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| PUBLIC RESPONSE | |
 December 14, 1998 
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How has the media covered the House Judiciary Committee's impeachment hearings? Following a report by Media correspondent Terence Smith, pollster Andrew Kohut discusses the American people's reaction to the impeachment vote.
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MARGARET WARNER: How are the American people reacting to impeachment developments in Washington? To help us look at that, we're joined by Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. |
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They're not really riveted to it. |
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MARGARET WARNER: So, Andy, is the American public paying attention to all this?
MARGARET WARNER: So what does the public want to have happen? Do they want to see the president impeached?
MARGARET WARNER: Is there any movement, is there any trend in this?
MARGARET WARNER: But the trend is certainly not in the president's direction. ANDREW KOHUT: It's not in the president's direction but overwhelmingly the public is still of the - of the point of view that this should not happen.
ANDREW KOHUT: Well, the public favors censure over impeachment, clearly, and even if you ask people if you don't favor impeachment, should we drop the matter, or should he be censured, the public continues to say, yes, something should happen, and censure is the appropriate punishment. MARGARET WARNER: How does the public feel about the president - whether he committed the offenses that the Republicans are charging him with?
MARGARET WARNER: Where do they come down on the question that was once again raised by the Republican leaders, as we just saw in Terry's piece - yesterday - which is that they said the president should resign - does the public want that? ANDREW KOHUT: No. Even though there's a growing perception that the president - that the president is likely to be - if there's a vote for impeachment, the percentage saying he should resign is still only about 37 percent. We keep coming in on about a third of the public saying he should go in one way or another, and it never gets too much higher than that. MARGARET WARNER: What do they think, Andy, of the various players in this drama, the Republicans on the Hill, the Democrats, the president, and so on? How do they think everyone's conducted themselves?
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MARGARET WARNER: And how about how Americans feel about Congress as an institution - I mean, even though - as we heard from Terry - a lot of people are not watching gavel-to-gavel coverage, we're really seeing through the House Judiciary Committee what we will see on the floor - Congress in action - how does it affect how people feel about it as an institution? ANDREW KOHUT: 53 percent say they have less respect for the Congress as a consequence. The favorability rating in our poll for the Congress has gone down from 62 percent favorable in September to 52 percent favorable in the poll that we conducted this weekend. This is not helping Congress. It's certainly not helping the Republican Party. MARGARET WARNER: So when you sort of sift off through all of this, we'd see that the public doesn't want him impeached, but how alarmed are they at the prospect of impeachment? In other words, can you see them responding to the cry that Robert Wexler made about America, wake up, and sort of to the barricades?
MARGARET WARNER: They think next year will actually be better than this year. ANDREW KOHUT: Will be better than this good year, and there's a sense of taking this in stride mainly because - or at least in part - because the public sees the Republicans and the Democrats arguing with one another, and we're not quite clear that this is going to come down to a bottom line - getting rid of Bill Clinton. MARGARET WARNER: All right. Well, thank you, Andy, very much. ANDREW KOHUT: You're welcome. |
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ANDREW
KOHUT: Somewhat, but they're not really riveted to it is, as they are
to major stories. We do a monthly news interest index asking people
how closely they pay attention to major stories, and, in fact, we have
a slide from this weekend's poll, and we find a moderate level of interest,
32 percent paying very close attention, 38 percent fairly close attention.
That makes it the 16th ranked story of the year. It may be historic
in historic terms, but in terms of public attention it's number 16 in
the Pew Center list. And when the Gallup Poll asked how closely are
you following the proceedings, themselves, they only found 16 percent.
So the public is not ignoring it, but it's certainly not galvanized
by this story. 
ANDREW
KOHUT: Well, if you look at the basic thumbs up/thumbs down question,
again, we have a slide based upon what you know - should the president
be impeached and removed from office - we get 67 percent that we should
not, 29 percent, yes, he should, about what the Gallup Poll has shown.
This poll was conducted this past weekend - about what the Gallup Poll
has shown over the course of the month and before the historic - so-called
historic vote. 
ANDREW
KOHUT: Well, the ABC Poll and the Gallup Poll, when they disentangle
this question and ask about should a trial take place, there has been
some increase in support, and here we have the ABC Poll trend, in favor
of sending the case to the Senate. But, again, it's only 38 percent
up from 33 percent a week ago, but 60 percent continue to say no. And
when Gallup and ABC - or at least Gallup does the follow-up question
- well, should the Senate convict the president, it goes back down to
35 percent. Bottom line- 
MARGARET
WARNER: Now, the White House keeps pointing out, saying that a majority
of the public - in fact, the president said ¾ of the American public
- wants the Congress to offer censure as an alternative and, in fact,
choose censure as an alternative. Is that true? Is the public - 
ANDREW
KOHUT: Well, they think he's guilty. 80 percent think he's guilty of
lying. 70 percent think he's guilty of perjury, and 50 percent think
he's guilty of obstruction of justice. But when you ask the follow-up
question, are these crimes, are these wrongdoings, do they justify his
removal from office, one by one, as the pollsters go down the list,
they get 40 percent at most saying, yes. And people say, yes, he's done
wrong things; no, they're not - not worth getting rid of a president
who's performed well over these issues. 
ANDREW
KOHUT: Well, simply, no one looks good. In our poll this week - we read
the laundry list and the Republicans in Congress - and we have a graph
on that - 33 percent approve of the way the Republicans have been handling
it; 59 percent disapprove. Democrats in Congress look a little bit better
with 44 to 46. But the president doesn't look very good. Even though
his approval ratings are still up there in the 60's, his performance
in this particular - in the scandal is not very good. In fact, criticism
of him was somewhat higher after he made his talk this weekend than
it was prior to that. So he didn't help himself, and that doesn't get
a lot of sympathy for the way he's conducting himself in this - with
regard to this investigation. 
ANDREW
KOHUT: We don't see a lot of alarm. This weekend when we conduct our
poll and we said to the American public, has this been a good year or
a bad year, for you and the country, 72 percent said it's been a good
year. And then we said on the weekend of this vote, what do you expect
for next year, will it be better than this good year? 59 percent said
yes. There is a sense of taking this - and there's a slide showing that
59 percent. There's -