Richard Waterman, Carol L. Silva, and Hank Jenkins-Smith have tackled head-on the concept of a gap between public expectations of a president and the actual capability of presidents to secure concrete accomplishments in office. Many presidential scholars have acknowledged the existence of this presidential expectations gap (see, e.g., Thomas Cronin and Michael Genovese, The Paradoxes of the American Presidency, 2013, for their examination of contradictory public expectations), although the authors note that some still question it (e.g., Richard M. Pious, The American Presidency, 1996). Where this book advances the conversation about this gap between public perceptions and presidential achievements is in its steady focus on providing empirical evidence to prove by systematic analysis the existence of this disparity and, even more significantly, to demonstrate that the effects of this gap have substantial political consequences on the presidency as well as on broader aspects of American democracy, such as the level of trust in government (especially in its leaders both in Congress and the White House) and perceptions of political efficacy.

Presidents and the public alike should take pause at that conclusion. At a time when deep cynicism about politics rules the realm, these authors show us how the public’s unrealistic preconceptions about what one person can accomplish (albeit, with the bureaucratic apparatus that comes with the office) create a vicious cycle: The public over-expects and the president under-delivers, with the inevitable result of perpetual public disappointment in presidential performance. Waterman, Silva, and Jenkins-Smith then carry this logic one step further by showing empirically that this public dissatisfaction leads to a destructive loss of trust in government, which negatively affects the political status of an incumbent president and his party, i.e., leading to drops in public approval for the president and a reduced likelihood of winning re-election, while also boosting the fortunes of the opposition party in midterm elections.

Historically, the conception of the presidency is strongly correlated with the role of the federal government. As government expanded, beginning in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, so did the public’s perception of the need for stronger leadership in the White House. Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and later, Franklin Roosevelt presided over this expansion, fueled by centralization of the economy and a greater role for the United States as an international actor. All three also understood the role that rhetoric came to play as a resource for presidents to connect with the public and, consequently for the public, to focus greater attention on the federal government and on the president. The authors harken back to Theodore Lowi’s observation in The Personal President (1985) of the double-edged-sword nature of expanded expectations that “reinforce(s) the mythology that there actually exists in the White House a ‘capacity to govern’” (Lowi, p. 151, as cited in Waterman, Silva, and Jenkins-Smith, p. 12). Modern presidents face increasingly greater challenges than their predecessors in “the art of governing” (p. 18), characterized by responsibility for managing the economy, confronting intractable foreign policy crises, being subjected to increased scrutiny by the press, and navigating the treacherous shoals of divided government. It is small wonder that leaders fall short of inflated expectations.

This study is an ambitious project that draws upon five surveys of public opinion that the authors conducted from 1996–2007. It proceeds in five parts: 1) defining and explaining the expectations gap in historical perspective, and examining how scholars have approached this concept: the primary features of the “gap” are “a pattern of declining presidential approval ratings over time” (p. 30) and an unflattering comparison of the incumbent president with the ideal type (i.e., FDR) (Chapters 1–4); 2) testing their thesis by looking at contemporaneous public attitudes about the recent presidencies of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush (Chapters 5–8); 3) comparing the results for Clinton and Bush during their terms in office with retrospective approval ratings of past presidents; 4) examining the presidency of Barack Obama as a case study of a president (who shares this feature with all presidents) who, once in office, soon acknowledges the unrealistic expectations he imposed upon himself during his campaign (Chapter 9); and 5) offering explanations of the determinants of the gap, and extrapolating from the data to suggest that public discontent is wider than just with the presidency alone, but, rather, extends to the broader governmental system (Chapters 10 and 11).

Some interesting findings are: 1) that the public evaluates incumbent presidents lower than their predecessors regardless of party affiliations (e.g., while in office, Clinton in 1996 was rated lower than almost all of his eight predecessors, but was rated far higher, ten years later, when out of office: George W. Bush, while in office in 2007, was also rated far lower than his immediate four predecessors); 2) in an election year, incumbents are rated lower than their challenger, even when the incumbent is ultimately re-elected; 3) even in non-election years, the expectations gap contributes to lower presidential approval ratings; 4) all members of the public expect a president to preside over a healthy economy, and when the economy is robust, both parties will credit the president and reward him with high approval ratings; 5) the public consistently rates “sound judgment in a crisis” as the most important foreign policy leadership attribute, even more than “experience in foreign affairs”; 6) Barack Obama campaigned in soaring rhetoric and made promises that were impossible to keep, and even in the face of major legislative victories in his second year, his approval ratings steadily declined, as the public ignored his accomplishments—an example of the candidate/incumbent expectations gap; and 7) when comparing performance expectations for an ideal type president with those for an incumbent president, the level of trust in government and political efficacy were the two factors that provided the strongest evidence for the existence of an expectations gap. However, trust in government was not related to the expectations gap in the same way as trust in leaders. Respondents with greater trust in leaders were more likely to be satisfied (and, thus, the expectations gap would be smaller), while respondents with greater trust in government were more likely to “look to the White House for leadership” (p. 150), meaning that they had higher expectations of favorable benefits or policies from the president (i.e., they favor activist government), but were most likely to be disappointed when presidents failed to deliver, and would thus register a larger expectations gap.

The main contributions of this book are that 1) it directly tests the assumptions that scholars have long harbored but had not actually endeavored to prove through empirical testing; and 2) it presents especially sobering conclusions that the wider effects of this gap go well beyond the presidency to the health of the polity, as a whole. The expectations gap, the authors suggest, affects all modern presidents, admits of no likely solution, and yet, may not even be “presidency-centric” (p. 162), as there is an expectations gap for Congress as well. It will not be sufficient (or reasonable) to ask presidential candidates to scale down their rhetoric or promises, or to recommend that the media and voters be more realistic or less polarized in their evaluations of candidates and incumbents. Rather, the authors paint a grim picture of an increasingly dysfunctional political system that prompts ever more dissatisfaction from the public, where only asking and answering the “big” questions about how to make government work better, how to promote greater trust in leaders, and how to increase political efficacy may provide a way forward and out of the expectations gap.