Could A Slew Of New Congressional Investigations Erode Trump's Approval Rating?

Investigation season is here. The House Oversight and Reform Committee announced Michael Cohen, the president’s former lawyer, will testify publicly on Feb. 7, which will be followed the next day in the House Judiciary Committee by public testimony from acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker. The hearings may not include any bombshells about the content of the Russia investigation, since House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff said they hope to discuss that topic in closed-door testimony with Cohen. But it still will be an early test of how effectively House Democrats can marshal their newfound investigative abilities — a power that has significantly weakened previous presidencies but is not without risks.

At their core, congressional investigations are a form of political theater, which means their success won’t just depend on what Democrats find but how they present it. There is evidence that congressional investigations can erode presidential support, especially when the government is divided like it is now, but if hearings are unfocused, too technical or appear petty, they can either be ignored by the media or dismissed by the president and his supporters as partisan “harassment.” Congressional investigations can be an extremely powerful tool in a divided government — but only if the investigations make a clear, coherent case for executive branch wrongdoing.

It is, of course, impossible to predict exactly what Democrats will uncover in a hearing like Cohen’s or in their potentially numerous other investigations, but we do know two things from studies on previous congressional investigations. First, House investigations have tended to be concentrated during periods of divided government. And second, this increased activity or “weaponization” of the congressional investigation process can weaken the president significantly in the public’s eye.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/could-a-slew-of-new-congressional-investigations-erode-trumps-approval-rating/


Douglas Kriner, a professor of government at Cornell University, and Eric Schickler, a political science professor at the University of California, Berkeley, published a book that analyzed congressional investigations of the executive branch. According to their dataset, between 1953 and 2014, there were on average 37 more investigative days1 when the party controlling the House differed from the president’s party.