Presidential Perceptions

One of Richard Nixon's most persistent Watergate defense themes is that he will never do anything to weaken the institution of the presidency. A study of children's attitudes toward the office by Political Scientist F. Christopher Arterton of Wellesley College indicates, however, that the Watergate scandal already has profoundly altered at least one small group of the younger generation's perceptions of the presidency.

Writing in the current issue of Political Science Quarterly, Arterton cites a national 1962 study that indicated that children in the third, fourth and fifth grades overwhelmingly idealized the President, viewing him as "benevolent, omniscient, omnipotent, protective, in fallible, diligent and likable." The professor's own much more limited current study of 367 children in the same grades in an upper-class Boston suburb (whose parents voted almost 2 to 1 for Nixon in 1972) shows a complete reversal. The President is now seen as what Arterton calls "truly malevolent, undependable, untrustworthy, yet powerful and danger ous." Where only 7% of the fourth-graders said of President Kennedy in 1962 that "he is not one of my favorites," 70% of Arterton's fourth-graders now hold that negative opinion of Nixon.

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