address in every calendar month. The addresses frequently concern more
than one issue, so it is difficult to characterize an entire address in terms of a single topic.
Instead, we separate each address into its constituent paragraphs and adopt the individual
paragraph as our unit of analysis. The analysis consisted of two steps, the hand-coding of
training data and the automated content analysis.
We hand-coded approximately 10 percent of the paragraphs (N=371) in the data set.
These hand-coded paragraphs were used as training data for the quantitative analysis described
below. Each co-author independently coded the same subset of paragraphs as to whether they
discussed issues related to poverty.
Paragraphs were coded as discussing poverty if they
explicitly mentioned poverty or the poor, mentioned a government social welfare program (e.g.
Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security), or mentioned a population particularly vulnerable to
3
The texts were downloaded from http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/satradio.php in May 2012.
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poverty (e.g. single-mothers or the unemployed4). The two coders agreed on the coding of more
than 95% of the paragraphs, and the disagreements were reconciled through discussion.
The first steps in the automated content analysis were designed to make the data more
tractable by reducing the number of unique terms without loss of meaningful information. This
was accomplished by dropping any paragraphs containing less than 35 characters,5 removing
stop-words, and stemming the remaining text.6 We then dropped from the data any word stems
that appeared in less than one percent or more than 99 percent of the remaining paragraphs
(Quinn et al, 2010, Hopkins and King 2010). The final dataset consisted of 3,179 paragraphs, and
for each observation (i.e. paragraph) we have data on the frequency with which each word stem
in the entire dataset was used.7
The second step in the analysis was to identify the terms that presidents tend to use when
talking about poverty-related issues. We accomplished this by calculating the average frequency
with which each term was used in the paragraphs hand-coded as discussing poverty, and the
frequency with which each term was used in the paragraphs hand-coded as not discussing
poverty. We then conducted difference of means tests to determine for each term whether it was
used more frequently in the paragraphs coded as discussing poverty. We selected each term
which occurred more frequently in the paragraphs discussing poverty and for which the
difference of means test was significant at the .01 level. The selected terms constitute a list of
4
References to the unemployment rate as an indicator of the overall health of the economy were not coded as
discussions of poverty-related issues.
5
We dropped short paragraphs to eliminate the opening salutations (e.g. "My Fellow Americans") and signing off
paragraphs (e.g. "Thanks for listening").
6
“Stop words” are words that carry no information about the meaning of the text (e.g. “a”, “an”, “at”, “on”, “it”,
and “of”) . Stemming means reducing a word to its word stem. For example, “healthy” and “healthful” both stem
down to “health.”
7
Most terms do not occur in most paragraphs, so most of our data set consists of zeroes.
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terms highly associated with discussion of poverty-related issues (based on our training dataset
of hand-coded text).8
Since our hand-coded data comprise only 10% of our full sample of paragraphs, our final
task was to implement an automated coding process to code the remaining 90% of the sample
(approximately 2,800 paragraphs). We accomplished this by first estimating a logit regression
model based on our hand-coded data, in which the list of poverty-relevant terms served as
independent variables and the human-coded variable indicating whether the paragraph discussed
poverty-related issues was the dependent variable.9 We then used the results from this model to
estimate the probability that each of the un-coded paragraphs discusses poverty-related issues.
These probabilities can be averaged within each year or presidential administration to create an
index of the extent to which poverty-related issues were discussed during the period.
Results of the Content Analysis
Figure 4 presents the average index value by presidential administration, while Figure 5
presents the yearly index value. Figure 4 reflects the conventional wisdom that Democratic
Presidents talk about poverty-related issues more than Republican Presidents. The average
probabilities that a paragraph in the weekly address discussed poverty-related issues under
Presidents Reagan, George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush were .09, .06 and .09,
respectively.10 The average probabilities under Presidents Clinton and Obama were .22 and .13,
respectively. The large difference between Presidents Clinton and Obama shows that President
Clinton talked about issues related to poverty much more than Obama has thus far. In fact,
8
The list of word stems used as independent variables in the logit model presented in appendix X, below.
The logit model performed very well, correctly classifying 96.9% of the human-coded paragraphs, for a 77.6%
proportionate reduction in error.
10
The spike in 2004 is somewhat surprising. An examination of President George H. Bush's weekly addresses that
year suggest that this spike reflects President' Bush's advocacy for job training programs for the unemployed, his
discussion of the No Child Left Behind Act and it effect on struggling schools, and his emphasis on the Working
Families Tax Relief Act.
9
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President Obama used the word "welfare" exactly one time in the addresses we analyze, and that
was in a sentence decrying "corporate welfare" for oil companies.11 He has used the word "poor"
one time, and that was quoting from a letter he had received.12 In contrast, President Reagan
used the terms "welfare" and "poor" 55 and 12 times, respectively, in the addressees we analyze.
President Clinton used the word "welfare" 93 times and the word "poor" 18 times. The fact that
welfare dependency was a main theme of Reagan's rhetoric and welfare reform was a central part
of President Clinton's policy agenda explains their frequent use of these terms. Because both
Reagan and Clinton had defined welfare as a problem, they were not associating themselves with
the poor or with the welfare program when they used those words. Obama has not made
reduction of welfare rolls and costs a policy priority. So if he uses these words he runs a risk of
being associated in the public mind with an unpopular group and problem. This risk is probably
greater for an African-American president who was formerly a community organizer on behalf
of poor people (Obama 1995).
[Figure 4 here]
In Figure 5 we present the yearly index value from 1982-2012. The vertical bars on
Figure 5 indicate time periods when the U.S. economy was in recession. Although one might
expect presidents to focus more attention on poverty-related issues when the economy is in poor
shape, no such overall pattern is evident. There was a modest increase in poverty-related rhetoric
by Ronald Reagan during the 1981 recession and a slightly larger increase during the most recent
recession under Barack Obama. However, there was no such increase during the recessions seen
during the administrations of George H.W. Bush or George W. Bush. Regardless, variation
11
12
President Obama's weekly address of March 3, 2012.
President Obama's weekly address of October 1, 2011.
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during this period is dominated by the increase in rhetoric surrounding welfare reform, beginning
in the early 1990s and subsiding after the passage of national legislation in 1996.
[Figure 5 here]
To gain a better understanding of the possible determinants of poverty-relevant
presidential rhetoric, we present the results of a simple regression analysis in Table 1. The
regression model utilizes our yearly index of poverty-relevant rhetoric as the dependent variable
and includes three independent variables as predictors – the unemployment rate, the poverty rate,
and a dummy variable indicating the presence of a Democratic president. The results confirm the
finding in Figure 4 that Democratic presidents (i.e. Clinton and Obama) have emphasized
poverty more than recent Republican presidents, even after controlling for economic conditions.
It is also interesting to see that the national poverty rate has a positive and statistically significant
effect on presidential rhetoric. When the poverty rate is high, presidents are somewhat more
likely to emphasize poverty-related issues in their rhetoric. However, the unemployment rate has
the opposite effect. It is not obvious why this might be the case, but it is important to remember
that our measure of rhetorical emphasis does not consider the tone of the rhetoric. Thus, it is
possible that periods of declining unemployment may give rise to efforts to cut welfare through
welfare reform, resulting in an increase in poverty-related rhetoric that is more negative in tone.
This would certainly fit with recent history and the two most important periods of welfare reform
activity in our dataset under presidents Reagan and Clinton.
[Table 1 here]
Given the fact that our measure tells us nothing about how presidents talk about poverty,
it is instructive to look more closely at the text and compare the terms used by President Obama
when he discuss issues poverty-related issues to the terms used by other presidents when they
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discuss these issues. To do this, we focused our attention on the paragraphs that our logit model
identified as having at least a 90% chance of discussing a poverty-related issue. We then
compared the average frequency of each term in Obama's poverty-related paragraphs with its
average frequency in the poverty-relevant paragraphs of the other presidents. We applied a
difference-of-means test to isolate the terms for which a there is a statistically significant (p<.05,
single-tailed test) difference between Obama's use and the other presidents' use. This produced a
list of 68 terms that Obama uses more often than other presidents when discussing poverty, and
52 terms that Obama uses less often than other presidents when discussing poverty.13
Although many of the words on these two lists are hard to interpret as meaningful
indicators of Obama's communication style on these issues, a couple of patterns seem to emerge.
First, Obama chooses words that refer to issues relevant to the middle class rather than just the
poor. He uses "retirement", "senior" (as in "senior citizens"), and "Medicare" more often than
other presidents. The costs of retirement, health care in particular, are problems more salient to
middle class citizens than to the poor, for whom a distinct "retirement" phase of life is less
realistic. Second, Obama seems to situate his discussions of the poor in the context of issues
affecting the entire nation rather than in the context of issues facing only the poor. He is more
likely to use the words "recession", "financial", and "crisis" than other presidents. These terms
refer to macro-economic factors rather than personal characteristics, and there are no similar
words in the list of terms President Obama uses less than other presidents.
The list of terms Obama avoids, relative to other presidents, includes "poor" and
"welfare", but also "child", "children", and "mother." Despite the positive connotations of
children and mothers, these terms may remind the public of the population most associated with
government welfare programs. Similarly, when speaking about poverty-related issues Obama
13
The complete list of terms is presented in the Appendix in Table A-3.
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uses the words "deficit", "program", "budget", and "government" less often than other presidents.
These words link the problems of the poor to government programs and to the national deficit.
In summary, we find that President Obama does not stand out compared to other recent
presidents when it comes to the frequency with which he addresses poverty-related issues. He
has addressed poverty issues slightly more than recent Republican presidents, but far less than
Democrat Bill Clinton. President Obama is somewhat distinctive, however, in the way that he
speaks about poverty. He seems to be more cautious to avoid words that can be associated
exclusively with public assistance and the lower class. We elaborate on this finding and tie it to
more general conclusions about Obama‟s leadership style below.
BARACK OBAMA AND POVERTY: LEADING BY FACILITATION
In his recent book on presidential leadership, George Edwards (2009) describes two
models of presidential leadership. He refers to the first model as “director of change,” which he
defines as a president who “creates opportunities to move in new directions, leading others
where they otherwise would not go. The director establishes an agenda and persuades the public,
organized interests, Congress, and others to support administration policies” (11). Clearly, at
least when it comes to poverty reduction, Barack Obama has not been a director of change.
Does this mean that Obama is not personally committed to poverty reduction? There is
little reason to think this is the case. Obama has a long track record as a supporter of poverty
reduction as an activist and elected official. He made inequality and social welfare an important
part of his platform during the 2008 election (Mettler 2010). And in the months after the election,
when he chose Tom Vilsack for Department of Agriculture Secretary, Obama reportedly told
Vislack that the top priority for his department (which also happens to administer the food stamp
program) should be that all American children are well fed (Alter 2010).
- 18 -
A more plausible explanation, and one that fits well with our findings, is that Obama has
chosen a different style of leadership, which Edwards refers to as “facilitator of change.”
According to Edwards (2009),
“Facilitators understand the opportunities for change in their environments and fashion
strategies and tactics to exploit them. Rather than create a constituency, they reflect and sometimes
clarify, intensify, or channel their constituencies‟ aspirations, values, and policy views. Instead of
persuading others to support them, they skillfully work at the margins of coalition building,
perhaps influencing a few critical actors, to obtain support for their initiatives” (12).
This type of leadership style is similar in many ways to the model described by Jacobs
and King (2010), which they term “structured agency.” The two models share the common
assumptions that presidents are often severely constrained in their ability to implement their
agenda. They are limited in their ability to move political elites to their side, and despite the
conventional wisdom, their efforts to take their case to the people by “going public” are rarely
successful in changing public opinion (Edwards 2003). Therefore, presidents must look for and
take advantage of opportunities to effect change.
Certainly, Obama has faced several important constraints on his ability to be a
transformative leader when it comes to poverty. Obama assumed the presidency during a time of
severe partisan and ideological polarization and a thin Democratic majority in the Senate that
was not guaranteed to withstand a filibuster (Mettler 2010). But most important, perhaps, is the
very nature of the poverty issue itself. Discussing issues related to the poor is particularly
treacherous. Research on mass attitudes has consistently shown that “among middle-class
persons, perceptions of welfare recipients and the welfare system are overwhelmingly negative.
Poor people and welfare recipients are typically characterized as dishonest, dependent, lazy,
uninterested in education, and promiscuous” (Bullock 1995, 125). This fact remains true today.
The opinion environment that Obama inherited as president was no less hostile to an expansion
- 19 -
of public assistance for the poor than it was before the recession. Indeed, even though the
country was in the midst of the worst recession in decades, in 2008 the General Social Survey
reported that a mere 18% of white independents favored increased spending on “welfare,” while
82% believed that welfare spending was “about right” (35%) or too excessive (46%).
Gilens (1999) argues that antipathy toward programs designed to help the poor is strongly
rooted in the public misperception that anti-poverty programs primarily benefit AfricanAmericans, a factor particularly relevant for President Obama as the nation's first AfricanAmerican president. Obama clearly understands the potential political costs of being perceived
as a champion of the poor, and his reluctance to speak directly about poverty reduction and the
poor as President was evident even before he was elected president. For example, after John
Edwards formally endorsed Obama in a 2008 campaign event in Grand Rapids, Obama spoke
about poverty in a way that proved to be very prophetic:
“Poverty isn't an issue that's talked about on the news or in Washington. It's not always the kind of
issue that polls well. But John Edwards decided to talk about it anyway. He decided to center his
campaign around it. He came up with new ideas to solve it. He pushed the rest of us to talk about
it and debate it. And he did it, not because it was popular, but because it was right.”
Our analysis of Obama‟s rhetoric as president is entirely consistent with Obama‟s
expectations of the political backlash that can accompany strong rhetorical leadership on poverty
reduction. He has very rarely spoken about “poverty” or the “the poor,” just as his critics on the
left have claimed. He also seems to attempt to distance himself from the target populations that
are most associated with “welfare.” When President Clinton promoted his welfare reform ideas,
he consistently presented the welfare system, rather than poverty itself, as the problem to be
resolved (Carcasson 2006), and President Reagan presented both the welfare program and
welfare recipients in negative terms (O‟Connor 1998). It was easy for them to talk about poverty
and welfare because they were perceived as reducing welfare. As a supporter of expanding
- 20 -
government assistance for the poor and near-poor, it would be unrealistic to expect President
Obama to make programs aimed at the poor a central focus of his public speeches. Rather, it
would seem to make much more sense for Obama to work as a facilitator, rather than as a
director of change.
As a facilitator, Obama took full advantage of the opportunity he had inherited – the
Great Recession. Soon after being Obama was elected, his soon-to-be Chief of Staff, Rahm
Emmanuel told an audience of top business executives "You never want a serious crisis to go to
waste…This crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before."
Although Emmanuel did not specifically refer to social welfare expansion as one of those
“things,” President Obama certainly used the economic crisis as an opportunity to increase
federal investment in poverty reduction. However, his antipoverty initiatives were designed in a
way that did not bring attention to them. They were bundled within the stimulus package and
therefore represented only a minority of overall stimulus spending. The initiatives were also
primarily designed as expansions of existing programs, which also attracted less attention than
would be the case if brand new programs were created. And most importantly, Obama did not
emphasize this aspect of the stimulus in his speeches. According to Jonathan Alter, when a
congressman approached the First Lady during a reception after the bill‟s passage and told her
that the ARRA was the most significant antipoverty legislation in a generation, the First Lady
reportedly replied “Shhhh!” Alter went on to explain, “The White House didn‟t want the public
thinking that Obama had achieved long-sought public policy objectives under the guise of
merely stimulating the economy” (131).
On the one hand, Obama‟s “facilitation” of the passage of significant antipoverty policy
has been successful. Our results are consistent with other analyses (e.g. Sherman 2011) that
- 21 -
conclude ARRA prevented millions of Americans from slipping into poverty. On the other hand,
Obama‟s facilitation strategy, which includes a lack of rhetorical leadership on the issue of
poverty and an unwillingness to seek credit for ARRA‟s antipoverty success, has had negative
political consequences. It was inevitable that a backlash would emerge from the right given the
scrutiny of conservative media outlets. It was only a matter of time, for example, until Obama
would be labeled the “Food Stamp President,” as he was by Newt Gingrich during the
Republican primary campaign. What was less expected, however, has been the criticism from the
left. In his efforts to keep his antipoverty efforts under the radar, Obama has succeeded in
convincing his own supporters that he has not done nearly enough to reduce poverty. In other
words, Obama has solved one leadership problem by exacerbating another.
This second problem is well-known in the presidential literature and is often referred to
as the “expectations gap thesis.” The basic premise of the thesis is that presidential capacity
inevitably falls far short of public expectations, and that over time this gap between expectations
and accomplishments has grown to unmanageable proportions (Waterman, St. Clair and Wright
1999). In hindsight, it seems inevitable that Obama would fall victim to this phenomenon as he
was elected with the highest expectations of any recent president. According to a Gallup poll
conducted soon after the 2008 election (Gallup and Newport 2009, 387), a majority of
Americans believed that Obama would “promote a good economy” (64%), reduce the federal
deficit (56%), and lower unemployment (67%). And if this was not difficult enough, a large
majority of Americans (64%) expected him to accomplish all of these things without raising
taxes. But as high as these numbers were, a full 80% of Americans believed that President
Obama would “improve conditions for minorities and the poor.” Of the 16 goals that respondents
- 22 -
were asked to consider, this goal reflected the highest level of confidence and easily exceeded
the levels seen by recent presidents, including Bill Clinton (68%).
In light of these exceptionally high expectations, it is hard to imagine that Obama could
be viewed as successful with respect to poverty reduction. As Theodore Lowi (1985) once
observed concerning this phenomenon, a partial success [in policy terms] is defined as a failure
(11, quoted in Waterman, St. Clair and Wright 1999). The only solution, as Waterman et al.
(1999) suggest, is to “convince the public that they are providing leadership, even if in reality
they have only a limited ability to affect outcomes” (15). Unfortunately for Obama, he is limited
in his ability to create this “image” due to the likely increase in the backlash from the right.
President Obama seems to be well aware of this dilemma but all signs point to a
continuation of the current leadership strategy. For example, in the fall of 2011 the White House
announced new targeted initiatives to combat “urban poverty,” which could potentially go a long
way toward ameliorating Obama‟s critics on left and within the black community. But as
columnist Walter Russell Mead commented, Obama has not altered his political strategy.
Instead, “the White House has opted for a dog whistle strategy: making proposals that Blacks
will recognize as beneficial and targeted to their special problems without triggering white
backlash. For that strategy to work, two things have to happen: Blacks have to see results while
swing voters and independents don‟t notice the President‟s new concern” (Mead 2011). Whether
this strategy will be successful is far from clear, but it is a strategy that is inevitable given the
political constraints he faces due to the unpopularity any policy that might be framed as
“welfare” expansion.
- 23 -
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26
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27
APPENDIX
Table A-1. Regression Results for Change in National Poverty Rate, 1960-2010
Independent
Variables
Unemployment Rate
Per Capita Income
Per Capita Incomet-1
Intercept
N
R2
Rho
Transformed D-W
t- value
.247**
4.31
-.00057*
-2.31
-.00065** -2.95
.09473
0.71
50
.48
.45
2.245
Note: The analysis was conducted using Generalized Least Squares
(using the Prais-Winsten transformation to preserve the first observation).
Table A-2. Word stems used in logit model to predict whether a paragraph discussed
poverty-related issues:
welfar
medicar
famili
work
social
care
poor
guarante
child
hard
medic
children
health
abl
cover
econom
insur
benefit
incom
person
requir
class
rais
condit
coverag
peopl
reform
educ
middl
colleg
skill
grow
tax
lose
system
increas
low
economi
demand
senior
wage
age
support
growth
give
encourag
fill
littl
promot
retir
told
troubl
allow
28
Table A-3: Differences in Words Used by President Obama and other Presidents when
discussing Issues Related to Poverty
President Obama Used these Word Stems President Obama Used these Word
More than other Presidents
Stems Less than other Presidents
compani
folks
recession
oil
insurance
clean
receive
qualiti
busi
decad
energi
gener
rebuild
hire
financi
retir
crisis
deliv
short
cost
put
that
senior
lost
fall
car
credit
small
mean
purchas
alreadi
save
construct
taxpay
deni
drop
keep
wont
entir
highest
hundr
run
theyll
thousand
like
medicar
break
close
road
yesterday
choic
feel
see
pay
job
come
fight
rise
took
base
industri
let
meet
cover
heard
matter
moment
poor
everi
live
chanc
encourag
leader
im
commun
deficit
way
state
crime
mother
safe
must
go
courag
wage
move
reduce
last
ive
law
first
social
demand
other
29
program
real
sign
peopl
million
want
train
good
age
man
educ
govern
work
increas
budget
ill
america
nation
support
school
ever
children
far
welfar
child
Table 1. Regression Results for Predictors of Poverty-Relevant Rhetoric, 1982-2010
Independent
Variables
Unemployment Rate
Poverty Rate
Democratic President
Intercept
N
R2
D-W Statistic
t- value
-.023*
.036*
.101**
- .245
-2.09
2.18
4.89
0.71
27
.64
1.78
Note: The analysis was conducted Ordinary Least Squares
30
20
20.4
15
14.8
14.7
14.1
12.3
13.3
12.4
11.9
5
10
11.6
13.8
0
Average Poverty Rate
Figure 1. Average Poverty Rate by President (1960-2010)
JFK/LBJ
LBJ
Nixon Nixon/Ford Carter
Reagan Bush I
Clinton
Bush II
Obama
Source: Annual poverty data were obtained from U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population
Reports, P60-239, Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2010.
31
-3
-2
-1
0
1
2
Figure 2. Observed vs. Predicted Changes in Annual Poverty Rate, 1960-2010
Kennedy/
Johnson
1960
Johnson
Nixon
1970
Nixon/
Ford
Carter
Reagan
1980
Bush I
1990
Clinton
Bush II
2000
Obama
2010
Year
Actual Change in Poverty
Predicted Change in Poverty
Note: The predicted change in the poverty rate is generated from a regression analysis of the
annual poverty rate on the change in the annual unemployment rate and the change in real per
capita income (measured at time t and t-1). See Appendix for details.
32
Figure 3. Percentage of People Removed from Poverty by Selected ARRA-targeted Public
Assistance Programs, 2004-2010
40
40.1
Start of Recession
35
38.3
33.1
32.1
25.3
25.4
2006
2007
Year
31.4
32
31.9
30
31.1
32.1
25.6
26
25
25.3
2004
2005
All people
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population
(http://www.census.gov/cps/data/cpstablecreator.html)
33
2008
2009
2010
Children
Survey
(CPS)
Table
Creator
Figure 4. Poverty-Related Rhetoric by President, Reagan-Obama
.15
.2
.22
.1
.12
.09
.09
0
.05
.06
Reagan
Bush I
Clinton
Bush II
Obama
Note: The vertical axis represents the average value for our index of poverty-relevant rhetorical emphasis.
34
.05
.1
.15
.2
.25
.3
Figure 5. Index of Poverty-Related Rhetoric by Year and State of Economy, 1982-2012
1980m1
1985m1
1990m1
1995m1
2000m1
Rhetorical Emphasis
35
2005m1
2010m1
Recession
2015m1