¹ Neustadt, R.. Presidential Power: The Politics of Leadership from FDR to Carter (New York: Wiley. 1980).Google Scholar

² Edwards, G., Presidential Influence in Congress (San Francisco: Freeman, 1980)Google Scholar; Edwards, G., ‘Presidential Legislative Skills: At the Core or a! the Margin?’ (paper presenled at (he annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, Illinois, 1986).Google Scholar

³ Fleisher, R. and Bond, J., ‘Presidential Skill and Success in Congress’ (paper presented at the annual meeting of the Southern Political Science Association, Atlanta, Georgia, 1986).Google Scholar

⁴ King, Anthony, ‘A Mile and a Half is a Long Way’ in King, Anthony, ed., Both Ends of the Avenue (Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute, 1983), p. 253.Google Scholar

⁵ Fleisher, and Bond, , ‘Presidential Skill and Success in Congress’.Google Scholar

⁶ Kernell, S.. Going Public: New Strategies of Presidential Leadership (Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly, 1986), pp. 146–7.Google Scholar

⁷ Edwards, , Presidential Influence in CongressGoogle Scholar; Edwards, , ‘Presidential Legislative Skills: At the Core or at the Margin?’Google Scholar; Fleisher, R. and Bond, J., ‘Assessing Presidential Support in the House: Lessons from Reagan and Carter’, Journal of Politics, 45 (1983), 745–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Renka, R., ‘Comparing Presidents Kennedy and Johnson as Legislative Leaders’, Presidential Studies Quarterly, 15 (1985), 806–25.Google Scholar

⁸ Rockman, B., The Leadership Question (New York: Praeger, 1984), pp. 190–1.Google Scholar

⁹ Light, P., ‘The President's Agenda: Notes on the Timing of Domestic Choice’, Presidential Studies Quarterly, II (1981), 67–82Google Scholar; reports that Carter's legislative reputation steadily improved throughout his term but could not completely overcome the impressions of his initial poor performance.

¹⁰ Neustadt, . Presidential Power, p. 61.Google Scholar

¹¹ See Kellerman, B., Tlie Political Presidency (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984)Google Scholar; Rockman, . The Leadership QuestionGoogle Scholar: and Hargrove, E. and Nelson, M., Presidents, Politics, and Public Policy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984)Google Scholar for extensive theoretical discussions of presidential legislative skills.

¹² See fn. 7 for the work that has employed this methodology of residual analysis.

¹³ Neustadt, . Presidential Power, p. 47Google Scholar; see also Grossman, M. and Kumar, M. J., Portraying the President: The White House and the News Media (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. 1981), pp. 206–25Google Scholar for a discussion of the role of Washington-based columnists.

¹⁴ Grossman, and Kumar, , Portraying the President, p. 61.Google Scholar

¹⁵ See, for example, Jones, C., ‘Presidential Negotiation with Congress’Google Scholar in King, , ed., Both Ends of the AvenueGoogle Scholar; Malbin, M., ‘Rhetoric and Leadership: A Look Backward at the Carter Energy Plan’Google Scholar, in the same King edited volume; and Fleisher, and Bond, , ‘Assessing Presidential Support in the House: Lessons from Reagan and Carter’.Google Scholar

¹⁶ For a discussion of the reliability problems inherent in content analysis research, see Manheim, J. and Rich, R., Empirical Political Analysis: Research Methods in Political Science (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1981).Google Scholar

¹⁷ This is an interesting finding, in light of Paul Light's theories of ‘the cycle of decreasing influence’ and ‘the cycle of increasing effectiveness’ (see Light, , ‘The President's Agenda: Notes on the Timing of Domestic Choice’, p. 71).Google Scholar

¹⁸ Neustadt, , Presidential PowerGoogle Scholar; Kernell, , Going Public.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Kernell, , Going Public, pp. 146–7.Google Scholar

²⁰ Source of data: Gallup, , Gallup Opinion Index (Reports # 180 and # 231, published 1980 and 1984, respectively).Google Scholar

²¹ Source of data: Economic Report of the President (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1978–1985).Google Scholar

²² For a discussion of these issues see Bond, J. and Fleisher, R., ‘Presidential Popularity and Congressional Voting: A Re-Examination of Public Opinion as a Source of Influence in Congress’, Western Political Quarterly, 37 (1984), 291–306CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Wildavsky, A., ‘The Two Presidencies’ in Wildavsky, A., ed., The Presidency (Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown, 1969).Google Scholar

²³ Bond, and Fleisher, . ‘Presidential Popularity and Congressional Voting: A Re-Examination of Public Opinion as a Source of Influence in Congress’.Google Scholar

²⁴ Source of data: Congressional Quarterly Almanac (Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly, 1977–1979, 1981–1983).Google Scholar The 80 per cent + criterion is commonly used to eliminate trivial and non-conflictual roll calls, some of which may be targets of presidential attempts to inflate their CQ scores (see Covington, C., ‘Congressional Support for the President: The View from the Kennedy-Johnson White House’, Journal of Politics, 48 (1986), 717–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bond, and Fleisher, , ‘Presidential Popularity and Congressional Voting’).Google Scholar

²⁵ Edwards, , ‘Presidential Legislative Skills: At the Core or at the Margin?’, p. 9.Google Scholar

²⁶ Kellerman, , The Political Presidency, Chap. 10.Google Scholar

²⁷ Edwards, , ‘Presidential Legislative Skills’, p. 9Google Scholar; Kellerman, , The Political Presidency, p. 199.Google Scholar There is some dispute as to whether Carter's attempt to legislate a national energy policy succeeded or failed. This is irrelevant to the point here, which is that the penalties for failure (whether real or hypothetical) were not so much a reversal of support but a reversion to a natural level of support.

²⁸ Carter equalled or exceeded the 3.2 threshold only twice in thirty-five months; Reagan exceeded it eight times. The correlation between ‘PRES’ and ‘HISKILL_t–I’ is only 0.25, indicating that skill varies within as well as across presidencies, and that collinearity between the president dummy variable and perceived skill should not affect the results.