Party Polarization and the Ascendance of
Bipartisan Posturing as a Dominant Strategy in
Presidential Rhetoric
JESSE H. RHODES
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
How do changes in the intensity of party conflict shape presidents’ public presentations of
self? Are presidents’ public statements about parties and partisanship consistent with their
political maneuvers behind the scenes? When do presidents have incentives to obfuscate about
their party leadership efforts? Drawing on comprehensive data on presidents’ public utterances
about the parties and on qualitative information about presidents’ strategic incentives and
activities, this article shows that presidents have responded to increasing partisan polarization
among members of Congress and party activists by adopting a more bipartisan leadership
posture. The evidence suggests that presidents’ increasing invocation of bipartisan themes does not
mean that presidents have become more consensus-minded; rather, presidents use bipartisan
rhetoric strategically, in an effort to cultivate support from voters disaffected by partisan conflict.
How do changes in the intensity of party conflict shape presidents’ public presentations of self? Are presidents’ public statements about parties and partisanship consistent with their political maneuvers behind the scenes? When do presidents have
incentives to obfuscate about their party leadership efforts? Given the centrality of the
presidency in the American political system, answering these questions is a pressing task
for analysts concerned about the practice of American democracy. Unfortunately, in spite
of considerable interest in the causes and consequences of today’s partisan battles, we
currently have little systematic evidence about how changes in partisan polarization over
Jesse H. Rhodes is an associate professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and author
of An Education in Politics: The Origin and Evolution of No Child Left Behind as well as numerous articles.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: I would like to thank Joseph Delfino for outstanding research assistance, and Stephen
Skowronek, Bruce Miroff, Matthew Grossman, Brian Schaffner, Ray LaRaja, Tatishe Nteta, Maryann Barakso, and
Bruce Desmarais for helpful comments and criticism. I gratefully acknowledge support from a Faculty Research Grant
from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Presidential Studies Quarterly 44, no. 1 (March)
© 2014 Center for the Study of the Presidency
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time affect the relationship between presidents’ public rhetoric and their private actions
in the partisan sphere (Cameron 2002; Cohen 2011).
This article seeks to set an agenda for studying the relationship between partisan
polarization and presidents’ rhetorical strategies, employing a case study of the 1977-2012
period—an era of rapidly intensifying partisan polarization—to develop and test a novel
theory of presidential party rhetoric. Drawing on a new data set of every public presidential
statement about one or both political parties in the Public Papers of the Presidents of the United
States (PPPUS) over the period 1977-2012—more than 21,000 statements in all—I
investigate how presidential rhetoric about parties and partisanship has evolved during a
period of intensifying partisan polarization. My research reveals a dramatic upsurge in
bipartisan rhetoric—and a concomitant decline in partisan rhetoric—by both Democratic
and Republican presidents over the past several decades, corresponding with the rise in
partisan polarization among party activists and elected officials.
Then, using quantitative comparisons and historical process tracing to interpret
these trends, I argue that presidents’ increasing invocation of bipartisan themes in their
public rhetoric about parties and partisanship over the 1977-2012 period reflects an
effort to cope with partisan polarization and reach out to the millions of citizens
disaffected by rancorous partisan conflict (Harbridge and Malhotra 2011; Hibbing and
Theiss-Morse 2002; Milkis, Rhodes, and Charnock 2012). While recent presidents have
held very different political ideologies and have experienced very different governing
opportunities, they have all presided in an era of intensifying partisan polarization. Faced
with intractable conflict between Democrats and Republicans over the trajectory of
domestic and foreign policy, recent presidents have increasingly sought to rise above
the fray of partisan politics in order to present a more congenial image, appealing to
disaffected citizens in order to increase their leverage with Congress, the mass media, and
important interest groups.
However, I do not claim that recent presidents have genuinely sought a more
consensual politics. To put matters simply, these presidents have become increasingly
bipartisan in their public rhetoric since the late 1970s, but they have definitely not
become either more ideologically moderate (Bailey 2007; Wood 2009) or more inclined
to forgo subterranean party-building activities (Galvin 2010; Milkis and Rhodes 2007;
Milkis, Rhodes, and Charnock 2012; Skinner 2009) during this time period. My analysis
suggests that recent presidents have used bipartisan themes both to obscure their own
ideological positions and to create a positive contrast with a highly partisan Congress. I
refer to this rhetorical stance as “bipartisan posturing” in order to convey its strategic
character.
In what follows I provide extensive quantitative and qualitative evidence of bipartisan posturing, and cast doubt on several alternative theories about the nature and
development of presidential partisanship. As I suggest, in the contemporary period, the
dramatic ascendance of the strategy of bipartisan posturing is worrisome. Presidents’
increasing use of bipartisan posturing in response to intensifying partisan polarization has
widened the gulf between presidential statements about parties and presidential actions
in the partisan arena, eroding the link between speech and action so essential to democratic practice.
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Future research should investigate how changes in partisan polarization affect the
relationship between presidents’ rhetoric and actions in the partisan arena during earlier
periods in American political history such as the highly polarized “Gilded Age” of the
late nineteenth century. Scholars could also examine the interaction of partisan context
and presidential partisan rhetoric in cross-national comparative perspective or study this
dynamic at the gubernatorial level. Such research is needed to advance our understanding
of how partisan conflict shapes the prospects for truly democratic executive leadership.
Conceptualizing Rhetoric about Parties and Partisanship
Given the modest state of conceptualization of “presidential partisanship” (Galvin
2013, 46), some definitions are in order if we are to investigate patterns of presidential
rhetoric about parties and partisanship. As defined in this article, partisan rhetoric is
comprised of two kinds of statements: statements in which the president makes positive
references to or about (members of) his own party and statements in which the president
makes negative references to or about (members of) the opposition party (e.g., Morris
2001). I contrast this rhetorical stance with cross-partisanship, which occurs when the
president makes negative references to or about his own party or in which the president
makes positive references to or about the opposition (Jones 1994).
Presidential statements that refer to both political parties fall into one of two
categories. I define as bipartisan both statements explicitly referring to the two political
parties in which the president criticizes the partisan posturing of both parties, and
statements mentioning both parties in which the president calls for—or praises—
compromise, cooperation, or conciliation between them (Morris and Witting 2001).
Finally, I define as contrast statements all statements in which the president makes some
kind of contrast between (members of) the parties that favors one party (or its members)
over the other.
Partisan Polarization and Presidents’ Rhetoric about Partisanship
My central theoretical argument is that presidents’ rhetoric about the political
parties is intimately related to the intensity of partisan polarization in the political
system, with presidents adopting more consensual themes as partisan polarization
increases. To unpack the logic of my argument, I draw primarily on theoretical and
empirical findings from the study of American politics from the 1970s to the present.
This logic may also hold at other moments in American political history, or in
other executive contexts in the United States or abroad; however, validation—or
disconfirmation—of my argument in these contexts awaits further data gathering and
analysis.
My argument is based in three central premises: (1) that partisan polarization can
vary in intensity over time, (2) that intensifying partisan polarization (when it occurs) is
usually directed by party activists and elected officials, and (3) that partisan polarization
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is much more pronounced among activists and elected officials than among members of
the mass public. There is little doubt that the intensity of partisan polarization has varied
over the course of American political history (McCarty, Poole, and Rosenthal 2006).
During some periods, both parties are internally divided between liberal and conservative
wings, muting partisan conflict; at other points, the parties become more internally
homogeneous and externally differentiated, leading to intensified partisan polarization
(Han and Brady 2007; Miller and Schofield 2003). Since the 1970s, the national political
parties have become increasingly polarized, so that today they are more differentiated
than at any point since the late nineteenth century (McCarty, Poole, and Rosenthal 2006).
There is also considerable agreement that partisan polarization is spearheaded by
ideological activists with extreme views on divisive policy issues. The issues that divide
party activists vary over time; in the 1960s and 1970s, activists divided on explosive
issues such as race, abortion, and the United States’ role in world affairs (Adams 1997;
Beinart 2008; Carmines and Stimson 1990). Activist polarization forces elected officials
from both political parties to clarify their stances on these divisive issues, and leads to the
replacement of older, more moderate elected officials with younger, more ideological
representatives, exacerbating polarization among officeholders (Hetherington 2009).
Importantly, the parties’ increasing differentiation on the new issues reinforces conflict
over existing issues, leading to “conflict extension” across a diverse array of issues
(Layman, Carsey, and Horowitz 2006; Layman et al. 2010). In recent decades, the
increasing differentiation of Democrats and Republicans on racial, religious, and foreign
policy matters has fortified existing differences on economic and social welfare issues.
Research on partisan polarization also indicates that party activists and elected
officials tend to polarize to a much greater degree than members of the mass public
(Bafumi and Herron 2010; Fiorina and Levendusky 2006; Masket and Noel 2012). To be
sure, as elected officials and party activists send increasingly clear signals about the
relationship between abstract ideology, positions on policy issues, and partisan identity,
voters tend to sort themselves into the political party that best represents their ideological and policy proclivities (Abramowitz and Saunders 2008; Bafumi and Shapiro 2009;
Hetherington 2001; Levendusky 2009). However, research on public opinion from the
1970s to the present reveals that many Americans continue to express relatively moderate
political attitudes on economic, social, and foreign policy matters (Fiorina, Abrams, and
Pope 2006; Levendusky and Pope 2011). Of equal importance, the evidence suggests that
party conflict and incivility reduces public confidence in Congress (Morris and Whiting
2001; Harbridge and Malhotra 2011), and may lead citizens to express more ambivalent
attitudes about their own partisan identities (Thornton 2013).
Given these dynamics, I suggest, changes in the intensity of partisan polarization
may alter the logic governing presidents’ public rhetoric about the parties. When the
parties are not highly polarized, presidents may have fewer incentives to downplay their
partisan identities, because these qualities are not heavily freighted with deeply divisive,
and therefore potentially explosive, ideological content (Green, Palmquist, and Schickler
2004). In fact, during periods of muted interparty conflict, such as the 1950s and early
1960s (Campbell, Converse, Miller, and Stokes 1966), presidents may tout the inclusiveness of their party identities. For example, Dwight Eisenhower was not only a
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consummate party organization-builder and successful wielder of patronage; he was also
an effective proponent of Republican principles, as he understood them. Indeed, while
Eisenhower made considerable appeals to Democratic Party identifiers, he did not shrink
from identifying with his party: instead, he promised Americans a moderate “Modern
Republicanism” that would embrace many of the strictures of the New Deal and thereby
appeal to a broad swath of the American public (Galvin 2010; Griffith 1982). In the same
way, while John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson were unfriendly to the regular Democratic
Party apparatus, they were also at pains to present the Democratic Party as the party of
national consensus in public addresses (Milkis 1993; Savage 2004). In fact, using
methods I will describe in detail below, I show (in Figure 1) that from the mid-1940s to
the mid-1970s presidents often made considerable use of partisan appeals in their public
rhetoric and usually (though not always) paid less to cross-partisan and bipartisan
themes.1
As partisan polarization intensifies, however, party may become an increasingly
divisive—and thus politically perilous—identity for presidents seeking to appeal in
their public rhetoric to moderates and political independents alienated by party conflict.
Partisan polarization may thus encourage presidents to rhetorically distance themselves
from their parties, in order to reach out to the broad middle of public opinion. As I will
demonstrate in the work that follows, presidents from the late 1970s on (with the notable
FIGURE 1. Three Trends in Presidential Rhetoric about the Parties, 1946-76.
1. It does appear, however, that between 1946 and 1976 Republican presidents were more likely to
employ cross-partisan and bipartisan rhetoric than were Democratic presidents, though they also made
respectable use of partisan appeals. This trend does not hold after 1977, during the contemporary polarized
period.
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exception of Ronald Reagan) have generally sought in their public remarks to present
themselves as bipartisan conciliators rather than partisan warriors (see, e.g., Cohen and
Panagopoulos 2012; Milkis, Rhodes, and Charnock 2012; Skowronek 1997, 446-64).
While changes in the intensity of partisan polarization likely influence presidents’
public presentations of self, it is doubtful that such developments affect presidents’
political ideologies. In fact, rigorous studies of the ideologies of postwar presidents
(Bailey 2007; Wood 2009) indicate that these presidents have held ideological positions
consistent with their partisan identities (Democrats are liberal, and Republicans are
conservative), with little evidence of increasing centrism over time.2 Furthermore, we
know that many postwar presidents have worked assiduously behind the scenes to
strengthen their parties’ fundraising and voter turnout operations (Galvin 2010; Milkis
and Rhodes 2007; Milkis, Rhodes, and Charnock 2012). Arguably, therefore, it may
make most sense to think of recent presidents’ protestations of bipartisanship and
cross-partisanship and their more limited deployment of partisan rhetoric—what I call
bipartisan posturing—as a form of “crafted talk” (Jacobs and Shapiro 2000) intended to
give their words and actions a consensual gloss even when the substance was not centrist.
More generally, my argument suggests that as partisan polarization increases, presidents
will be more likely to dissemble in their public rhetoric about their partisan inclinations.
Admittedly, while my argument has been cast in abstract terms, it relies primarily
on findings from studies of postwar American politics. Whether my theory is portable to
other moments in American history—or to other institutional or national contexts—is an
open question, and should be the subject of future research.
Alternative Perspectives
My argument departs from expectations derived from some prominent theories
about presidents’ relationship to the party system. Some scholars have suggested
that Reagan’s presidency inaugurated a new era of presidential leadership in which
presidents have fully embraced the role of party leader, routinely employing public
rhetoric, organizational leadership, and administrative powers to advance party objectives
(Jacobson 2007; Milkis and Rhodes 2007; Skinner 2009). If this perspective—what
we might call the “partisan presidency” (Skinner 2009; see also Cameron 2002)
hypothesis—is correct, presidents since Reagan should have made increasing efforts to
provide partisan rhetorical leadership, and dedicated decreasing attention to bipartisan or
cross-partisan themes, in their public statements about parties and partisanship.
A second possibility—what we might call the “congressional context”
hypothesis—is that presidents’ partisan rhetorical strategies are shaped by the presence or
absence of divided government (Cohen 2011; Coleman and Manna 2007; Jones 1994).
During periods of unified government, presidents can count on partisan majorities in
2. However, because the Republican Party has been in the ascendancy during this period, Republican
presidents have enjoyed greater latitude to accomplish their preferred political objectives, while Democratic
presidents have likely been forced to accept more conservative outcomes than they would otherwise have
preferred.
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Congress to support their programs and therefore are not as dependent on cooperation
from the opposition. Consequently, presidents enjoying unified government may have
more leeway to employ partisan rhetoric against the opposition. During periods of
divided government, however, presidents must acquire support from the opposition party
if they are to achieve programmatic objectives. Periods of divided government should
thus encourage presidents to limit partisan rhetoric in favor of cross-partisan and bipartisan language that appeals to the opposition and thereby facilitates compromise across
party lines.
Third, the “majority status” hypothesis suggests that the president’s rhetoric about
the parties may be influenced by the president’s perception of the partisan leanings of the
broader political regime (Miroff and Skowronek n.d.). When presidents are confident that
their party is in the majority position—as evinced by the vote returns from the previous
presidential election, the margin of control by the president’s party in one or both houses
of Congress, and/or the advantage held by the president’s party in partisan identification
in the electorate—they may feel more secure in espousing partisan rhetoric and be less
disposed to employ cross-partisan and bipartisan appeals. In contrast, when presidents
doubt their party’s majority status, or perceive their party to be in the minority, they may
feel less secure in their political position and may focus their energies on expanding their
electoral coalition. This may encourage them to privilege cross-partisan and bipartisan
themes that reach out to political independents and those with weak ties to the opposite
party.
A final possibility—what we might call the “party differences” perspective—
suggests that profound differences in the parties’ respective coalitions and organizational
cultures may foster differences in Democratic and Republican approaches to discussion of
parties and partisanship. A large body of research (Bruzios 1990; Freeman 1986; Nexon
1971) indicates that the two parties have very different cultures: the Democratic Party is
a highly diverse party with an organizational culture emphasizing equality, inclusiveness,
and fairness, while the Republican Party is a considerably more homogeneous party with
a more hierarchical, orderly, and efficient organization. Scholars have shown that these
different cultures shape presidents’ (and presidential candidates’) rhetoric in a variety of
ways (Benoit 2004; Jarvis 2004; Johnson 2005). Given the Republicans’ greater coalitional homogeneity and unity of purpose, we might expect Republican presidents to be
especially likely to adopt partisan rhetorical strategies that appeal to the party’s base,
while the Democrats’ greater coalitional diversity and emphasis on inclusion and
consensus-building might make Democratic presidents more likely to adopt crosspartisan and bipartisan themes (Galvin 2013, 48).
Studying Presidential Rhetoric about Parties: A New Approach
The few studies that have directly examined presidential rhetoric about parties and
partisanship (Coleman and Manna 2007; Hinckley 1990; Jarvis 2004; Lim 2002) suffer
from serious methodological limitations that constrain their ability to provide an unbiased portrait of the evolution of presidential party references over time. Some existing
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studies (e.g., Hinckley 1990; Jarvis 2004) only analyze a particular subset of speeches,
which could lead to biased conclusions about how presidents talk about parties by
obscuring patterns evident in omitted addresses. Other studies (Coleman and Manna
2007) examine a broader variety of speeches but only for a few noncontiguous presidencies. Such studies cannot shed light on how and why presidential rhetoric about the
parties has developed over time. My multimethod study of the evolution of presidential
partisan rhetoric is designed to overcome these limitations.
Content Analysis and Quantitative Comparisons
Content analysis of the PPPUS comprises an important part of this research.
Routinely used by scholars to study presidential rhetoric (Coleman and Manna 2007;
Wood 2009), the PPPUS is a comprehensive record of presidents’ public utterances. For
each year of a president’s term, the PPPUS contains every public presidential statement,
including all State of the Union messages, budget transmittal messages, executive orders,
directives, signing and veto statements, and press conference statements, as well as all
public remarks to interest groups, social movements, and party organizations. I created
an electronic database file for each year of the PPPUS in the time period under study.3
Then, PowerGREP, a powerful database manipulation utility, was used to extract from
each year of the PPPUS every paragraph spoken by the president that contained keywords
relevant to the Democratic and Republican parties, respectively.4
Next, I worked with a research assistant to code a random sample of paragraphs into
seven exhaustive and mutually exclusive categories (“Positive Statements about the
Democratic Party.” “Negative Statements about the Democratic Party,” “Positive Statements about the Republican Party,” “Negative Statements about the Republican Party,”
“Bipartisan Statements,” “Contrast Statements,” and “Not a Presidential Statement
about Parties”). After developing the codebook, training on sample data, and discussing
the results of these trial runs, we independently coded 2,000 randomly selected paragraphs. We achieved a very high level of intercoder reliability (Krippendorf’s Alpha =
.86, p < .001) in coding these paragraphs.
To facilitate the coding of presidential statements about the parties, I employed a
nonparametric method of automated content analysis (Hopkins and King 2010) called
ReadMe that used the information from the 2,000 randomly selected paragraphs to make
inferences about the more than 19,000 uncoded statements. For each year of the PPPUS
in my study, I used the information from the 2,000 hand-coded statements to estimate
the proportion of all uncoded paragraphs uttered in that year falling into each of the seven
3. This involved converting to database format PDF and HTML files of the PPPUS obtained from the
American Freedom Library CD-ROM (for the period 1946-2000), the Government Printing Office (for
2001-5), and the American Presidency Project (for 2006-12).
4. Whereas prior to 1977 the PPPUS was assembled following the completion of a president’s term,
and was shaped by administrations’ decisions about the release of documents, after 1977 the PPPUS became
a “real-time” record of public presidential documents assembled from the “Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents” (Personal communication with John Woolley, October 17, 2012). The two periods are
not directly comparable.
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categories described above.5 I reconstructed important analytic categories, such as the
proportion of partisan rhetoric and the proportion of cross-partisan rhetoric, for each year
of my analysis.6 Finally, I assessed how well the observed patterns of presidential rhetoric
about the parties conformed to expectations derived from each of the hypotheses outlined
above, using a range of simple quantitative comparisons to evaluate each argument in
turn.7
Process Tracing
Historical process tracing makes an equally important contribution to my research
(George and Bennett 2005; Hedström and Ylikoski 2010). This involves showing (1) that
recent presidents were aware of intensifying partisan polarization and viewed it as a
political problem to be addressed, (2) that these presidents sought to calibrate their political
behaviors to maximize their political effectiveness in the context of escalating partisan
polarization, (3) that these presidents realized that presenting a conciliatory public image
through rhetoric would help them accomplish their political objectives in this context, and
(4) that empirical patterns of presidential rhetoric about the parties conformed to presidents’
understanding of their political situation and their strategies to navigate within it. This
process tracing completes my argument by connecting the empirical rhetorical trends
identified in the content analysis to presidents’ historically-contingent objectives and
strategies.
Partisan Polarization and the Evolution of Presidential Rhetoric
about the Parties
The content analysis focuses on mapping trends in presidents’ use of partisan,
cross-partisan, and bipartisan themes in their statements about the parties. As Figure 2
shows, presidential partisan rhetoric underwent a profound evolution between 1977 and
2012.
5. I conducted a ten-fold cross-validation with my hand-coded data—available on request—in order
to increase confidence in the accuracy of the algorithm in characterizing my data (Grimmer and Stewart
forthcoming).
6. Proportion Partisan Rhetoric was defined as the proportion of positive rhetoric about the president’s
party + the proportion of negative rhetoric about the opposition; while Proportion Cross-Partisan Rhetoric was
defined as the proportion of negative rhetoric about the president’s party + the proportion of positive rhetoric
about the opposition.
7. I used NOMINATE measures of party polarization to test hypotheses about the relationship
between presidential rhetoric and partisan polarization. I gathered data on party control of each house of
Congress to help test hypotheses about the relationship between presidential partisan rhetoric and divided
government (Unified Government = 1, Divided Government = 0). To test hypotheses about the relationship
between presidents’ rhetoric about the parties and their competitive standing, I gathered data on (1) the
president’s share of the vote in the previous presidential election (on a 0-100 scale); (2) the margin of
advantage (or disadvantage) of the seats held by the president’s party in each house of Congress (calculated
as the president’s party share of seats—the opposition party’s share of seats, measured separately for each
chamber); and (3) the margin of advantage (or disadvantage) for the president’s party in party identification
in the electorate (calculated as the percentage of Americans identifying with the president’s party—the
percentage of Americans identifying with the opposition party).
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FIGURE 2. Proportion Partisan Rhetoric, 1977-2012.
Partisan statements were a staple of Jimmy Carter’s rhetoric about the political
parties (averaging between 16 and 34% of all of his statements about the parties), and
became even more prominent during the presidency of Reagan (averaging between 37
and 47% of his total rhetoric). After Reagan’s presidency, however, the use of partisan
rhetoric began to decline dramatically, reaching a new, much lower, equilibrium during
the presidency of Bill Clinton that is largely sustained through the presidencies of George
W. Bush and Barack Obama. Indeed, between 1993 and 2012, the proportion of presidential rhetoric about the parties devoted to partisan themes usually hovered in the low
to mid-2% range, rarely rising above 30%.
Over the entire 1977-2012 period, and consistent with my theory of bipartisan
posturing, the proportion of presidential rhetoric about the parties dedicated to partisan
themes is strongly, and negatively, correlated with polarization in both the House of
Representatives (−.60) and the Senate (−.60). It is possible to show this graphically by
plotting the proportion of presidential rhetoric about the political parties that is not
partisan against polarization in the House of Representatives and the Senate, respectively,
as in Figure 3.
The impressive fit between these series provides strong evidence for my argument
that the rise of partisan polarization has encouraged presidents to project a less confrontational image in their public rhetoric. Crucially, because presidents have not increasingly
gravitated to the ideological center (Bailey 2007; Wood 2009), this development cannot
be traceable to a fundamental shift in presidential political beliefs. Moreover, the declining share of partisan rhetoric as a proportion of all presidential statements about the
parties over the time period 1977-2012 is not adequately explained by alternative
theoretical perspectives. The partisan presidency perspective presumes that presidents
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FIGURE 3. Proportion of Presidential Rhetoric that is Not Partisan, 1977-2012, with Measures of
Partisan Polarization.
from Reagan to George W. Bush have been forthright partisan leaders, “present[ing] a
more distinctively partisan image to voters . . . [and] lead[ing] the battalions of a partisan
army into the battlefield of contemporary Washington” (Skinner 2009, 608). But the
proportion of public presidential rhetoric about the parties dedicated to partisan themes
has declined significantly since the Reagan presidency, precisely the opposite of what the
partisan presidency hypothesis predicts.
Similarly, the congressional context perspective does a poor job accounting for the
pattern of presidential partisan rhetoric over the 1977-2012 period. The congressional
context perspective predicts that partisan rhetoric would occupy a greater percentage of
presidential statements about the parties during periods of unified government and a
lesser proportion during periods of divided government. However, and contrary to this
hypothesis, the proportion of presidential rhetoric dedicated to partisan themes is negatively correlated with unified government (−.38), suggesting that presidential partisanship is higher during periods of divided government.
The evidence for the majority status hypothesis is highly ambiguous. The correlation between the proportion of the president’s rhetoric devoted to partisan themes and
the proportion of the vote won by president in the previous presidential election is
positive and strong (.63), indicating that presidents who are surer of their own majority
status are more likely to employ partisan rhetoric. However, my analysis shows that when
the size of the majority of the president’s party increases in the House and/or Senate, the
proportion of presidential rhetoric devoted to partisan themes actually decreases (across
the entire period, the correlations are −.49 and −.17, respectively). Moreover, when the
president’s party enjoys a larger advantage in partisan identification in the electorate,
partisan rhetoric makes up a smaller proportion of the president’s rhetoric about the
parties (the correlation is −.45). These findings do not accord well with the expectations
of the majority status hypothesis.
Finally, the evolution of partisan rhetoric is inconsistent with the party differences
hypothesis. This perspective predicts that Republican presidents should make relatively
greater use of partisan rhetoric, while Democratic presidents should make relatively less
use of this rhetorical strategy. Unfortunately, while this perspective can account for the
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vigorous partisanship of Republican Reagan (1981-88), and the less strident, though still
significant, partisanship of George H.W. Bush (1989-92), it cannot explain the comparatively modest use of partisan rhetoric by fellow Republican George W. Bush (20018). Likewise, the party differences hypothesis sheds light on the modest partisanship
of Democratic presidents Clinton (1993-2000) and Obama (2009-12), but it cannot
account for fellow Democrat Carter’s full-throated partisanship during his term of office
between 1977 and 1980 (particularly in 1979 and 1980). In terms of their use of partisan
rhetoric, Democratic president Carter is more similar to Republicans Reagan and George
H. W. Bush than to fellow Democrats Clinton and Obama; and Republican George W.
Bush is more similar to Clinton and Obama than to either Reagan or his father.
Thus far, the patterns evident in the data provide considerable evidence for my
theory of bipartisan posturing and limited support for rival perspectives. My theory also
anticipates a substantial increase in both cross-partisan and bipartisan rhetoric over time.
Figure 4 plots trends in both cross-partisan and bipartisan rhetoric against partisan
polarization in the House and Senate between 1977 and 2012.
As the figure suggests, both cross-partisan and bipartisan themes have represented
a growing proportion of all presidential statements about the parties between 1977 and
2012. Whereas cross-partisan rhetoric occupied 17% of presidential speech about the
parties in 1977, this proportion increased relatively steadily over the following 36 years
(especially after 1986), reaching 28% of presidential rhetoric in 2012. The explosion of
bipartisan rhetoric over this period is even more pronounced, rising from 1% of presidential rhetoric in 1977 to 15% in 2012 (and routinely residing in the high-20% or
low-30% range in the 1990s and 2000s). Moreover, over this time period, and consistent
with my theory of bipartisan posturing, these trends are closely related to partisan
polarization: presidential cross-partisanship is correlated with House polarization at .57
and with Senate polarization at .54, while presidential bipartisanship is correlated with
House polarization at .52 and with Senate polarization at .55. The strong direct relationship between conciliatory presidential rhetoric, on one hand, and mounting partisan
polarization, on the other, is precisely what my theory of bipartisan posturing predicts.
Importantly, trends in the use of cross-partisan and bipartisan themes fail to accord
consistently with predictions from rival theories. The partisan presidency perspective,
FIGURE 4. Cross-Partisan and Bipartisan Rhetoric, 1977-2012, with Measures of Polarization.
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which portrays presidents as crusading partisan leaders (Milkis and Rhodes 2007; Skinner
2009), predicts that presidents would make declining use of cross-partisan or bipartisan
rhetoric during this period. As we have seen, however, precisely the opposite has occurred,
suggesting this perspective provides an incomplete portrait of presidents’ partisan activities.
The congressional context perspective also does a poor job accounting for the
ascendance of cross-partisan and bipartisan rhetoric over the 1977-2012 period. This
approach predicts that presidents will allocate lesser attention to cross-partisan and
bipartisan themes during periods of unified government and greater attention to these
themes during periods of divided government. Unfortunately, however, the evidence does
not support this hypothesis. Cross-partisanship is positively associated with unified government at .31, indicating that cross-partisanship is greater during periods of unified
government, while bipartisan rhetoric appears virtually unrelated to party control of
government (the correlation is negative, but very weak, at −.10).
The evidence for the majority status hypothesis remains highly ambiguous. As the
hypothesis would predict, presidents rely less on cross-partisan and bipartisan rhetoric
when they received a higher proportion of the vote in the previous election (the correlations are −.49 and −.35, respectively). However, the relationship between presidents’
rhetorical strategies and their party’s margins in Congress is conflicted. Contrary to
expectations, the proportion of presidential rhetoric devoted to cross-partisan themes is
positively, albeit modestly, correlated with the magnitude of the president’s party margin
of control in the House (.29) and Senate (.17); however, and consistent with expectations,
the proportion of presidential rhetoric allocated to bipartisanship is negatively correlated
with size of the president’s margins in both houses (−.12 and −.44, respectively). Yet
contrary to the expectations of the majority status hypothesis, the proportions of presidential rhetoric devoted to both cross-partisan and bipartisan appeals are positively,
though modestly, correlated with the magnitude of the advantage enjoyed by the president’s party in partisan affiliation in the mass electorate (.22 and .09, respectively).
The party differences hypothesis cannot account for the dramatic escalation of
bipartisan themes in presidential rhetoric about the parties over time. Whereas the party
differences hypothesis predicts fundamental differences between Democratic and Republican approaches to cross-partisan and bipartisan rhetoric—with Democratic presidents
employing these rhetorical strategies more frequently than Republicans—both crosspartisanship and bipartisanship have increased relatively steadily between 1977 and 2012
as proportions of all presidential rhetoric about the parties, regardless of whether Democrats or Republicans held the White House. Clearly, the party differences perspective
cannot account for the fact that presidents’ use of cross-partisan and bipartisan rhetoric is
much more heavily affected by proximity to the increasingly polarized present than by
the partisan identity of the president.
A Note on Presidential Contrast Statements
Between 1977 and 2012, presidential contrast statements represented a modest
component of presidential rhetoric about the parties (about 11% of statements per year,
on average). Crucially, the relegation of contrast statements to their own category does
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not significantly alter my conclusion that presidents have increasingly eschewed partisan
appeals in favor of more conciliatory language. As I demonstrate in results not shown (but
available on request), even if we make the very generous assumption that all contrast
statements are partisan statements, the proportion of presidential rhetoric about the
parties that is partisan in tone still declined noticeably over the 1977-2012 period, albeit
by a lesser amount.
Presidents’ Adoption of the Strategy of Bipartisan Posturing
Presidents’ increasing adoption of conciliatory public rhetoric between 1977 and
2012 reflected their efforts to cope with intensifying partisan polarization in national
politics. The late 1970s and early 1980s witnessed a dramatic struggle over the future of
the New Deal/Great Society order, which had fallen into disrepute due to the wrenching
social and economic changes of the 1960s and 1970s (Skowronek 1997, 361-406).
Carter’s awkward lurch from conciliatory language during his first two years in office to
partisan attacks during the second half of his term reflected his unhappy place in political
history. Placed in the unenviable political position of adjusting flagging New Deal/Great
Society initiatives to conform to the realities of 1970s-era “stagflation,” Carter initially
distanced himself from his party, seeking to build an independent, “outsider” image that
could appeal to moderates displeased with the legacy of modern liberalism (Gould 2003,
181-82; Jones 1988). To burnish his transcendent credentials, Carter not only criticized
long-standing social welfare priorities of liberal Democrats as inimical to budgetary
discipline; he also ultimately adopted a macroeconomic agenda that disavowed the
party’s historic emphasis on full employment in favor of a program to combat rapid
inflation (Leuchtenberg 1997, 7-17; Morgan 2004). At the symbolic level, the president
also conveyed his independence by deliberately snubbing Democratic Party leaders
and traditional Democratic constituencies (e.g., Heyward 2001, 507-9). Carter’s efforts
to distance himself from the Democratic Party were reflected in his early eschewal of
partisan themes in his rhetoric, as documented in Figure 3.
However, as his presidency progressed, Carter increasingly employed partisan
themes in his rhetoric, using public addresses to laud Democratic achievements and
lambaste his Republican opponents. Carter’s belated conversion from bipartisan conciliator to partisan warrior were part of his increasingly desperate efforts to demonstrate his liberal credentials to the many rank-and-file party members who were deeply
skeptical of his unorthodox—if not heretical—economic and social welfare initiatives
(Kaplowitz 1998). In 1979 and 1980, as Carter was seeking to fend off a primary
challenge from Edward Kennedy and position himself for a difficult reelection campaign against Reagan (Kaufman and Kaufman 2006, 219-32), his deployment of partisan rhetoric soared.
In contrast, Reagan’s especially sharp partisan tone likely reflected his emphatic
embrace of the role of a reconstructive Republican president out to replace the New
Deal/Great Society regime with a new conservative order featuring limited government,
low taxes, and a strong defense (Skowronek 1997, 414-29). Because Reagan aspired to
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make a historic break with Democratic programmatic commitments, it was incumbent
on him to draw a sharp contrast with his Democratic predecessors and to cast serious
doubt on Democratic achievements. Equally important, Reagan needed to talk up
Republican principles and purposes both to make them more familiar to a mass audience
unaccustomed to conservative Republican leadership (Sloan 1999) and to consolidate
disparate conservative factions (supply-siders, neoconservatives, religious conservatives,
sunbelt suburbanites, big business, and so forth) into a coherent coalition (Busch 2001,
225-46). Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, Reagan allocated enormous attention to the task
of communicating his conservative Republican “public philosophy” (Heclo 2003) to
the American people. His message, repeated again and again over the long course of
his public career, was simple: the expansion of the federal government’s authority and
responsibility—so central to project of Democratic liberalism—undermined democracy
and weakened the character of a free people (Milkis 1993, 263). To be sure, Reagan made
numerous pragmatic compromises to his political opponents, including agreements that
resulted in tax increases; throughout, however, he sought to create a consistent narrative
that emphasized a break from inherited Democratic commitments and adoption of new
Republican ones.
By the end of Reagan’s administration, however, it was evident that his reconstructive ambitions were only partially realized: while huge tax cuts and rising deficits limited
opportunities for future liberal state-building, most of the New Deal-Great Society
regime remained firmly in place (Derthick and Teles 2003). Moreover, Reagan’s rhetorical assault on the pillars of the New Deal/Great Society order had inspired a powerful reaction among the various social movements and interest groups that favored
liberal Democratic solutions to the nation’s problems, intensifying partisan conflict in
Washington, DC. Ascending to the presidency as Reagan’s ostensible heir, George H. W.
Bush pursued a much different rhetorical strategy than did his predecessor: indeed, Bush
self-consciously attempted to ratchet down partisan conflict by adopting a lower-key
public personae (Barilleaux and Rozell 2004, 16-45; Rozell 1998).
While Bush struck a sharply partisan tone during the 1988 presidential campaign,
he subsequently “went out of his way to give the impression that he wanted a more
civilized and less confrontational relationship with Congress—one that stressed conciliation, compromise, and bipartisanship” (Mervin 1996, 44). Notably, rather than side
with conservative Republicans in a full-throated attack on the New Deal-Great Society
order, Bush signaled his conciliatory credentials by signing several compromise environmental and civil rights laws that expanded the federal government’s role in these areas
(Mullins and Wildavsky 1992). Even when Bush strongly disagreed with legislation
proposed by the Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, he usually employed
careful veto bargaining rather than partisan broadsides to accomplish his programmatic
objectives (Greene 2000, 62). To be sure, Bush’s comparative hesitance to employ
partisan rhetoric stemmed in part from his pragmatic orientation (Hammer 1995); but it
also reflected his desire to avoid the “rhetorical overkill” that he believed contributed
to partisan polarization during Reagan’s tenure in office (Rozell 1998, 132). Bush’s
awkward and belated return to orthodox Republican positions during the 1992 presidential campaign failed to save a presidency undermined by a weak economy.
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Bipartisan posturing arguably reached a new level of strategic importance—
reflected in the quantitative data reviewed above—during the presidency of Clinton.
Clinton came to power in the midst of an ongoing conservative Republican reaction
against the New Deal/Great Society order (Skowronek 2008), encouraging him to
embrace a “New Democratic” identity that emphasized his independence from traditional Democratic ideas and interests (Baer 2000). A rhetorical approach stressing conciliatory themes was perfectly suited to Clinton’s strategic effort to position himself
between, but also above, the partisan extremes in order to cater to what he viewed as the
broad middle of public opinion (Harris 2000, 87-97). By moderating partisan appeals
(and thereby distancing himself from congressional Democrats who were viewed as
excessively “liberal” by many Americans), Clinton could signal his credentials as a
transcendent figure capable of overcoming the partisan divisions of the 1980s and early
1990s. This strategy was evinced in Clinton’s targeted, and opportunistic, adoption of
popular, but stereotypically Republican, policy proposals in areas such as trade liberalization, deficit reduction, welfare reform, and crime control (Crockett 2002, chap. 9).
At the same time, however, Clinton recognized that projecting a conciliatory image
could provide a strategic advantage in his struggles with Republicans. By appearing more
reasonable and open to compromise than his opponents, Clinton could win the battle for
public opinion over an increasingly strident (and unpopular) Republican caucus, especially after the Republican “Revolution” of 1994 handed control of Congress to the GOP
(Wilentz 2008, 355-81). Clinton’s celebration of cooperative themes reinforced the
public’s perceptions of Republicans as extreme and obstinate (Skowronek 2008, 106-7),
contributing to Clinton’s reelection in 1996 and his enduring popularity in the face of
withering Republican attacks during his second term. Perhaps even more important,
Clinton’s effective efforts to highlight Republicans’ radicalism took the wind out of the
sails of the GOP’s attempts in 1995 and 1996 to balance the federal budget by eviscerating central Democratic commitments to Medicare, Medicaid, education, and environmental protection (Milkis and Nelson 2012, 421-22). Republicans’ rising influence in
national affairs—and their firm control of Congress between 1995 and 2000—forced
Clinton to acquiesce to a rightward drift in American domestic policy. However, Clinton’s savvy use of bipartisan posturing helped him deflect some of the “Republican
Revolution’s” most ambitious proposals, thereby preserving important liberal programs
(Harris 2005, 431-37).
As shown in the quantitative analysis above, the decline of partisan rhetoric and the
rise of bipartisan and cross-partisan themes continued during the presidency of George
W. Bush. The fact that Bush embraced the strategy of bipartisan posturing in spite of his
conservative convictions and (in comparison with Clinton) favorable governing situation
is readily explained once we place Bush’s presidency in historical context. By 2000,
Clinton’s repeated success in outmaneuvering conservative Republicans’ efforts to discredit him had convinced many Republican leaders, including Bush, that the party’s
harsh partisan image was a political liability (Milkis and Rhodes 2007). To address this
political problem, Bush self-consciously cultivated a public image as a “compassionate
conservative” eager to work with congressional Democrats (Jacobson 2007, 39-40).
Along these lines, many of Bush’s signature domestic initiatives—especially the
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successful No Child Left Behind and the Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit programs,
and the failed proposal to reform the nation’s immigration policies—were carefully
packaged to highlight their appeal across party lines (Béland and Waddan 2007; Jacobs
and Shapiro 2008).
In the end, though, and unlike his father, George W. Bush was a thoroughgoing
conservative dedicated to advancing Reagan’s programmatic agenda (Skowronek 2005;
Weisberg 2008). Even so, Bush was acutely aware that a frontal partisan assault on New
Deal/Great Society programs would ensure broad opposition to his conservative objectives. Rather than echoing Reagan’s partisan tirades against the New Deal/Great Society
order, therefore, Bush employed a different strategy. In public, the Bush administration
used all the techniques of the modern presidency—“a steady feeding and managing of the
press corps to saturate the airwaves with the White House’s agenda and particular
presentation, presidential speeches calibrated to appeal to public opinion through extensive polling, television and radio advertisements by allied groups, and the mobilization
of the cabinet to blanket the country with the same message” (Jacobs 2007, 314)—to
portray Bush’s initiatives as compromise measures enjoying bipartisan political support.
Meanwhile, working closely with congressional Republicans, Bush employed a variety of
byzantine legislative and administrative maneuvers to attain conservative objectives
largely out of public view (Hacker and Pierson 2005; Jacobs and Shapiro 2008). This
strategy proved remarkably effective during the first five years of Bush’s presidency
(Milkis and Rhodes 2007), before collapsing in the face of ongoing turmoil in Iraq, the
Hurricane Katrina debacle, and the onset of the financial crisis.
Obama’s further development of the strategy of bipartisan posturing reflected his
efforts to manage the severe partisan pressures that attended his first term in office.
Partisan acrimony had intensified dramatically during Bush’s tenure in office, in significant part due to Bush’s own controversial positions, particularly with regard to management of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (Jacobson 2007; Weisberg 2008). Sensing that
many Americans had become disillusioned with the partisanship of the Bush years,
Obama made overcoming partisan polarization a central theme of his 2008 presidential
campaign (Obama 2006, chap. 1). Obama sharply criticized what he viewed as George
W. Bush’s excesses, but he also claimed that he would “reach across the aisle, listen to the
Republicans, and credit their good ideas, but also demonstrate that the division between
the parties was exaggerated if not false, as many Americans . . . fervently believed”
(Wilentz 2011). Consistent with this promise, Obama made a show of reaching out to
congressional Republicans on issues such as the fiscal stimulus, education, health care
reform, and deficit reduction, though the overall liberal thrust of his agenda all but
ensured that the increasingly conservative GOP caucus would refuse to cooperate (Milkis,
Rhodes, and Charnock 2012).
To be sure, Obama’s appeals for bipartisan conciliation during his first term in office
were not entirely strategic. As scholars (Kloppenberg 2011; Smith 2012) have noted,
there are indications that Obama truly believes in the need to overcome dogmatic
partisanship—which threatens to stifle practical solutions to real-world problems—in
order to advance the common good. Some have argued that Obama’s pleas for bipartisan
cooperation were naïve given the intensity of partisan polarization in Congress (Edwards
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2012). It is fair to say that Obama overestimated Republicans’ willingness to work with
him on compromise reforms to health care, the financial system, and the budget.
However, perspectives that emphasize Obama’s credulous allegiance to the ideal of
consensus fail to do full justice to the ways in which Obama has used rhetorical
bipartisanship strategically, in order to accomplish cherished ideological objectives.
Indeed, like George W. Bush, Obama repeatedly used the rhetoric of conciliation as
political cover during his first two years in office. Having been rebuffed in highly public
efforts to secure Republican support, Obama was freed politically to employ more
partisan legislative and administrative maneuvers to secure his programmatic objectives
(Milkis, Rhodes, and Charnock 2012; Rudalevige 2012). Notably, by the end of his first
term, Obama had amassed the most impressive—and, broadly, liberal—legislative record
of any Democratic president since Lyndon Johnson (Skocpol and Jacobs 2011).
Moreover, after the 2010 elections, which delivered the House of Representatives to
a stridently conservative Republican majority, employing conciliatory themes actually
gained in value as a political strategy. Much as Clinton had after the 1994 midterm
elections, Obama made heavy use of cross-partisan and bipartisan appeals to convey the
message that (unlike congressional Republicans) “he would be the adult in the room, the
reasonable man looking for productive discourse and sensible compromise” (Corn 2012,
46). Through this strategy, Obama managed to turn the tables on congressional Republicans, transforming his reasonableness (and, by implication, Republicans’ intransigence)
into a powerful campaign issue that resonated with the millions of Americans alienated
by the partisan clashes of his first term in office. Indeed, during the 2012 presidential
campaign, most Americans were more likely to blame Republicans than the president for
the nation’s harsh partisan polarization (Sullivan 2012). In the 2012 election, Obama
won a decisive victory over Republican challenger Mitt Romney, granting him the
chance to defend the historic achievements of his first term and perhaps make incremental
progress on additional measures.
Conclusion
The relationship between the president and the parties has varied over the course of
American political history (Milkis 1993, 1999; Galvin 2010). To date, however, there has
been little research examining how changes in the intensity of partisan conflict affect
presidents’ rhetorical strategies and public presentations of self. As a result, we have only
a limited understanding of the conditions under which presidents’ public statements
about parties and partisanship are more or less likely to accurately reflect their political
maneuvers behind the scenes. This constrains our ability to make sound judgments about
whether presidential rhetoric about parties performs an educative purpose that teaches
citizens about the presidents’ principles and objectives, or a mystifying function designed
to obscure presidents’ true intentions.
This article seeks to set an agenda for investigating the relationship between
partisan polarization and presidential partisanship, using a case study of the 1977-2012
period to develop and test a theory about how changes in the intensity of partisan
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polarization affect presidents’ public rhetoric about the parties. I argue that intensifying
partisan polarization encourages presidents to adopt a strategy of bipartisan posturing,
in which presidents privilege conciliatory themes in their public rhetoric in order to
increase their political appeal with citizens alienated by partisan combat. Drawing on a
systematic content analysis of every public statement about the parties between 19772012 and qualitative process tracing of presidential strategies over the same period, I
provide strong evidence that presidents have strategically shifted their rhetoric toward
cross-partisan and bipartisan appeals in order to distance themselves from unpopular
congressional partisanship and thereby reach out to disaffected citizens. The ascendance
of bipartisan posturing as a presidential rhetorical strategy over the past three decades has
troubling implications for the practice of American democracy. Ironically, while presidents could be more truthful about their partisan proclivities when polarization was
subdued, the intensification of partisan polarization since the mid-1970s has increasingly
encouraged them to project a public image that obscures their partisan intentions and
strategies.
These findings point to important directions for future research. Scholars should
study how changes in partisan polarization affect the relationship between chief executives’ rhetoric about parties and actions in the partisan sphere during other periods in
American political history. Future research could also examine similar questions at the
gubernatorial level or in cross-national perspective. Such work would illuminate how
partisan conflict shapes the prospects for executive rhetoric that advances the practice of
democracy.
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