Is there any chance that President Trump’s missile strikes and military action in Syria will raise support for his healthcare reform agenda? It’s possible, but they probably won’t. Here’s why.
Throughout history, pollsters have found that presidents who take military action sometimes see a temporary spike in their approval ratings, thanks to what’s called the “rally ’round the flag effect.” Approval ratings for President George W. Bush, for example, jumped by more than 10 percentage points after the initial invasion of Iraq and then again when Saddam Hussein was captured.
Historically, presidents have used that boost in their approval ratings to raise support in Congress not just for the war effort, but for other parts of their domestic agenda as well. Remember all the bipartisan support for No Child Left Behind, which was signed into law just months after the Sept. 11 attacks, another rally ’round the flag event that gave Bush a huge approval boost?
So it’s plausible that, if Trump were to get a big approval boost for taking military action in Syria, he’d use that to raise support in Congress for repealing Obamacare, tax reform, infrastructure, etc.
The problem for Trump is, the rally ’round the flag effect is basically hit or miss. And presidents don’t have a very good batting average.
A team of researchers looked at 167 military actions from 1933 to 1993 and found that 65 of them gave the president a bump in his approval ratings. That’s almost 40 percent of the time, which isn’t too bad. But the average increase in approval is quite small: 0.1 percentage points.
That’s not exactly going to help Trump’s already-miserable approval ratings.
Of course, we won’t know until next week what public opinion polls say about Trump’s actions in Syria. But researchers say five things help a president get a big approval boost from military action:
- If the action has bipartisan support. (Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., praised Trump’s actions, but Democrats don’t appear to be unanimously behind it.)
- If the action is taken against a major power. (Syria isn’t exactly a major power, but perhaps Trump could frame his actions as a check on Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin. That might help.)
- If the action has support from the United Nations Security Council. (Trump launched the missile strikes without warning, so the Security Council hasn’t weighed in. If he had gone to the UN, Russia would have vetoed the resolution. But I suspect this factor is less about the Security Council and more about Americans’ aversion to unilateralism.)
- If the action has a “revisionist goal,” meaning it tries to right an international wrong. (Trump’s action is more retaliatory for Assad’s chemical weapons attack than revisionist, but perhaps he’ll get a boost from this factor anyway.)
- If the action is taken in a presidency’s early stages. (We’re only on Day 78 of the Trump administration, so it’s safe to say he can check this box.)
At the same time, it seems like the bigger the military action, the bigger the boost in support. Missile strikes are significant, to be sure, but they’re not the same as putting boots on the ground.
So, can the Syrian missile strikes increase support for repealing Obamacare? Probably not. But maybe.
Jason Russell is the contributors editor for the Washington Examiner.
