The theory outlined in the previous chapter argues that voters define presidential leadership as representation and strength. And in evaluating whether a president is a good and/or effective leader in this sense, voters compare the actual behavior of presidents with an idealized standard. The closer a president comes to fulfilling the voter's expectation concerning representation and strength, the more positive the voter's evaluation will be of the president's leadership. This chapter reviews evidence on the theoretical assumption that voters value representation and strength from presidents, followed by a review of existing evidence relating to the public demand for representation and strength in presidents.

THE PUBLIC DEMAND FOR PRESIDENTIAL REPRESENTATION

There is neither theory nor empirical evidence to tell us whether voters prefer dyadic or collective representation from presidents or how they balance these two representational demands when they conflict. In fact, it is difficult to both design and locate poll questions or studies that have studied this issue. Voters would probably say that they want both types of representation from the president. Yet, as I reviewed above, for many voters, there is a trade-off or tension between collective and dyadic representation from presidents.

In the following sections, I review what I have been able to locate that bears on the trade-off between collective and dyadic representation as it pertains to the president, and little of it is directly on point. First, Kinder et al. (1980), using 1979 survey data, asked respondents a host of questions regarding desirable traits in presidents. They do not present direct evidence that the public has a preference for representation from presidents, but several of their items relate to the concept of presidential representation. For instance, they find that 46 percent and 31 percent of respondents say it is important that presidents “communicate openly with the public” and “understand the little people,” while another 32 percent and 48 percent say it is bad if presidents “become isolated from the people” and “favor special interest groups” (p. 319). Most telling is that the public desires a president who represents the entire nation and not special interests.