Is Time on Their Side? Understanding the Relationship Between Presidents and the House of Representatives.

According to scholars and the media, second term presidents, often known during their second term as lame ducks, are less successful in policymaking than earlier in their term. While political scientists and the media speak of second term presidents negatively referring to them as "lame ducks", no empirical evidence has been done to test whether the statements commonly made above are actually supported. This paper explores the theory that second term presidents are not as successful by looking at the president's relationship with the House of Representatives. President's relationship with Congress is important to his overall success, and thus this paper looks at whether time affects relations between the president and the House. Using multivariate analysis, three hypotheses are tested to look at such relations over time. Suggested in this paper is that the longer the president is in office, the more likely that the House of Representative support scores of the president will decline. The second and third hypotheses are based on party support; the longer a president is in office, the more likely that Democrat and Republican support scores of the president will decline. Regression analysis shows that the amount of time a president holds office does not explain the decline in relations; only be looking at how other variables affect time can the "lame duck jinx" be explained. These variables include party identification of both the members of the House and the President, public approval ratings, control of the house, congressional investigations, and number of administrative changes. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]