Pulping the bully approach to presidential leadership V: a counter-argument

Returning once more to Frances E. Lee's demonstration that presidential advocacy of a specific policy increases partisan polarization on that issue: one strand in Lee's data may call in question the notion that Obama can best foster a comprehensive tax/budget reform compromise by keeping a low profile at this stage (because a detailed presidential plan would immediately harden the party battle lines).

Yesterday I noted that according to Lee's statistical analysis in Beyond Ideology: Politics, Principles and Partisanship int he U.S. Senate, tax policy is already so polarized by party that there's not that much room for a President to worsen the division. Therefore, presidential advocacy on tax issues has less of a polarizing effect than presidential advocacy on most issues. More generally, presidential input has a more measurable polarizing effect on issues that are not strongly maked by ideology, such as space exploration, than on issues where ideology already clearly divides the parties.

Presidential input increases partisan division by increasing both parties' voting cohesion.  So again, perhaps if the president does not "go first" in laying out a plan for long-term tax/budget reform, he can increase the chances of a bipartisan compromise. But here's the rub: according to Lee's data, on strongly marked ideologial issues presidential input increases his own party's cohesion signficantly more than the opposing party's. For tax policy, from 1991-2004, presidential input increased his own party's cohesion on roll call votes 10.2 points, from 53.7 to 63.9, while slightly reducing opposite party cohesion, from 48.5 to 47.3.