The Public Presidency and
Disciplinary Presumptions
LAWRENCE R. JACOBS
University of Minnesota
The tendency of well-developed research fields to overtill is well known; a corresponding
challenge is the tendency to misunderstand or misapply that research by scholars plowing
different plots. The mistaken or incomplete interpretation of research on the public presidency
presents a particularly egregious case of poor harvesting. Although political observers and
scholars outside the public presidency field project “going public” as a highly influential weapon,
scholars in the field converge on modest expectations in which presidential promotions have
limited, selective, and conditional effects. This pattern is illustrated through content analyses
of Barack Obama’s speeches and the media’s coverage of them. The findings correspond with
the expectations of the public presidency field: Obama conducted extensive public promotions of
his signature legislative accomplishment—health reform—and his efforts failed to move media
coverage, public opinion, or the legislative process. As research on the public presidency expands
its scope and reach, there is a growing opportunity to correct its misapplications and, more
positively, to build an unusually diverse research community that spans political theory and the
social sciences.
Doug Arnold (1982) distinguished between “overtilled” and “undertilled” areas of
research in American politics. His purpose was to encourage a reallocation of scholarly
labor from extensively studied areas with low and diminishing yields of new knowledge
to fields that have “largely been abandoned, although they still offer great promise, [or
have] . . . never been well cultivated at all” (92).
Attention to the allocation of research labor needs to be complemented by
scrutiny of another dimension—the harvesting and distribution of research outside
fields and subfields to the broader discipline devoted to studying politics and policy.
Though these research fields tend to produce veritable warehouses of findings, they are
poorly understood or misapplied by scholars plowing different plots. In these cases,
Lawrence R. Jacobs is the Walter F. and Joan Mondale Chair for Political Studies and Director of the Center
for the Study of Politics and Governance in the Hubert H. Humphrey School and Department of Political Science at the
University of Minnesota. His books include Reaching for the New Deal, Health Reform and American Politics,
and Obama at the Crossroads.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: I am grateful to Shannon Thompson for her superb research assistance as well as Kate
Peterson.
Presidential Studies Quarterly 43, no. 1 (March)
© 2013 Center for the Study of the Presidency
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the misallocation problem that Arnold identified becomes compounded by a breakdown in the distribution system that delivers the fruits of labor to scholarly consumers.
Gaps between the specialized research of particular fields or subfields (what I refer
to as “field research”) and broader disciplinary learning put researchers at risk of
adopting assumptions and theoretical expectations about fields outside their areas of
expertise that have been proven flawed or false. Such underharvesting raises questions
about the way the political science community operates and the degree to which that
community generates new knowledge through cumulative processes of learning and
interaction.
The purpose of this article is to use research on the promotional presidency to
stimulate a discussion about cross-field engagement and intellectual dialogue within
political science. As an enormous body of research on the U.S. president’s public promotions piles up, political observers and scholars outside the presidency field continue to
mistakenly or incompletely interpret the research and, in cases where they do not draw
on political science research at all, they have been prone to adopt unfounded assumptions.
Initial critical assessments of Barack Obama’s first term in office, and specifically his
public promotion of health reform, illustrate this general pattern, and pose a revealing
puzzle: Obama engaged in public promotion and his efforts failed to move public opinion
or the legislative process. While Obama’s sobering experience with health reform may
be surprising to popular commentators and some political scientists, it is consistent (as
I discuss shortly) with a large body of presidency research—throwing the underharvesting challenge into relief.
Understanding the conditional nature of presidential promotion requires appreciation for the interaction of agency and structure. White House appeals for public support
often collide with structural constraints cemented into America’s institutional and
informational systems. Yet, institutions and interests also open up choices for strategic
presidents who can adjust to lure allies and skillfully persuade them to deploy their
institution resources to serve the president’s agenda.
This article has two objectives. The first is to use the Obama health reform episode
to underscore the misunderstanding of public presidency research outside the field.
To be clear, though, this is not a study of health reform per se; this can be found elsewhere (cf. Jacobs and Skocpol 2012). Nor is this a comprehensive study of presidential
public promotion under Obama; more in-depth research is required to understand the
detailed content of Obama’s messages and his particular mobilization strategies. The
second objective is to outline a framework for understanding presidential promotion as
conditional—one that extends beyond a personalistic account of individual traits toward
a more impersonal and institutional explanation.
This article proceeds in four sections. The first reviews the disconnect between the
presidency research and the assessments of Obama’s public handling of health reform by
political observers and the broader discipline. The second section presents evidence from
content analyses of Obama’s public statements on health reform and the media’s coverage
of them that confound early assessments of Obama even as they fit with past research on
the presidency. The third section draws on presidency research to account for the limited
effects of Obama’s public promotions. The fourth section concludes by encouraging
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presidency scholars both to engage in “translational research” that accurately disseminates findings and to confront misunderstandings of presidential promotions by political
observers and the broader discipline.
Research on the Public Presidency and Disciplinary Presumptions
Over the past three decades, the expanding field of presidential research has developed more sophisticated and diverse analytic approaches, and devoted enormous time and
effort to studying the president’s widening commitment to promote himself and his
policies to Americans and thereby go “over the heads” of Washington lawmakers and
power brokers. This shift produced the large and vibrant subfield of the “public presidency” (Edwards 1983), which has developed in two broad directions. The first is a
meticulous charting of the frequency of “going public” as well as its forms and audiences
(Kernell 1986). Researchers trace the rise of the public presidency to changing norms
of governance and speech (Tulis 1987), to the dissipation of power and the onset of policy
paralysis (Kernell 1986), and to communications strategies that are geared toward
mobilizing public support in order to augment scarce political resources and satisfy voter
expectations (Jacobs and Shapiro 2000).
The second strand is a rigorous examination of the effects of presidential public
promotions, which generally—though not uniformly—stresses the limits on White
House efforts to mold Americans to their designs. George Edwards enjoys the distinction
of both helping to launch the “public presidency” field (1983) and documenting
its ineffectiveness in manufacturing public preferences or higher approval ratings
(1996a, 1996b, 2003, 2007). Recent summaries of “minimal effects” research confirm
that “evidence is mounting that presidents find difficulty in leading public opinion”
(Tedin, Rottinghaus, and Rodgers 2011, 506) and that their “effectiveness [is] more
problematic [than often assumed]” (Cameron and Park 2011, 443).
This research also challenges the causal chain in which “going public” is expected
to mobilize public support that, in turn, pressures members of Congress and other policy
makers to adopt the president’s policies. Investigations repeatedly report that presidential promotions have limited impacts on Congress. Presidents who rely on orchestrated
appeals frequently find themselves exerting only “marginal” influence on lawmaking
(Bond and Fleisher 1990; Edwards 1989, 2007) and victims of squandered political
capital, frustrated public expectations, and potentially missed opportunities for privately
negotiated pacts (Baum 2004; Jacobs and Shapiro 2000; Jerit 2008).
While extensive research suggests minimal effects of presidential promotion,
it does not justify “writing off presidential leadership as totally ineffective” (Tedin,
Rottinghaus, and Rodgers 2011, 506). A more precise distillation of the research is that
presidential appeals fall short of White House objectives but can exert modest selective
influence under certain conditions. Modest influence by presidents has been detected in
discrete components of the policy process, specifically in agenda-setting, where a president can moderately elevate Americans’ attention to his initiatives, even though he is
unable to exclude other issues (Cohen 1982, 1995; Edwards and Barrett 2000; Peterson
1990). The White House may enjoy more influence when it has shifted from seeking to
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influence “the nation” to targeting subgroups of party activists, local communities,
and discrete voting blocs (Cohen 2009; Druckman and Jacobs 2011; Tedin, Rottinghaus,
and Rodgers 2011; Wattenberg 2004). These selective effects tend to be a bit more
likely under conditions of relatively muted public opposition and countermobilization
(Cameron and Park 2011) and elevated public support (Canes-Wrone 2001, 2006; Page
and Shapiro 1984).
Gaps in the Consumption of Research
In contrast to the cautious and nuanced findings from the public presidency field,
there is a tendency among political observers and the broader discipline of political and
policy studies to exaggerate the scope and magnitude of White House influence through
public promotions. Part of the problem is the tendency to reach generalizations based on
significant if not necessarily representative cases such as Theodore Roosevelt’s campaign
for the Hepburn Act, Woodrow Wilson’s use of major presidential addresses to press
Congress to adopt tariff reform, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s radio promotion during
his drive to pass Social Security (Laracey 2002; Tulis 1987). These studies are invaluable
evidence for historical comparative analysis (e.g., Skocpol and Jacobs 2011) as well as for
generating critical questions and tentative theses about American political development.
But researchers also need to develop broader generalizations over a larger and more diverse
set of presidential promotions. Simply extrapolating from the successes of Wilson and the
Roosevelts in moving public opinion and Congress to Obama misunderstands historical
comparative analysis and ignores the wider record of failed presidential promotion.
The more common problem is to misinterpret findings or, more frequently, to
overinterpret them by neglecting the limits and conditions that generally restrict presidential influence. The public presidency field is cited to claim support for the assertion
that “presidents’ use of public rhetoric increases . . . opportunities for the expansion of
presidential power” (Beasley 2010, 22); that “many scholars assign the president significant power [because of his]. . . . rhetorical effect [and use of] . . . ‘going public’ [as] a key
tool” (Ragusa 2010, 1021); and that “[p]residents use [public appeals] . . . to influence
the mass public in order to ultimately influence Congress [and to] creat[e] a feedback
cycle that allows presidents to win passage of their legislation in Congress” (Hill, Oliver,
and Marion 2010, 897).
The overinterpretation of the White House’s promotional efficacy is evident in
case studies where antidrug enforcement is tied to past research findings that the
president can effectively harness the bully pulpit to drive policy (Whitford and Yates
2009). Public safety similarly casts presidency research as demonstrating that the White
House is “the leader of public opinion,” which it uses to “generate support for the
administration’s policies” (Hill, Oliver, and Marion 2010, 897). Comparative studies also
tend to cherry pick slices of presidency research findings. Analysis of the British prime
minister relies on the assumption that “devices and strategies of the public presidency can
be exceptionally successful in developing and sustaining the political initiatives for a
leader” (Foley 2008, 56). Studies of Latin American countries trumpet the “going public”
research to claim that U.S. presidents “make their case to the electorate as a way of cowing
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a recalcitrant congress” and “enhancing executive power” (Conaghan and de la Torre
2008, 269) as well as generating “legislative strength” (Alemán and Calvo 2010). A
similar pattern is on display in a study of Portugal that claims that U.S. presidents “use
the pressure of popular opinion to prompt Congress to approve their policy initiatives”
(Neto and Lobo 2009, 249).
The flaw with these (and other) studies that harvest public presidency research is
not that “going public” has no effect, but rather that such studies profile an imbalanced
or inaccurate portrayal of the research findings that inflates presidential influence and
power. Neglected are the limits, conditions, and selectivity that generally characterize
presidential promotions of legislative initiatives. Where the public presidency field
underscores constraints and White House disappointment, broader disciplinary accounts
stress power and accomplishment.
The Case of Health Care Reform and Obama’s Predictable Limits
The neglect of public presidency research is vividly illustrated by exaggerations
of Obama’s capacity to rally public opinion against recalcitrant legislators and by his
predictable experience—extensive, substantive public promotions and limited effects
on the media and Americans. This tendency toward inflating the efficacy of the public
presidency is spotlighted by the expectations of Obama to drive press coverage and public
opinion to support the Affordable Care Act (ACA) of 2010.
In contrast to the restrained findings of public presidency research, Drew Westen
(2011) stridently critiqued Obama in the media and Political Science Quarterly for his
“failure in storytelling” and in dominating press coverage to establish a “counternarrative” (496). The division of Americans over health reform and their lack of understanding of its provisions is a product, Westen reports, of Obama’s failure to “explain [it
and other initiatives] . . . with the repetition and evocative imagery . . . to make an idea
. . . ‘stick’ ” (497). Westen’s conclusions were echoed by historian Julian Zelizer (2012)
who faults Obama for having “done little to rally the public behind [health reform].”
Criticisms of Obama’s handling of health reform stand out from the public
presidency research in two respects. First, the complaint that the president had “done
little” to promote it is at odds with numerous studies that find a persistent pattern of
“going public” on White House top priorities. Did Obama’s behavior sharply depart
from the practices of his predecessors, as his critics charge? Second, the charges that
Obama failed to perform a central presidential power—establishing his “narrative” in
media coverage and “rallying the public”—pose expectations of efficaciousness that are
unsupported by rigorous research. Are critics correct that Obama’s poor performance of
his public leadership responsibilities account for the lack of favorable press reports and
public attitudes toward ACA?
To answer these questions and explore the connection between presidency research
and the disciplinary interpretations of it, I analyzed Obama’s public handling of health
reform and the media’s coverage of it. In particular, I identified and analyzed his public
statements on health reform in the month of his State of the Union Address and every
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third month afterward—11 months in total (three months each in 2009, 2010 and 2011,
and two months in 2012).1 I examined each of the president’s speeches and remarks that
were posted on the White House Web site and identified substantive statements about
health care reform that extended beyond passing references to the word or legislative
victories. For substantive speeches, I analyzed Obama’s comments on why reform was
needed, the specific features of reform, and the evidence that substantiated his case for
reform. My analysis also tracked the length of speech in terms of its number of paragraphs
and identified his audience—whether it was specialized (professional associations and
political insiders) or a general public audience such as Town Hall meetings or national
addresses like his televised State of the Union Addresses.2
I examined two aspects of the press coverage of the president’s statements using
LexisNexis. First, I investigated whether his substantive public statements on health
reform were reported by the national media of record regarding politics and policy—
specifically, the New York Times, Washington Post, or CNN. Second, I tracked the nature of
the press coverage and, specifically, whether it focused on substantive health reform
policy or on politics and strategy such as behind-the-scenes maneuvering and tactical
positioning.
Obama Goes Public
Our analysis finds that Obama made frequent, substantively specific, and consistent
public statements on the need for and the benefits of health reform—much of what critics
lament as missing. Indeed, Obama’s efforts confirm the findings of presidency research
regarding the aggressive attempts of presidents to engage the public.
Table 1 presents my analysis of Obama’s public statements on health reform and
reveals that he made substantive speeches on 40 separate occasions during the 11 months
examined in depth. Although critics harbor the impression that Obama was missing in
TABLE 1
Obama’s Substantive Public Discussion of Health Reform
Obama’s Substantive Discussion1
Total
Discussion
Discussion Before Health
Reform Law
Discussion After Health Reform
Law Passed in March 2010
40
25
15
1
Number of separate Obama speeches or remarks that discussed the need for health reform, specific features
of reform, and substantiating data between February 2009 and April 2012.
1. The sampling strategy—combining inclusion of the president’s most significant annual speech
(State of the Union Address) and a random sample of his other public statements—is designed to accurately
reflect the topics chosen by President Obama to address publicly and the frequency of his statements on them.
I do not expect this sample to disproportionately include his comments on health care reform.
2. Obama’s addresses to specialized audiences included those to a conference of the American Medical
Association and the Business Council as well as political events for insiders including for the DSCC/DCCC,
Democratic National Committee, Senate and House Democrats, and fund raisers, and campaigns. His
national addresses were primarily the State of the Union Address and also included press conferences and a
variety of public settings such as Town Hall meeting and “backyard” conversations.
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action, he was actually barnstorming the country, making the case for reform: four times
per month overall and seven times per month in his first year in office. In June 2009, he
made nine separate addresses; these included in-depth discussions at a Green Bay Town
Hall (56 paragraphs), the annual meeting of the American Medical Association (87
paragraphs), and a forum hosted by ABC television (81 paragraphs).
These addresses included pitched calls for action as well as substantively coherent
and consistent discussions of the urgency of reform, the specific remedies required, and
tangible descriptions of how reform would help everyday people and critical stakeholders
from physicians to businesses. For example, Obama used his first nationally televised
address to Congress soon after his inauguration to spotlight health reform as one of
his primary objectives, stressing his realism about future hurdles and his determination:
“let there be no doubt: health care reform cannot wait, it must not wait, and it will not
wait another year.”3 He augmented his call for action with a detailed case for reform and
specific changes including in a Green Bay Town Hall meeting a few months later. “We
need health care reform because it’s central to our economic future. . . . We also have to
provide Americans who can’t afford health insurance more affordable options [because]
. . . it’s also a moral imperative” (Obama 2009). He foreshadowed what became the
building blocks of the law passed nearly a year later including the health insurance
exchange to find coverage plans. And, he firmly pushed back against criticism including
the charge of divisiveness and overreaching, reassuring his audience that “we’ve . . . built
an unprecedented coalition of people who are ready to reform our health care system:
physicians and health insurers; businesses and workers; Democrats and Republicans.” He
also challenged reform opponents—“What’s the alternative?” (Obama 2009).
The president’s address to the Green Bay Town Hall is not an exception; he
repeatedly made the case for health reform. His statements were not only substantive,
they were also consistently extensive: 15 addresses devoted 10 paragraphs or more to
health reform, and a quarter (10) ran over 20 paragraphs.
Moreover, he addressed multiple audiences. He targeted insiders who were indispensable to the politics of the legislative process and to the financing and operation of the
health system, including a diverse array of specialized associations from health care providers
to businesses. But he did not limit this campaign to insiders. More than half of his addresses
(23 of 40) were directed to the nation through prime-time televised speeches as well as
conversations in Town Halls and other public settings across the country.
As predicted by presidency research, Obama’s public appeals were motivated by his
drive to pass reform in a system prone to paralysis. He made more than half of his
presentations (25 of 40) before ACA was signed into law.4 It is a sign of the importance
the White House attached to rallying the public behind the ACA and explaining its
provisions to fend off confusion or apathy that he invested nearly 40% of his time and
energy to discussing it after the law was passed.
3. President Barack Obama, “Address to Joint Session of Congress,” February 24, 2009.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-barack-obama-address-joint-session-congress
(accessed October 18, 2012).
4. The disproportionate discussion of the ACA before its passage is not an artifact of my content
analysis; 7 of the 11 months that I examined followed its enactment.
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Obama’s public case was in depth, but it also included the forceful passion needed
to rally support. Illustrating a common pattern is the president’s stirring message in
Green Bay and the reaction from his audience (as recorded in a transcript): “we have
finally decided to fix what’s broken about health care in America. (Applause.) We have
finally decided it’s time to give every American quality health care at an affordable
cost. (Applause.) We have decided to invest in reforms that will bring costs down
now. (Applause.). . . . That’s what we can do in this country right now, at this moment”
(Obama 2009). Although Obama has often been criticized as “detached” and “professorial,” he displayed urgency and passion on health reform.
The Media Filter
Obama’s persistent, substantive and in-depth comments raise an intriguing
question: why would shrewd observers conclude that Obama did little to rally the public
behind the ACA when he was “going public,” as presidency research predicts? The answer
lies less with Obama and his lack of effort than with America’s information system.
Table 2 shows that the national press of record only covered 45% of all Obama’s
statements on health reform. Its reporting was even scarcer after the ACA’s passage, when
its coverage dropped to 20%. In other words, at the moment when Americans most needed
to learn about the ACA’s contents, only one out of five of Obama’s addresses about health
reform was conveyed to the country.
Even the limited coverage of Obama’s speeches about health reform often avoided
in-depth reporting on the substantive components of reform in favor of conveying
conflict among politicians and their strategic schemes. More than two-thirds of all press
stories focused on tactical maneuvering for power and advantage; only 13% primarily
reported the policy content of the president’s addresses; and the remaining portion
conveyed both the policy and politics of reform.5
Take, for example, Obama’s momentous January 2010 State of the Union plea
to continue to pursue reform after Scott Brown’s startling win of Ted Kennedy’s senate
TABLE 2
Media Coverage of Obama’s Substantive Public Discussion of Health Reform (Percent of
Obama’s Separate Statements on Reform Covered by National Press)
Press Coverage of
Obama’s Substantive
Statements
Total Press Coverage
Coverage Before Health
Reform Law
Coverage After
Health Reform Law
Passed in March 2010
45%
(coverage of 18 of
Obama’s 40 addresses)
60%
(coverage of 15 of
Obama’s 25 addresses)
20%
(coverage of 3 of
Obama’s 15 addresses)
5. I examined media framing by analyzing the content of the 39 stories by the New York Times,
Washington Post, and CNN on the president’s 18 substantive addresses on health reform. My analysis found
that 27 of these stories focused on the politics of reform, 5 were mostly devoted to policy, and 7 more
conveyed a mix of both.
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seat. To a coveted national audience, he made the case for the economic, fiscal, and moral
urgency of action and outlined his approach to “protect every American from the worst
practices of the insurance industry,” expand access by “giv[ing] small businesses and
uninsured Americans a chance to choose an affordable health care plan,” and “require
every insurance plan to cover preventive care” (Obama 2010). The coverage by the
New York Times (Stolberg 2010) never mentioned his reforms to establish insurance
company regulations, greater affordability, and improved access to prevention. Instead,
the coverage focused nearly uniformly on political intrigue: Obama’s address was framed
as “com[ing] at a particularly rocky point in his presidency,” presenting a contrasting
with his campaign “promise to change the culture of Washington,” and beating up on
both parties in Congress—he was presented as “chastis[ing] Republicans for working in
lock-step against him and . . . warn[ing] Democrats to stiffen their political spines.” For
those who only learned of the president’s speech through the media, they would likely be
unaware of the tangible reforms that were in the works and might be reasonably cynical
of Washington playing politics with their lives (Cappella and Jamieson 1997).
The media’s muted coverage of health reform and preoccupation with conflict and
intrigue frustrated Obama, as it had his predecessors including George W. Bush, who
derisively referred to the press as “the filter.” The “virtues of this legislation for Americans
with insurance and Americans without it,” Obama opined, “have been entirely obscured
by fear and distraction” both by opponents and by press reports that “breathlessly
declar[e] what something means for a political party, without really talking much about
what it means for a country.”6
The combination of a well-funded and carefully honed opposition and the media’s
incomplete and selective reporting of Obama’s public promotions contributed to public
ambivalence and confusion about health reform—the end-state that has alarmed the
President’s critics. Six out of 10 Americans report not knowing enough about the
personal impact of ACA, and most remain unaware of the core features of the law—nearly
all of which enjoy majority backing even among people who identify as Republicans,
according to Kaiser Family Foundation surveys.7 Nonetheless, the public is divided or a
bit opposed to reform, with favorable and unfavorable views generally in the 40% range
in 26 Kaiser surveys since ACA was signed into law.8
Putting Public Presidency in Context
Disciplinary borrowings from the field of the “public presidency” have feasted
on the “public” dimension of White House promotions but overlooked the second
component, which references the seminal shift from studying the individual of the
president to investigating the institution of the presidency. The field’s research finds that
the origins, forms, and conditional effects of presidential promotions are a function of
6. President Barack Obama, Speech at the House Democratic Caucus Retreat, January 14, 2010.
7. http://www.kff.org/healthreform/8296.cfm (accessed October 18, 2012); http://www.kff.org/
kaiserpolls/8302.cfm (accessed October 18, 2012).
8. http://www.kff.org/kaiserpolls/8315.cfm (accessed October 18, 2012).
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both the organizational processes of the executive office as well as broader sets of
relationships with the country’s information system, institutional contexts, and organizational rivals.
The case of health reform spotlights the analytic significance of situating personal
presidential behavior within the institutional and organizational contexts of American
politics. What is striking about Obama’s handling of health reform is not that he
failed to make frequent and compelling public presentation—a failure that could be
attributed to his personal flaws and limitations. Rather, what stands out is that he did
devote substantial time and resources to public promotion and still was unable to produce
favorable press coverage and public opinion. The answer to this puzzle can be found in the
institutional and informational systems that impose structural limits on White House
promotions and open up opportunities for strategic choices to capitalize on the capacities
of the presidency and exploit the weaknesses of opponents. Although a detailed analysis
is not feasible, I outline core features of America’s broader political context that condition
the effects of presidential promotions.
Presidential Communications within the Information System
Obama joins a large pool of presidents who sought to capitalize on their unrivalled
access to the media and to the presidency’s enormous capacities for promotion but failed
to impact public opinion as they desired. President George W. Bush devoted enormous
effort and resources to rallying the country to support the Iraq War and to back his efforts
to partially privatize Social Security; neither campaign moved public opinion in the
directions he sought (Edwards 2007). Bill Clinton launched an ambitious public push for
health reform in 1993 and was rewarded with stronger public opposition within a year
of unveiling his proposal.
Four components of the information system constrain and condition the effectiveness of White House promotion. First, the effectiveness of presidential appeals depends
on how the media process them based on their organizational incentives and processes.
The media’s search for audience and pursuit of general (if unevenly embraced) norms of
informing the public motivate journalists and editors to report on public affairs in ways
that will attract and entertain (Graber and Holyk 2011). What the president says—no
matter who he is and what gilded words he chooses—will routinely be subject to selective and refracted coverage by editors and reporters who choose (based on their own
incentives and norms) what to cover, how to frame it, and who to use as sources (Just
2011; Patterson 1994). The communications revolution—cable stations and social media
networking as well as online news sites and news-aggregating services—have atomized
the shared public square into numerous, disconnected cubbyholes that reinforce existing
perceptions and attitudes and resist presidential appeals (Shapiro and Jacobs 2011). In
addition to erecting new hurdles to presidential persuasion, the information revolution
has further complicated presidential promotions by reducing audience size and segmenting it; presidential failure has promoted them to redirect their appeals from broad
national audiences to narrower subgroups of partisans, local communities, and other
slices of voters (Baum and Kernell 1999; Cohen 2009; Wattenberg 2004).
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The second component is the intersection of the media and politics, and the media’s
close coverage of political conflict (Patterson 1994). The fixation of the traditional print
and broadcast media with political conflict and strategy may be lamentable from the
perspective of public education, but it accurately reflects partisan polarization that,
for instance, defined the ACA’s legislative journey—no Republicans voted for it while
Democrats overwhelming backed it— as well as earlier health reform episodes (Cappella
and Jamieson 1997). Indeed, the media reacts to presidential promotions not by passively
accepting them but by portraying them as staged orchestrations and by expanding
coverage of opponents (Jacobs 2010).
The third component is the public’s existing set of attitudes and style of information
processing. From the start, the president’s promotions face outright suspicion from a
large proportion of the country that affiliates with the opposing party. Worse, today’s
historic polarization nearly ensures potent opposition to White House initiatives and
sophisticated countermobilization strategies (Cameron and Park 2011; Jacobs and Shapiro
2000). For presidents, their promotions contend with ingrained patterns of information
processing in which oppositional framings bypass critical cognitive inspection (Druckman 2004; Strickland, Taber, and Lodge 2011). The health reform episode illustrates what
political psychologists call “motivated reasoning”: warnings by reform opponents about
“death panels” and personal threats, which the media extensively reported, had the effect
of priming many Americans to retrieve entrenched partisan beliefs and attitudes about
government and to grow uncertain about, or turn against, reform.
Fourth, the design of policy has powerful and potentially enduring effects on public
attitudes and behaviors that are difficult for presidents to override (Mettler and Soss
2004). In the case of health reform, the public’s muted awareness and evaluations of the
ACA were in part a function of the law’s policy design and, in particular, the decision
of lawmakers to delay implementation of tangible benefits to 2014 and to rely on
“submerged” policy tools (such as tax subsidies and the state option to avoid or mute the
government’s public involvement in operating the new insurance programs) (Mettler
2011).
In short, presidents face enormous hurdles in delivering their message through the
information system. The mutually reinforcing incentives of the information system
routinely work to crowd out meaningful reporting on policy and feeds cynicism about the
purpose of government (Cappella and Jamieson 1997).
Institutions and Interests Trump Presidential Appeals
Presidency research delivers a double blow to exaggerated claims about the general
efficacy of presidential promotions: not only do they rarely deliver what the White House
and its supporters expect, but the preoccupation with them distracts from the dominant
dynamics of policy making—entrenched institutional and organizational processes. Put
another way, even if presidents (including Obama) impact public opinion as they desire,
rigorous research provides no reasonable grounds to a general expectation that legislative
outcomes (including health reform) are likely to meaningfully change in ways that would
avoid compromises, delays, and deadlocks.
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Of particular importance are interbranch relations. They drive national decision
making and routinely blunt or override the personal appeals of presidents for public
support, helping to account for the selectivity and contingency of presidential efforts to
move public opinion.
Presidents can barnstorm the country to champion their proposals, but their success
in Congress is largely a function of its partisan composition: fellow partisans generally
support the White House, legislators in the opposing party usually oppose the administration, and the probability of both tendencies has increased as partisan polarization has
widened (Bond and Fleisher 1990; Edwards 1989; Jacobson 2003). The biggest factor in
the passage of comprehensive national health reform was unified Democratic Party control
of the legislative and executive branches and the largest congressional majorities in decades.
Fellow partisans regularly support presidents as a general rule, but even this
bond does not guarantee White House success: one party does not typically control
both lawmaking branches (as Obama discovered after the 2010 midterm elections) and
presidents face resistance from fellow partisans who do not share their philosophical
orientation (as exhibited by the splits within the Democratic Party over health reform in
2009-10). These structural features, and not Obama’s personal temperament or promotional skills, set the parameters of what was feasible.
While partisan and ideological forces predispose certain legislative outcomes,
the institutional rules and procedures of Congress influence the form, pace, and tenor of
lawmaking. One set of picket fences consist of the increasing and broadening use of the
60-vote filibuster requirement that the opposition deploys to bog down and block
legislation (Bondurant 2011). On health reform, the filibuster required the votes of all 58
Democrats and two independents, empowering each senator to bargain for goodies under
the threat of withholding his or her support and sending reform to defeat. The infamous
“Cornhusker Kickback” was struck to secure one of the final Democratic votes for the
ACA—Nebraska’s Ben Nelson. Adding still more opportunity for delay, deadlock, and
doom were legislative budget rules that positioned the Congressional Budget Office
(CBO) as the official scorekeeper on the revenue and costs of new legislation. (See Jacobs
and Skocpol 2012 for detailed discussion of these dynamics.)
Presidential promotional efforts to dictate the pace, form, and disposition of
legislation are routinely trumped by the durable and thorough-going influences of a
turbo-charged system of institutional warfare.
The Institution of the Presidency
Interbranch relations and the informational system impose structural constraints
on presidents. But agency and structure interact. When presidential promotions collide
with institutional constraints, strategic presidents can adapt by capitalizing on the
institutional resources they direct in order to serve their agenda.
Political observers and scholars unfamiliar with presidency research tend to
conclude from the visible nature of White House promotions that this is the crux of
its efforts to drive policy. In reality, presidents can choose to pursue less visible forms of
influence anchored in the presidency’s swelling institutional resources (Burke 1992;
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PRESIDENTIAL STUDIES QUARTERLY / March 2013
Milkis 1993; Milkis and Nelson 1990; Ragsdale and Theis 1997) and the significance of
America’s developmental paths for structuring presidential choice and success (Skowronek 1993). Although multiple and competing lines of authority have created a “hapless
giant” in parts of the American state (Skowronek 1982), the expansion and centralization
of national institutions and the presidency have forged new administrative capacities in
the executive branch and boosted the White House’s confidence in regularly using them
to advance its agenda (Mann and Ornstein 2012; Moe 2003).
As the efficacy of promotional campaigns has proven uneven and limited, presidents
have begun to turn routinely to the enduring capacities of the Office of Management and
Budget and executive branch departments to circumvent Congress to pursue an “administrative presidency” that promotes the president’s policy agenda through appointments
of compatible agency personnel, executive orders, and his office’s oversight of agency
budgets and regulations (Arnold 1986; Mayer 1999; Nathan 1975; Wood and Waterman
1991). While observers focused on Obama’s limited success in driving press coverage
and public opinion, his White House responded to failure by unilaterally implementing
reforms through administrative rulemaking in a host of areas from the environment to
labor policy (Layzer 2011; Warren 2011).
On health care, stronger administrative capacity and its effectiveness reinforced the
confidence of the Obama administration and Congress in developing new government
cost controls including the creation of an unusually independent body to constrain
Medicare expenditures as well as other initiatives to contain costs.9 By comparison, when
Medicare was formulated in the mid-1960s, these steps were inconceivable; presidents
John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson and their allies rejected proposals for direct national
government control over costs in favor of perverse reimbursement arrangement: doctors
and hospitals determined their own charges after providing treatment and were paid
by intermediaries—insurers and, most often, Blue Cross and Blue Shield) (Jacobs 1993;
Jacobs and Skocpol 2012). As budgetary pressures bore down on Obama and his allies,
the expansion of the executive’s institutional capacities elevated the credibility of government cost controls during the formation of the ACA. After the 2010 midterm
elections fueled Republican efforts to stop health reform, Obama turned to the administrative discretion and capacity of the Department of Health and Human Services to
shape the new law’s rules and to press ahead with its implementation (Jacobs and Skocpol
2012).
The Politics of Economics
Political organizations that represent established economic interests capitalize on
contentious public beliefs and the dispersal of government power. They wield resources
and ongoing relationships of advantage sharing and threats of political retribution to
guide and, if necessary, pressure members of Congress and administration officials to
redirect, delay, or reject policies that threaten their interests.
9. Proposals by the Independent Payment Advisory Board automatically take effect unless congressional majorities vote otherwise, and they are able to override a veto if the president supports the commission’s recommendations.
Jacobs / THE PUBLIC PRESIDENCY AND DISCIPLINARY PRESUMPTIONS
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Ronald Reagan’s wide-ranging efforts to shrink federal government responsibilities
and funding was subsequently checked or reduced as organized interests effectively used
judicial oversight and congressional alliances (Bickers and Stein 1995). Seeking change
from the opposite ideological direction, Obama faced formidable opposition to programs
that would primarily benefit a large, diffuse, and comparatively unorganized target
population—namely, recipients of health care expansion. Anticipating deadlock and
potential defeat, he and his allies adapted to this imbalanced organizational combat zone
by striking compromises with stakeholders in the financial and health care industries
(Jacobs and King 2009, 2010).
Although strong public support can augment the White House’s bargaining position, strategic presidents enhance their probability of success by adjusting their positions,
giving some ground to legislators and well-organized interests with the sway to obstruct
them (Burnam 2010; Dickinson 2008). In 2009-10, President Obama and his allies
adjusted their policy positions on health care reform, balancing their commitment to
comprehensive reform against the strategic need to secure support or acquiescence of
powerful economic interests and their allies (Jacobs and Skocpol 2012).
Cross-Fertilization and Boundary Cross
The conditional nature of presidential promotion has several implications. Most
immediately, it offers a more accurate and nuanced context for analyzing the Obama
presidency and the pattern of extensive public promotions and minimal effects. Commentary and analysis of Obama’s public leadership needs to shift from simple personalistic traits toward a more sophisticated analysis of the enduring institutional and
developmental patterns that structure American politics. This is not a recommendation,
as suggested earlier, to replace one simplistic account with another; agency and structure
do interact. Moving toward a more satisfying analysis of Obama’s public presidency
requires pulling back from personalism as the preeminent focus and introducing the
broader context of White House appeals.
The second implication relates to the way political commentators and scholars
engage with public presidency research. Here is the starting point: research on presidential
promotions occupies center stage in scholarly and real-world disputes about American
politics; it does not suffer from the “overtilling” that worried Arnold. Although presidential
appeals are at times treated as being directed solely at the general public, important research
has identified its effects in fostering and reinforcing polarization and politically important
segments of the electorate (Cameron and Park 2011; Druckman and Jacobs 2011; Lee 2008;
Wood 2009). The president’s impact on legislation increases when he invests his State of
the Union Address into moving his agenda, but these effects appear to have weakened in
the face of intensifying party polarization and opposition (Cummins 2010). A host of factors
related to the legislative process and political time condition when and how presidents make
their appeals (Eshbaugh-Soha and Miles 2011; Rottinghaus 2006).
The range of disciplines studying the public presidency is impressively wide,
breaking from the silos that too often characterize the study of American politics.
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Research on presidential promotions is increasingly entwined with the study of the
media, as presidents seek to cherry pick more deferential local journalists (Cohen 2010)
and attempt to drive media coverage (Jacobs and Shapiro 2000, chaps. 4 and 5). The
transformation of mass communications has expanded the number and diversity of news
outlets and introduced a new era in which “consumers” of news have, in part, become its
producers through the internet (Shapiro and Jacobs 2011). As these changes have redefined the news media, students of mass communications and American politics have been
tracing and analyzing new forms of journalistic reporting (Clayman et al. 2010) and the
impacts of new and expanded media options on the nature and effects of presidential
appeals (Baum 1999, 2005; Young and Perkins 2005).
Important research examining the president’s influence on public opinion and
representative democracy has significant normative implications. Although the White
House fashions game plans to move public attitudes, a sophisticated series of studies are
identifying conditions that modify the president’s impact. These conditions include the
broader political environment, the president’s message (especially its credibility and its
focus on domestic or foreign policy) and his ability to attract national media coverage
(Rottinghaus 2009) as well as the traits of the individuals receiving his message (Groeling and Baum 2008).
There is also growing sophistication in detecting the range of influences that
presidents exert. Although presidents rarely succeed in manufacturing the support
they seek for a sustained period in a fractious environment (Druckman 2001, 2004;
Rottinghaus 2009), presidents are able to influence the public’s agenda (Cohen 1995).
Rather than banking on the daunting task of changing the public’s basic preferences
and beliefs, presidents work to “prime” individuals to focus on particular policy domains,
image traits, and emotions (Druckman, Jacobs, and Ostermeier 2004; Jacobs and Shapiro
2000). The priming strategy may impact public evaluations of the president and his
policies without altering core attitudes and beliefs (Jacobs and Shapiro 2000, chap. 2 and
Conclusion).
Presidential influence on citizens raises significant normative questions. Drawing
on research on the efforts of presidents and political elites, more generally, to shape
public opinion, Lisa Disch (2011, 2012) argues that “political representation need
not and cannot take preferences as its starting place” and, instead, must “conceive of the
‘people,’ democracy’s political subject, as endogenous to the process of representation”
(103). Presidential appeals that “foreclose” citizen judgment and make citizen preferences
“necessarily endogenous to politics” (101) recast democratic theory and undercut Hannah
Pitkin’s (1967) previously revered analysis of representation, which had assumed exogenous citizens (Disch 2011, 107; Mansbridge 2003).
Accurate dissemination of public presidency research will be enhanced by continued
and growing publications in prominent journals that span political science, political
psychology, and mass communications. As the process continues, there is a natural and
necessary progression toward scrutinizing questionable or misleading claims. Cross-field
research can also be encouraged through “translational” publications that explicitly bridge
methodological and theoretical barriers. This is common practice in the physical sciences
and may foster a new generation of cross-field research on presidential promotions.
Jacobs / THE PUBLIC PRESIDENCY AND DISCIPLINARY PRESUMPTIONS
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31
Conferences and journals offer important opportunities for synthesizing the diverse research
on presidential promotions and building a research community that brings together
political theory and scholars from across the social sciences.
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