Javascript Dot Notation = Undefined

Dot notation allows for accessing objects with a '.' Cannot figure out why this is happening. I have the following success function, as part of a jQuery $.ajax function.

success: function(data){
  console.log('data = ' + data);
  console.log('data.president = ' + data.president);
  console.log('data.adviser = ' + data.adviser);
}

This, oddly, results in the following browser log:

data = {"president":1,"adviser":1}
data.president = undefined
data.adviser = undefined

I must be missing something painfully obvious. Can somebody enlighten me?