The Public Presidency: Increasing Return on Investment

Abstract

Despite greater access to the media, greater resources to craft the perfect message and greater knowledge of the contours of public opinion (Heith 2000), presidents seem to be less persuasive (Edwards 2003, 2007, 2009). Paradoxically, modern presidents are more likely to take their message to the public than their predecessors. This paradox motivates continued exploration of the persuasive capacity of modern presidents, despite the flaws in the original "going public" paradigm. This dissertation explores several aspects of this paradox and in some instances clarifies and in others innovates on the existing literature. The focus of the existing literature on speech content and the tone of news coverage neglects individual level causal mechanisms that influence public acceptance of presidential messages. Sometimes persuasion is less a matter of the content of the message and more related to psychological motivations that influence how individuals respond to the person presenting the message. This dissertation adds both breadth and precision to the existing literature by exploring the influence of these psychological mechanisms on individual acceptance of presidential messages. In addition, this dissertation shows that sometimes our myopic focus on presidential persuasion is misplaced. Under certain conditions, presidents may use a public campaign for policy as a diversion, rather than an attempt to persuade the public. Thus, modern presidents may use the bully pulpit to exercise negative control of the public agenda rather than to persuade potential political converts.