The Political Environment Presidents Grew Up In

[humder]

 This timeline shows the presidency and lifespan of American Presidents- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Presidents_of_the_United_States

 What President you grew up under must be important in developing your political opinions. So I thought it would be interesting to look at who was President at the time when they were forming their political views.
 
George Bush has been President since I was nine and my environment around me has been hostile to him, through family and friends etc. So therefore, in my growing up, Bush may have come to represent what I disagree with in politics. I even remember being very angry and upset when he was elected in 2000 even though I probably knew little about his policies.
 
Presidents are usually more interested in politics than the average person, so lets say they began developing their political opinions as young teenagers. Clinton and Bush.Jr were both born in 1945. So, they were probably forming some of their first political opinions under Eisenhower and Kennedy.
 
Obama is much younger, he was born in 1961. This means he was developing his  political opinions under Nixon and Carter.

 How significant of a factor do you think this has been for past Presidents? Which President did you develop your politics under? Was is significant factor in forming your opinions?

[Brittain33]

Absolutely. I became politically aware during the latter part of George H.W. Bush's term and the combination of his perceived jingoism and cluelessness and the "culture war" feel of the 1992 Republican campaign committed me to being a Democrat. The 1980s and early 1990s were also a time of great limits if you went to public school--the tax revolt had taken its bite and everything was rundown or in shortage, and if you complained, well, it's because people spent too much money before you were born. It was hard not to feel aggrieved.

[Torie]

LBJ scarred me for life, and then there was Nixon as a lagniappe. And so it goes.

[ilikeverin]

I completely disagree that the president at the time one grows up has anything to do whatsoever with political ideology of the people who grow up with them.  Or, perhaps more to the point, the sum of the effects of the president at the time people grow up in is about equal to zero, as some people are pushed to agreement with the President and others are pushed to disagreement.  In other words, for every brittain33, there's going to be someone who says that George H.W. Bush's moderatism, pragmatism, and prudence in invading Iraq inspired them to become a Republican.

[Rob]

Or, perhaps more to the point, the sum of the effects of the president at the time people grow up in is about equal to zero, as some people are pushed to agreement with the President and others are pushed to disagreement.

Uh, this is blatantly ridiculous. For example: clearly George W. Bush has alienated many more voters from his party than he has attracted. For every person who thought Bush did a heck of a job- and voted accordingly- I would guess there are ten (or whatever) who ended up hating the very sight of him and voting against his party.

This is politics. One party always has to gain at the other's expense, and a very, very large factor in that is the President's performance.

[Bacon King]

Note that both Clinton and Bush the Younger were born in the same year.

[NOVA Green]

I grew up heavily under the Reagan / Bush Sr. era and my political identity was strongly shaped by the discussions and themes of that era. The end of the Cold War and Gulf War I had a major effect. I saw Clinton as largely a sellout at the time and didn't vote for him either time. My respect for many of his policies has grown with time although there are still some that I strongly disagree with.

Opposition to what I considered the failed foreign policies of Bush Jr.  caused me to vote Democratic at the Presidential level in'04 for the first time.

Many things shape political opinions and identity, and Presidents are no exception. In a political state where there are only two major political parties there are usually multiple factions that loosely political ally around certain themes, and usually by the time someone runs for President, the themes from a preceding President that helped shaped their attitudes have changed.

Yeah, some influence for both Presidents and average citizens, but not the only factor.

[ilikeverin]

Or, perhaps more to the point, the sum of the effects of the president at the time people grow up in is about equal to zero, as some people are pushed to agreement with the President and others are pushed to disagreement.

Uh, this is blatantly ridiculous. For example: clearly George W. Bush has alienated many more voters from his party than he has attracted. For every person who thought Bush did a heck of a job- and voted accordingly- I would guess there are ten (or whatever) who ended up hating the very sight of him and voting against his party.

This is politics. One party always has to gain at the other's expense, and a very, very large factor in that is the President's performance.

Yes, delightful.  Now prove this effect lasts for 10, 20, 50 years.  The hypothesis was on formation of political beliefs that last a lifetime, not short-term effects.

[Brittain33]

In other words, for every brittain33, there's going to be someone who says that George H.W. Bush's moderatism, pragmatism, and prudence in invading Iraq inspired them to become a Republican.

For what it's worth, I have a much higher opinion of GHWB now than I did then. I would venture to say most Democrats do.

[NOVA Green]

In other words, for every brittain33, there's going to be someone who says that George H.W. Bush's moderatism, pragmatism, and prudence in invading Iraq inspired them to become a Republican.

For what it's worth, I have a much higher opinion of GHWB now than I did then. I would venture to say most Democrats do.

^^^^^^^^^^^^

Although it wasn't until I became Democrat that my reputation of Bush Sr. started to increase.

[Citizen James]

Note that both Clinton and Bush the Younger were born in the same year.

As were Carter and Bush Sr.

(and Nixon and Ford, though their differences were less pronounced)

(moving up the list, Grant and Hayes, and John Q. Adams and Andrew Jackson also share birth years).

It's interesting to see how they jump around a bit.  The biggest gap in birth years (for any future presidents) is currently 22 (between GWHB/Carter and GWB/Clinton), though there is a slight chance that someone from the 'silent' generation might still eventually win (such as Joe Biden).

The second largest gap was between Ike and Johnson (18 years, and the odds of someone born before 1908 winning the presidency in the future are trivial - so that gap is sure to stand).

I hadn't realized that Carter is slightly younger than GWHB, or that Clinton is slightly younger than GWB.

I wonder if there is a difference in average age at election between the parties? Or even a cluster (tossing out the outliers like Reagan and Kennedy)?

[Rob]

Yes, delightful.

Ah, mincing sarcasm from a goofy teenager. I must be on Atlas! But seriously, though...

Now prove this effect lasts for 10, 20, 50 years.

Exit polls in election after election have consistently shown the generation that came of political age in the Reagan era to be among the most Republican voters in the US, to this day. That certainly seems to support the "hypothesis."

[ilikeverin]

Now prove this effect lasts for 10, 20, 50 years.

Exit polls in election after election have consistently shown the generation that came of political age in the Reagan era to be among the most Republican voters in the US, to this day. That certainly seems to support the "hypothesis."

It could.  But I just see a correlation there.  To me, it seems like there might be a third factor causing both things.  Let's call it "eightiesness":

Maybe the confluence of cocaine and bad hair created a perfect storm of conservatism that led to both consequences.

Actually, with just a correlation, that finding provides an equal amount of support to this diagram:


Which might square with the hypothesis "kids influence their parents' behavior". (not saying it's one I'd endorse myself, but...)

Besides, the kids who grew up in the 80s are right now at the peak Republicanness point in their lives; can we really be sure that their partisan affiliation now is that much out of the ordinary?

[humder]

 How you are socialised when you are young allways has an effect on you. If your parents allways told you to say please and thankyou, then you are more likely to do so in later life than somebody who was not. So, why not for political opinions?
 A person who grows up in China is more likely to become a communist than a person who grows up in America. You form opinions and attitudes through out your life but you early life is when you are the most easily influenced. This is why parents are so important.
 The President at the time effects the issues being debated at the time. If you grew up in poverty in the 1930s and then Mr Roosevelt came and gave you some benefits and your parents jobs, you would be more in favour of government intervention later in life.
 

[ilikeverin]

How you are socialised when you are young allways has an effect on you. If your parents allways told you to say please and thankyou, then you are more likely to do so in later life than somebody who was not.

Yes, because conscientiousness is heritable.  Conscientious people are more likely both to say please and thank you themselves and tell their children to say please and thank you.  Thus, there will be a correlation between the two in families where the children are biological kids of the parents, but causation comes from that third variable.

Furthermore, most sociological studies are conducted in the home.  Even if there were some sort of demonstrable positive affect of the parents who raise you upon your frequency of pleases and thank yous when around parents, I'm even less convinced that such an effect would be reproduced anywhere outside the house.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Of course people in China are more likely to be communist than those in the United States.  But if you take a person with Chinese communist parents and resettle them in the United States at a young age (even bringing over their Chinese communist parents with them), they will be no more likely to be communist than any other American.  Well, to be even more precise, they could be slightly more likely to be communist, given that many of their peers will be Chinese-Americans as well, a group that is probably more communist than most (given that there will be at least some members who have been partially socialized by their Chinese peers while living in China).  But if you were to move this Chinese kid to, say, rural South Dakota, without that peer group, there's no way in heck they'd ever have communist sympathies, unless they were talking to their crazy, flag-waving, Mao-idolizing parents (but they'd only be going through the motions).

[humder]

You must be logged in to read this quote.

 Yes, so the political environment you grow up in has an effect on your opinions. The President at the time sets the political environment and so this can effect your opinions. Younger people are more impressionable than older people, so the political environment matters most when they start forming their political opinions at a young age.

[Rob]

It could.  But I just see a correlation there.  To me, it seems like there might be a third factor causing both things.

The problem is that the Reagan era is not the only time in history this has happened. As humder implies, youth coming of age in the years of the New Deal voted much more Democratic than their elders; another pattern that persisted in election, after election, after election. People growing up in the early seventies under Nixon, who got their first real taste of politics with Watergate, have consistently voted more Democratic than the nation as a whole, (yet again) to this day.

I suppose you could make some argument as to how all of these effects are purely coincidental, and have nothing to do with the policies and popularity of the presidents. But I'm going to use Occam's Razor here and say that's garbage.

[ilikeverin]

You both seem to be making the same mistake, in my opinion.  The President doesn't set the political mood; I believe the President is a result of the political mood.  humder is correct when he says that young people have less set-in-stone political beliefs than others, and when he says that these political attitudes persist into adulthood (our quibble is with who does the influencing).  But these patterns you observe aren't the Presidents' doings; they're the result of the public shifting left or right at formative times, including peoples' peers, leading both to the election of different presidents and the underlying changes in the ideology witnessed in people of different age cohorts.  So it's "seventiesness" that led to the children of the seventies and the election of Nixon and Carter, "sixtiesness" that led to the children of the sixties and the election of Kennedy, LBJ, and Nixon, "fiftiesness" that led to the election of Ike, and so on.

[Brittain33]

You both seem to be making the same mistake, in my opinion.  The President doesn't set the political mood; I believe the President is a result of the political mood.

You think that the current tendencies among young people aren't a big reaction to George W. Bush and his supporters, but arose independently?

[ilikeverin]

You both seem to be making the same mistake, in my opinion.  The President doesn't set the political mood; I believe the President is a result of the political mood.

You think that the current tendencies among young people aren't a big reaction to George W. Bush and his supporters, but arose independently?

I think that the fact that George W. Bush's policies are viewed as unfavorable and the fact that the youth of America presently lean Democratic have arisen from the same sources.  Furthermore, I'm sure that quite a few kids would give George W. Bush as a justification for their liberalness; they'd be wrong, but they'd believe it quite earnestly.