How long after a President leaves office does it take for his policies to take?
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  How long after a President leaves office does it take for his policies to take?
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Poll
Question: See below.
#1
Immediately - most policies are felt within his term
 
#2
Within the first term of his successor
 
#3
Eight to twelve years after he leaves office
 
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Total Voters: 14

Author Topic: How long after a President leaves office does it take for his policies to take?  (Read 797 times)
Meursault
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« on: April 21, 2014, 02:07:20 AM »
« edited: April 21, 2014, 02:09:03 AM by Meursault »

One of the great mysteries of policymaking is how long it takes for any given, particular policy to be felt after that President's term has expired.

Consider the controversy surrounding Jimmy Carter's influence on the "Reagan Recovery" of the 1980s. Obviously, partisan Republicans will attribute it solely to Reagan (and consequentially the recession of the early 1980s solely, or mostly, to Carter). But there's a large body of evidence that suggests the roots of the mid-80s bull market lay in decisions made by Carter during the 1978/1979 period - the appointment of the tightfisted Volcker to the chairmanship of the Federal Reserve, the introduction of neoliberal economics and deregulation to the national agenda by Carter, &etc. Reagan, in this view, would be seen as having done no more than cash in on a recovery already in the offing.

The economic recovery during the first half of the first Franklin Roosevelt term is another example of a problem of policy periodization. Before the dip in 1937, the economy showed marked improvements over the course of each year of Roosevelt's first term. But we may question (A) whether or not Roosevelt's New Deal policies had been in place long enough to have caused the improvement single-handedly, and (B) whether Herbert Hoover - who, as our Austrian friends incessantly and annoyingly remind us, basically created a proto-New Deal - may not have had a more immediate influence on the recovery.

Obviously some policies are immediate in their application: the Emancipation Proclamation freed all slaves on American soil immediately, and I do not question this immediacy. But I want to get at the lag with respect to more esoteric policies, usually fiscal ones. Answering this with any degree of accuracy would solve quite a few problems (such as why conservatives generally absolve Reagan of both the early-80s recession and the recession of the late 1980s).

Is it even possible to quantify this in any measurable sense? If not, then I'd argue that the Presidential republican system is founded on false premises and is not intellectually coherent.
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Mordecai
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« Reply #1 on: April 21, 2014, 04:09:32 AM »

It depends entirely on the particular President and policy, you can't really generalize this sort of thing.
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Antonio the Sixth
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« Reply #2 on: April 21, 2014, 04:10:49 AM »

It depends from the kind of policy. The effects of Clinton's budget policies were already visible by 1996, and the effect of the Irak War had become obvious by 2006 or so.
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Meursault
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« Reply #3 on: April 21, 2014, 04:15:28 AM »
« Edited: April 21, 2014, 04:25:05 AM by Meursault »

It depends entirely on the particular President and policy, you can't really generalize this sort of thing.

It depends from the kind of policy. The effects of Clinton's budget policies were already visible by 1996, and the effect of the Irak War had become obvious by 2006 or so.

I know this.

Obviously some policies are immediate in their application: the Emancipation Proclamation freed all slaves on American soil immediately, and I do not question this immediacy.

The problem I have, however, is that there are no readily obvious benchmarks to say that "X policy was enacted at such a time and achieved its goal at this other time" with most policy decisions.

In part, this is because the Presidential system is opaque; I think the public is accustomed to thinking that Presidential policies basically end with the term of the President who initiated them, and the changeover in personalities occupying the office serves to obscure the fact that this isn't so. Which is among the reasons I prefer direct democratic systems - personalities wouldn't 'get in the way' of observing policy outcomes over time.

EDIT: Let me explain my problem with this.

We can understand individual Administrations fairly well, and we can weave historically local narratives pretty easily (the 'Reagan Revolution' or the 'New Deal', say). Policy is more-or-less comprehensible on the small scale. But like Hemingway said, the past isn't even past - after so many items in a set, it seems to me to become increasingly difficult to separate one item from another.

The New Deal is obviously partially intact; Social Security still exists, for instance. But were Social Security's solvency issues 'baked into' the programme when it was first created, or are they the result of tinkering over decades and Administrations of both Parties? It's difficult to impossible to say, and the evidence is solid for both sides. This ambiguity is the result of the opacity I mentioned earlier.
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Angel of Death
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« Reply #4 on: April 21, 2014, 07:01:51 AM »

the Emancipation Proclamation freed all slaves on American soil immediately

Was your history education that poor?
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Meursault
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« Reply #5 on: April 21, 2014, 07:30:41 AM »

the Emancipation Proclamation freed all slaves on American soil immediately

Was your history education that poor?

*in the slave states

Good to see this forum is as pedantic as ever. My point is that the Emancipation Proclamation is an example of a piece of policy that had a more-or-less instantaneous effect and one which would have no direct carry-over into any subsequent administration.
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tik 🪀✨
ComradeCarter
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« Reply #6 on: April 23, 2014, 04:26:02 AM »

People here are totally that pedantic - your Emancipation Proclamation example is a poor one as it didn't really do anything at the time - it was a big eye-roll for people back then. When they heard about it from the town crier most people made jack off motions with their left hand.

Don't take offense, now, I enjoy reading your thoughts and contributions. But we have to be specific - a law takes effect when it is actively enforced. And that varies a lot. It seems you're pointing more in the direction of economic policies or how unrelated policies change the economy over time. An excellent question - I think that larger trends take about five years to come to fruition. I have no basis for that, and of course government policy doesn't influence everything. But five years feels right.
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Meursault
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« Reply #7 on: April 23, 2014, 04:45:37 AM »

Alright, then let's use FDR's gold confiscations as an example of an immediately effective policy. Whilst it obviously took time to physically get all that gold out of circulation, its effects were basically immediate and obvious. Contrast that to Nixon closing the gold window, for a similar type of policy: the aftershocks of that were still playing out in the oil inflation of the Carter Administration.
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MurrayBannerman
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« Reply #8 on: April 23, 2014, 10:55:05 AM »

the Emancipation Proclamation freed all slaves on American soil immediately

Was your history education that poor?

*in the slave states

Good to see this forum is as pedantic as ever. My point is that the Emancipation Proclamation is an example of a piece of policy that had a more-or-less instantaneous effect and one which would have no direct carry-over into any subsequent administration.
They were a separate country. The Emancipation Proclamation did nothing outside of keeping the British out of the war.
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SWE
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« Reply #9 on: April 23, 2014, 02:17:17 PM »

the Emancipation Proclamation freed all slaves on American soil immediately

Was your history education that poor?

*in the slave states

Good to see this forum is as pedantic as ever. My point is that the Emancipation Proclamation is an example of a piece of policy that had a more-or-less instantaneous effect and one which would have no direct carry-over into any subsequent administration.
They were a separate country. The Emancipation Proclamation did nothing outside of keeping the British out of the war.
2,000-5,000 slaves in occupied territories were immediately freed, and more than 3 million slaves were eventually freed by the Proclamation. To say the Proclamation did nothing is simply ignorant to history.
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Atlas Has Shrugged
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« Reply #10 on: April 23, 2014, 02:53:00 PM »

the Emancipation Proclamation freed all slaves on American soil immediately

Was your history education that poor?

*in the slave states

Good to see this forum is as pedantic as ever. My point is that the Emancipation Proclamation is an example of a piece of policy that had a more-or-less instantaneous effect and one which would have no direct carry-over into any subsequent administration.
They were a separate country. The Emancipation Proclamation did nothing outside of keeping the British out of the war.
2,000-5,000 slaves in occupied territories were immediately freed, and more than 3 million slaves were eventually freed by the Proclamation. To say the Proclamation did nothing is simply ignorant to history.
But the point is how immediate the reaction was. 5,000 slaves does not make up for the millions still left in the unoccupied territories, who were freed whenever the Union Army arrived in their area.
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