IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jscscx/v7y2018i3p36-d134439.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Historical Memory of American Presidents in the Mass Public

Author

Listed:
  • Jeffrey E. Cohen

    (Department of Political Science, Fordham University, Bronx, NY 10458, USA)

Abstract

This paper investigates public evaluations of past presidents. Since voters generally lack much historical knowledge, such evaluations are not useful indicators of the performance and effectiveness of presidents across history, unlike the greatness evaluations of experts, like historians and presidency scholars. Still, presidents may be concerned about how future generations of voters will think about them. These anticipations may then affect presidential behavior in office. This study uses a Rasmussen poll in 2007 that asked voters their assessment of all the past presidents, from George Washington through to George W. Bush. Results find that voters look upon past presidents more favorably as a larger number of voters have opinions about the president, presidents of the founding generation are looked upon more favorably, and the ratings of experts affect voters’ assessments of past presidents. The conclusion discusses the implications of the results and offers suggestions for future research.

Suggested Citation

  • Jeffrey E. Cohen, 2018. "The Historical Memory of American Presidents in the Mass Public," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 7(3), pages 1-14, March.
  • Handle: RePEc:gam:jscscx:v:7:y:2018:i:3:p:36-:d:134439
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/7/3/36/pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/7/3/36/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Markus Prior, 2005. "News vs. Entertainment: How Increasing Media Choice Widens Gaps in Political Knowledge and Turnout," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 49(3), pages 577-592, July.
    2. Jennifer Jerit & Jason Barabas & Toby Bolsen, 2006. "Citizens, Knowledge, and the Information Environment," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 50(2), pages 266-282, April.
    3. Bartels, Larry M., 1993. "Messages Received: The Political Impact of Media Exposure," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 87(2), pages 267-285, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Scott Simon Boddery & Damon Cann & Laura Moyer & Jeff Yates, 2023. "The role of cable news hosts in public support for Supreme Court decisions," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 20(4), pages 1045-1069, December.
    2. Jason Barabas & Jennifer Jerit, 2009. "Estimating the Causal Effects of Media Coverage on Policy‐Specific Knowledge," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 53(1), pages 73-89, January.
    3. James Tilley & Christopher Wlezien, 2008. "Does Political Information Matter? An Experimental Test Relating to Party Positions on Europe," Political Studies, Political Studies Association, vol. 56(1), pages 192-214, March.
    4. Dubey, Subodh & Sharma, Ishant & Mishra, Sabyasachee & Cats, Oded & Bansal, Prateek, 2022. "A General Framework to Forecast the Adoption of Novel Products: A Case of Autonomous Vehicles," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 165(C), pages 63-95.
    5. William D. Berry & Jacqueline H. R. DeMeritt & Justin Esarey, 2010. "Testing for Interaction in Binary Logit and Probit Models: Is a Product Term Essential?," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 54(1), pages 248-266, January.
    6. Samuele Poy & Simone Schüller, 2016. "Internet and Voting in the Web 2.0 Era: Evidence from a Local Broadband Policy," CESifo Working Paper Series 6129, CESifo.
    7. John V. Duca & Jason L. Saving, 2016. "Income Inequality and Political Polarization: Time Series Evidence Over Nine Decades," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 62(3), pages 445-466, September.
    8. Donati, Dante, 2023. "Mobile Internet access and political outcomes: Evidence from South Africa," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 162(C).
    9. Ruben Durante & Paolo Pinotti & Andrea Tesei, 2019. "The Political Legacy of Entertainment TV," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 109(7), pages 2497-2530, July.
    10. Stan Hok‐Wui Wong & Mathew Y. H. Wong, 2020. "“Distant Participation” and Youth Political Attitudes: Evidence from a Natural Experiment," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 101(4), pages 1489-1512, July.
    11. Matt Guardino & Suzanne Mettler, 2020. "Revealing the “Hidden welfare state†: How policy information influences public attitudes about tax expenditures," Journal of Behavioral Public Administration, Center for Experimental and Behavioral Public Administration, vol. 3(1).
    12. David K Levine, 2023. "True Myths," Levine's Working Paper Archive 11694000000000123, David K. Levine.
    13. Lin Hu & Anqi Li & Ilya Segal, 2019. "The Politics of Personalized News Aggregation," Papers 1910.11405, arXiv.org, revised Nov 2022.
    14. Raphael Boleslavsky & Christopher Cotton, 2015. "Information and Extremism in Elections," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 7(1), pages 165-207, February.
    15. repec:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/16juu6v6rg8rq8nl0u1grb4jm6 is not listed on IDEAS
    16. Natali HELBERGER & Andra LEURDIJK & Silvain de MUNCK, 2010. "User Generated Diversity. Some reflections on how to improve the quality of amateur productions," Communications & Strategies, IDATE, Com&Strat dept., vol. 1(77), pages 55-78, 1st quart.
    17. Simon Richter & Sebastian Stier, 2022. "Learning about the unknown Spitzenkandidaten: The role of media exposure during the 2019 European Parliament elections," European Union Politics, , vol. 23(2), pages 309-329, June.
    18. Campante, Filipe R. & Hojman, Daniel A., 2013. "Media and polarization," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 79-92.
    19. Lisa Oswald, 2024. "More than news! Mapping the deliberative potential of a political online ecosystem with digital trace data," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 11(1), pages 1-16, December.
    20. Nunkoo, Robin, 2015. "Tourism development and trust in local government," Tourism Management, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 623-634.
    21. Julia Cagé, 2014. "Media Competition, Information Provision and Political Participation," SciencePo Working papers hal-03602440, HAL.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jscscx:v:7:y:2018:i:3:p:36-:d:134439. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.