What people remember about Trump's presidency

It has very little to do with his chaotic last year in office

Source: New York Times

This is a fascinating piece by Christine Zhang, Sean Catangui, and Alex Lemonides at the New York Times “Upshot.” (And I’m not just saying that because the authors quoted me and fellow political scientist John Sides.)

They surveyed over 1,000 voters and asked what the one thing was that they remembered from Donald Trump’s presidency. The answers fell overwhelmingly into the category of “the economy” (generally offered by Trump supporters) and “Trump’s behavior” (generally offered by his opponents). What was particularly striking was that arguably the two most critical aspects of his presidency that most directly reflected his leadership style and priorities and most immediately affected Americans’ lives and their democracy — the response to the Covid pandemic and the attempt to violently overturn an election on January 6^th — barely got mentioned, offered by just 5 percent each.

“Behavior” covers quite a bit of ground, from racist rhetoric to fulfilling campaign promises to assault of women to just tweeting too much. But to an impressive extent, most of the responses in this category have little to do with the Trump presidency at all. Many of these things occurred when he was running for president in 2016 or even earlier.

Similarly, “the economy” is pretty broad terrain. It’s not completely fictitious — the economy, by most measures, was growing at a respectable pace with low unemployment and inflation during Trump’s first three years in office, even if those numbers weren’t notably different from the economy during Barack Obama’s second term. But “the economy” also covers things like tax cuts, oil use, gas prices, and a vague sense of “good times.” Economic performance is generally something for which incumbents are rewarded or punished, of course, but these recollections are fuzzy, and in many cases just seem a juxtaposition for complaints about the economy under Biden (specifically inflation during 2022). To a considerable degree, voters seem to be saying that things were pretty good for Trump’s first three years, and the fourth wasn’t his fault.

Presumably the Biden campaign will be running ads to raise the salience of January 6th over the next several months, and may well be highlighting Trump’s Covid response, even if memories of that aren’t entirely negative. But there’s only so much a presidential campaign can do to tell people how to remember the past and how to think about two of the best-known presidential candidates in history.

What stands out to me in these survey responses is that voters are relying on impressions of Donald Trump that largely predate his presidency. They actually know how Trump acts as president, yet both his supports and detractors are choosing to evaluate him as though his presidency never even happened.

Anyway, I encourage you to read the whole piece.