Right-Wing Authoritarianism, Party Identification, and Attitudes Toward Feminism in Student Evaluations of the Clinton-Lewinsky Story

This study explored the relationship among undergraduates' right-wing authoritarianism (as measured by the RWA scale), attitudes toward feminism, party identification, gender, and attitudes about the Clinton-Lewinsky relationship. Factor analysis yielded three subscales, reflecting participants' evaluations of Clinton's morality, the affair, and Kenneth Starr (the independent counsel). Republican identification was related to each subscale and also mediated the relationship between RWA and two subscales, which illustrates how party identification channels the expression of personality variables in partisan contexts. In addition, RWA—especially those items tapping aggression—was directly related to negative evaluations of Clinton, which suggests a punitiveness going beyond the mere channeling of opinions by party identification. Attitudes toward feminism were unrelated to the subscales, possibly because feminism supporters viewed Clinton's policies positively but his behavior negatively. However, females did give significantly lower evaluations of Clinton and the affair.     

Leadership Image-Building: After Clinton and Watergate

Leadership images are built collectively by leaders and their relevantconstituencies—elected officials, the news media, and the public. The process of buildingleadership image rests on prior expectations about the leader, policy outputs, the course ofevents, and the disposition of political resources. In building images of leadership, each of thethree constituencies puts more weight on some aspects of image-building than on others: Thepublic sees the president primarily in terms of his previous behavior, the media view thepresident through the lens of immediate events, and other elected officials focus on politicalresources. One of the president's most important resources is his public image. It can helphim to maintain the loyalty of other officials, which in turn contributes to balanced newscoverage, even in times of crisis. President Clinton was able to preserve his public image throughthe impeachment debacle in large part because of low public expectations about his personalmoral behavior and satisfaction with his economic leadership. Conversely, President Nixon wasforced to resign because of high public expectations about his personal probity anddisappointment with his management of the economy.