The Fallacy of 'Going Public': Old Fears, New Strategies, Premature Assessments
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The Fallacy of ‘Going Public’: Old Fears, New Strategies, Premature Assessments Diana Ichpekova University of Bristol © Diana Ichpekova School of Sociology, Politics, and International Studies, University of Bristol Working Paper No. 01-09 Diana Ichpekova is currently a Ph.D. student in the Department of Political Science at the University of California, Los Angeles. Diana graduated from the University of Bristol with a BSc in Joint Economic and Politics, with First-Class Honours, in 2007. At UCLA, Diana is double-majoring in American Politics and Quantitative Methods, undertaking research in the areas of political psychology, mass public opinion, the media, political and electoral behaviour, and the American presidency. She also has a keen interest in the politics of post-Communist Central and Eastern Europe and has recently written on the issues of public trust and transitional justice in the region. Aside from her Ph.D. studies, Diana works on the editorial team of the American Political Science Review. This paper, originally a BSc dissertation, received the highest mark of awarded any BSc dissertation in Politics at the University of Bristol in 2006-7. President Clinton, addressing a crowd in Market Square, Dundalk, Ireland http://www.randomhouse.com/knopf/clinton/photos/ins4.gif 2 Contents Introduction: Unravelling the Grounds for the Debate 2 Chapter I: Setting Up the Stage for the Presidential Spectacle 7 Chapter II: The President Takes the Mic, But is Anybody Listening? 12 Trends in Presidential Speechmaking 12 The Effects of Speaking Out 16 Rallies as Temporary Opportunities for Influence 21 Chapter III: The Public Thinks for Itself 23 The Concept of Issue Salience: Why It Matters 23 The Nature of Public Opinion 25 The Economy Speaks Louder than Words 26 The President’s Predicament 29 Chapter IV: The Underlying Forces of Public Opinion 32 Ronald Reagan: The Real Secret Behind the Charm 32 Underlying Cycles of ‘National Mood’ 35 The Inevitable Decline in Support I: The Expectations Gap and Presidential Decay Curves 36 The Inevitable Decline in Support II: Diminishing Political Trust 39 Chapter V: Concluding Remarks: The Fallacy Revealed 42 Bibliography 46 3 Introduction: Unravelling the Grounds for the Debate “Power is based on opinion. What is government not supported by opinion? Nothing.” (Napoleon, cited in Ellul 1973: 123) Studying the contemporary scholarly literature and observing the behaviours of recent American presidents, it would seem that Napoleon’s words largely echo the emerging consensus regarding effectual presidential leadership in today’s United States (Tatalovich & Engeman 2002: 218, Cook 2002: 753). Fearful of tyranny and abhorring executive dominance, the Founding Fathers certainly sought to stifle presidential headship and ensnarl the president in a web of restraints and checks (Shogan 1999: 13, Genovese 2003: 54; Cronin & Genovese 2004: 3, Graubard 2004: 3, Lind 2004: 188, Fisher 2004: 108). Unmistakable, on the other hand, is the fact that the executive office of our day is a far cry from that envisioned and designed in the hot summer of 1787 (Maltese 2003: 148, Pika & Maltese 2004: 25, Tulis 2006: 59). No longer constrained by a “powerful political norm” (Laracey 2002: 3), which previously censured direct public appeals in favour of strict, undeviating and written deliberation with Congress, twentieth-century presidents have been better known as ‘rhetorical’ or ‘public’ presidents (Ceaser, Thurow, Tulis & Bessette 1981; Tulis 1987, 1996, 2006, Edwards 1983, 1996, 2000a: 50, Campbell & Jamieson 1990, Stuckey 1990, Zarefsky 1990, Windt 1990, Medhurst 1993, Smith & Smith 1994, Dorsey 1995, Thurow 1996). These presidents now aspire to lead the country through 4 “popular speeches aimed at the masses, the sort of oratory that the constitutional framers regarded with suspicion” (Ivie 1996: 158. See also Rozell 2003: 135, Miroff 2006: 255). Rather than spending time nurturing their relations with legislators, these public presidents are continuously embroiled in a whirlwind of image-enhancing activities, arguably turning the modern presidency into “a perennial campaign, combined with the essential features of a television network and a Hollywood studio” (Gould 2003: 236-7. See also Blumenthal 1980, Loomis 2000). As perhaps most notoriously defined by Samuel Kernell (1997: 2), these modern chief executives are increasingly likely to ‘go public,’ adopting “a strategy whereby a president promotes himself and his policies in Washington by appealing to the American public for support…Forcing compliance from fellow Washingtonians by going over their heads to appeal to their constituents.” Consequentially, since the earliest signs of its instigation, the preponderance of scholarly work scrutinising this emerging mode of governance has been broadly disparaging, stipulating that in this “era when almost everything is bought and sold, when packaging and spin are often indistinguishable from reality, and when ulterior motives seem to lurk behind almost every friendly encounter, [it is clear that] our democratic process needs help” (Reich 1997, cited in Waterman, Wright & St. Clair 1999: 12. See also Edwards III 1996, 2000a). But whilst it may be true that modern presidents have often attempted to use symbols, extensive polling and crafty rhetoric to advantageously influence public opinion and bypass Congress, it would seem reasonable to contend that the adverse implications associated with this leadership strategy, such as suboptimal policy outcomes, tarnished executive-legislative relations and potential Congressional submissiveness, only materialise and become relevant if the chief executive can shape public attitudes 5 in the first place (Edwards III 1980, 1989, Hart & Kendall 1996: 86, Warshaw 2000: 301-2). Undoubtedly, “going public renders the president’s future influence ever more dependant upon his ability to generate popular support” (Kernell (1997: 4), but a public president may very well find that “all the techniques of Madison Avenue and the advertising industry may be incapable of fundamentally altering how the public feels about its leading political leader” (Cohen 2001: 734). Certainly, a glance into American political history, and, in particular, noting the presidency of Bill Clinton, “the ultimate example of the rhetorical presidency” (Edwards III 2000b: 33), would certainly insinuate that ‘going public’ offers no guarantee of legislative success or of a receptive mass public (Jamieson & Cappella 1998, Campbell 2000: 49, Sinclair 2000: 93, Fisher 2002, Cook 2002: 755, Rozell 2003: 144, Gould 2003: 213, Jacobs 2006: 289). In this sense, thus, it would seem that the political literature on the public presidency, primarily “equat[ing] rhetoric with myth and both with deception, cliché, exhortation, emotional appeals, manipulation [and] storytelling” (Ivie 1996: 157) has disproportionately emphasised presidential efforts at leading the public (see Hart 1987, Tulis 1987, 1996, 2006, Smith & Smith 1994, Edwards III 1996, 2000a: 50). The power to do so has been assumed (Ivie 1996: 158, Edwards III & Eshbaugh-Soha 2000: 4). As Edwards III (1996: 200) most compellingly puts it, “underlying most of the work on political rhetoric, however, is the premise that rhetoric matters-not just to the speaker, but, most importantly, to the audience…the assumption of the influence of rhetoric is pervasive in the literature and central to the justification of rhetoric as a field of study.” 6 Prompted by this apparent necessity for an in-depth analysis into the effects of recent presidential ‘public relations’ endeavours, this study will explore a chief executive’s underlying scope for influencing public opinion. By critically examining the core condition for any president striving to ‘go public,’ the paper should thereby offer a vital contribution to the political literature investigating the development of the modern presidency and, even more generally, to the study of American Government and Politics. “In an age where the visual image and the related reaction to symbolism has become so all-pervasively important…the public presidency cannot be ignored” (Gregg II 2004: 89). Most urgently needed, however, is systematic research assessing the degree to which modern American presidents will effectively be able to utilise the opportunities presented by ‘going public.’ Armed with this objective, Chapter I commences with a comprehensive review of the scholarly literature on the public presidency, assessing, in particular, the rationale behind this style of leadership and illustrating its various manifestations within the White House. Chapter II initiates the formal analysis by moving beyond reviews of the calculating strategies invoked by presidents and, instead, thoroughly examining the theoretical, empirical and quantitative data regarding the documented impacts of presidential speechmaking on American public opinion. Having established the possibilities and limitations associated with direct public appeals, Chapter III investigates an alternative path for presidential influence. Specifically, it evaluates the presence and significance of issue salience on a chief executive’s prospects, analysing the extent to which public presidents can raise public awareness of an issue or advantageously frame the public debate, so as to indirectly shape the policy agenda and tweak their own evaluations. Chapter IV then considers these capabilities in light 7 of Ronald Reagan, notoriously depicted to be a “public relations phenomenon”