Year: 1999
Type: article
Abstract: Throughout the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, media pundits and commentators puzzled and despaired that Americans were not more outraged at their president's behavior (Kurtz 1998).Opinion poll after poll showed that most Americans believed the president had an affair with the White House intern and lied about it, gave Clinton very high approval ratings, and disapproved of the House members conducting the impeachment trial.How could Americans give high ratings to an admitted lecher, liar, and adulterer?What were Americans' values?Was Clinton the new "Teflon President?"Why? My colleagues and I at the Catholic University of America fielded numerous queries from reporters who could not reconcile the public's reaction to the scandal with the rise of the Christian Right, Promise Keepers, and the Million Man and Million Woman Marches.After much deliberation, I have concluded that a theory advanced by James Rosenau, an international relations theorist from George Washington University who studies changes in the system of sovereign states, can lead to an explanation of the U.S. public's reaction.Rosenau (1990, 1995; Rosenau and Fagen 1997) has contended that globalization and the spread of technology has made citizens more skillful in gathering and using a variety of information and analyzing how it affects them.This information and skills revolution has changed the nature of political authority.As regimes in China, Nigeria, Indonesia, and South Africa have learned, citizens are becoming less deferential to traditional sources and claims of authority and legitimacy and are paying more attention to the performance of their leaders.According to Rosenau, citizens arc beginning to
Source: PS Political Science & Politics
Author: Sanford G. Thatcher
Institution: Pennsylvania State University
Language: English
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W2086845837