© The Author(s) 2018

Shannon Bow O'BrienWhy Presidential Speech Locations MatterThe Evolving American Presidencyhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78136-5_1

1. Overview

Shannon Bow O’Brien¹  

(1)

Department of Government, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA

 

 

Shannon Bow O’Brien

Email: shannonbow@hotmail.com

The presidency occupies a special status within American society. The office has clearly defined powers and limitations. However, the constitutional powers fail to capture the true nature of the evolving power of the executive. It is the only branch of the American government headed by a solitary person. Though not a monarch, this individual is simultaneously a person, position, and branch of government. The presidency exists as a multilayered entity that cannot easily be teased apart into compartmentalized notions. The person functions both as the head of state and the chief executive. Ceremonial and administrative duties fall squarely upon their shoulders. They are ideally supposed to represent our nation in various social functions while managing the entire executive branch bureaucracy. The American presidency balances the pageantry of our nation with the responsibility of bureaucratic management. Both are interlinked and critical to the successful functioning of our government. When one is favored over the other, presidents appear to either be out of touch with either the people or the system. Our presidents attempt to manage the branch while simultaneously attending to the needs of the population.

As conceived in Article I of the USA Constitution, the legislative branch wields a tremendous amount of power. Many scholars consider this branch as the most powerful of the three. Our founding fathers were deeply concerned about the emergence of a monarch. As a result, they vested the majority of authority into the legislative branch with the idea of power diffused among the electorate. All systems, however, need leaders to organize and guide ideas into actualizations. Within the Congress, formal and informal leadership structure developed, and over time, institutionalized into a set hierarchy governing member interaction and activity. The legislative branch has long been involved in power struggles with the executive branch. While our founders were apprehensive about a powerful executive, they understood a single president was psychologically important for the country. Voters demand accountability, and an elected president provides a figurehead for the public to galvanize around, and look toward as the ultimate voice for the people. Over the years, the American presidency has grown in power disproportionate to its original constitutional provisions. The development of the bureaucracy allowed for the executive branch to exert a large amount of influence upon the federal government. As presidents have transitioned away from their role as “chief clerk,” ¹ they challenged the legislative branch’s historical dominance of government. The public looks to the president for guidance and leadership as the country’s primary elected official. This fluidity of executive responsibility lends itself toward a flexible model of leadership. Presidents throughout history mold the branch and office to suit their current administration’s needs. Because of the diverse responsibilities held by the executive, the sitting president regularly sees to the obligations of the office through personal appearances, speeches, meetings, executive orders, messages, or other means to communicate his opinions and preferences. It is difficult to distill all presidential actions into uniform categories. Each executive has brought their own distinctive style to the office along with personal proclivities toward specific methods of public interaction. Some, like Eisenhower and Nixon, preferred a more formal White House while Carter and Clinton gravitated toward a more collegial one. Within all the uniqueness and idiosyncratic behavior of administrations, are there patterns across time we can observe? Can we compare presidencies to see certain aspects are stable across administrations and if changes have occurred over the years? Is it feasible to treat presidential administrations as units of comparison rather than exceptional events without counterparts?

When presidents choose to speak in public, they do so for a variety of reasons. Many explanations exist, but they often include announcing policy, recognizing individuals, informing the country, and building support. Location of a public speech often indicates the motivation and rationale for the activity. If we assume presidents have the ability to give as well as refrain from speechmaking, the act itself has implications of intentional activity. Presidents speak because they have grounds for doing it. Sometimes, it can be as innocent as presenting an award, but other times, it may involve building support for national programs or authorizing international military action.

Presidents are only as powerful as their ability to align support for their policies. Though presidents have dramatically increased the total volume of speeches over the past seventy years, do they solely rely upon large cities and media markets to convey the messages or do they utilize smaller, less national media outlets and regional addresses to connect with the citizenry? Presidential speeches give us tools to better explore choices made by administrations in terms of priorities. When presidents speak, people listen. The topics they address, the words they choose can help guide and direct the public in specific ways. Jason Barabas asserts “citizens learn from the presidential rhetoric in SOTU addresses, especially policy proposals highlighted in the mass media.” ² People listen to what a president says, and how he says it. Tone ³ can affect perceptions and when “public opinion moves in favor of the president’s advocated policy, an effect that is strongest among the attentive audience.” ⁴ Competing ideologies over the role of the president has seesawed the balance of power back and forth between the congressional and executive branches. In the twentieth century, presidential dominance emerged and has never been subjugated. American president acts as the lead policy maker within the hearts and minds of most citizens. This research explores several basic questions about modern presidential speechmaking. First, has the basic nature of presidential speechmaking changed over time? Through examining the volume of speeches on a yearly basis, it is possible to see that new patterns of yearly speechmaking that emerged especially after the Nixon administration continuing through today. In particular, this research suggests almost much modern presidential speechmaking is cyclical in nature, both during governing and election periods. Can we determine if any consistent patterns within speech location exist across presidencies? In particular, the usage of media markets helps us better understand where presidents choose to speak throughout the USA. If presidents do prefer certain media market sizes to others, what types of speeches occur there? Do they use certain sized markets primarily for campaigning, policy announcements, or consensus building publicity stops? Through media markets and use of speech types (i.e., election speech), clear profiles emerge with how and when presidents choose to talk in different parts of the USA. Some presidents prefer to reinforce base support while others engage in more outreach activities. By comparing and contrasting speeches organized by more conventional Census areas and the less traditional media markets, this project unearths some striking and surprising results. Unquestionably, the volume of presidential speeches over the past fifty years has exploded. Chief executives give public speeches almost constantly, talking on a variety of topics ranging from mundane to vital issues impacting life in America. However, do presidents give preferential treatment to specific areas of the USA? Furthermore, over the past thirty years, a body of literature has emerged around the continuous or permanent campaign of presidential administrations. In the world of the continuous campaign, presidents theoretically never cease the campaigning process. Richard Nixon in March 1971 said to Haldeman “[t]he staff doesn’t understand that we are in a continuous campaign.” ⁵ Polling public opinion becomes paramount, and every speech has some sort of audience. In short, administrations never disengage from campaigning. This situation implies presidents must maintain the same level of speechmaking during nonelection years as they do within periods of reelection or risk erosion. My belief is this premise may be flawed. These findings suggest Nixon indeed engaged in permanent campaigning during his entire time in office. Much of the early research on continuous campaigning emerged during or soon after his presidency. However, his administration appears to be the exception rather than the norm for most subsequent chief executives. Nixon was, in retrospect, less of a model and more of an outlier for generalized behavior in office. Because the volume of speeches exploded following the Nixon presidency, an assumption was made that others were behaving in a similar matter, but the rapid growth in quantity clouded their true behavior. In reality, every presidency post-Nixon until Obama has engaged primarily in cyclical speechmaking, seriously altering pattern during election seasons, particularly during their own reelection periods. The sheer number of speeches often swamps these dramatic changes, but when filtered by Census areas or media markets, distinctive and persuasive patterns of cyclical speechmaking are more apparent. By using an additional lens of Electoral College success, we can also see presidents choose and prefer relying on their bases of support both during and not during periods of election-oriented speechmaking. Presidents have different patterns throughout the country when engaging in election-focused speeches compared to generalized ones. This project also integrates swing states into the Electoral College assessment. It will show that George W. Bush focused on swing states at a far higher level than any other president. Barack Obama, on the other hand, eschewed them and reinforced his base with veracity. Recent presidents have also seriously altered the ways in which they “go public.” The underlying theory within much of the rhetorical presidency literature relies upon the notion the president primarily addresses national audiences. Several scholars ⁶ pay careful attention to presidents’ interaction with media and the public, but their focus clearly centers on national level appeals. Samuel Kernell’s book, Going Public: New Strategies for Presidential Leadership, first published in 1986 engages this material during a period of heightened presidential speechmaking in Washington, DC. While the concept of “going public” has been an institution within American research for about 30 years, my research suggests George W. Bush broke with the tenets of this idea and interacts with the public in a localized speechmaking model. Both Richard Nixon and George W. Bush appear as outliers in a rather regular pattern of behavior. While Barack Obama was often publicly criticized for his speechmaking, his regional patterns more closely resemble administrations such as George H. W. Bush than his immediate predecessors. He goes more national, helping support a nationalized “going public” model.

Much of the rhetorical presidency literature relies upon the idea the president primarily addresses national audiences. Recent attention to local audiences has grown, ⁷ but there is still often a focus at the national level speeches. Some presidents have utilized local media outlets and regional addresses to connect with the citizenry while others gravitated toward broader, national audience approaches. These noticeable styles and differences highlight marked patterns which have more to be with how they approach the presidency rather than simple partisan distinctions. The research borrows some methods utilized in marketing research to identify and explain regional patterns of speechmaking and underscores the importance of regional appeals to the “rhetorical presidency.”

As the twentieth century saw the rise of the institutional presidency, the public engaged in perhaps its most intimate relationship between the president and population. Radio and later television transitioned the president from an abstract office to friend and ally. Verbal and video communication promoted the presidency in new ways to the American public. Presidential activities were no longer solely chronicled in third person newspaper articles or theatrical newsreels. Chief executives explained justified or appealed directly to individual voters inside their homes. Successful presidents transcended the divide between the conceptual and tangible in the psyches of their constituents. Thus, presidential authority arises from the chief executive choosing specific points in time to act. Presidents are fully aware the press corps closely scrutinizes their public movements, words, and activities. People want to know intimate details about the president, and astute leaders use this desire at opportune moments for their advantage. “The presidency is a battering ram, and the presidents who have succeeded most magnificently in political leadership are those who have been best situated to use it forthrightly as such.” ⁸ Chief executives use their sway over the media and other outlets to get their message out without expending too many resources. “Rhetorical power is a very special case of executive power because simultaneously it is the means by which an executive can defend the use of force and other executive powers and it is a power itself.” ⁹ The language of the president sends clear indications of his justifications for action as well as their power over the decision itself. “A successful rhetorical president has become so by developing three resources: public trust, an image of managerial competence, and a coherent rhetoric that unites trustworthiness and competence into a vision that coordinates public choices.” ¹⁰

American presidents have understood the appeal of direct communication with the public. President Calvin Coolidge was the first president to address the nation from the White House in 1924. In fact, during his run for the presidency that same year, Coolidge gave his final campaign speech on the radio garnering the largest listening audience of any broadcast to date. Franklin Roosevelt most notably employed radio broadcasts with his “Fireside Chats.” Thirty speeches spanning between 1933 and 1944, the Fireside Chats humanized an American president in ways no previous administration had achieved. The term was coined because Roosevelt sought to cultivate an image of him actually sitting in the living room of individual citizens informally conversing about his policies and actions. These talks were enormously successful in forging a new relationship between the public and presidency. People viewed Roosevelt as a friend and partner who took the time to carefully explain his strategies in clear, but straightforward terms. Television further served to amplify the president’s relationship with the American public. Though Franklin Roosevelt was the first president to appear regionally on television in 1939 at the opening of the World’s Fair on Long Island, Harry Truman was the first president to have an address nationally broadcast in 1951. Neither president, however, used television as a mechanism to directly connect with the public.

It was Dwight Eisenhower who pioneered the application of television to bring his message to Americans. Between 1952 and 1956, television ownership grew from 37 to 76%. ¹¹ Starting in 1953, Eisenhower gave regular televised news conferences interacting with reporters and answering their questions. Like Roosevelt with radio, he saw this new medium as a way to manage his image and foster a bond between him and the public. By the time he sought reelection in 1956, Dwight Eisenhower was not in the best physical shape. Between his heart attack in 1955 and intestinal surgery in June 1956, Eisenhower needed a way to conserve his energy and health ¹² during the election campaign. The Republican Party turned to television as a novel approach to interject Eisenhower into American homes with minimal commitment from the ailing chief executive. Television campaign commercials cultivating an image of vitality put Eisenhower into practically every American household. The television approach succeeded with Eisenhower winning in a landslide.

In the early years of both radio and television, presidents drew large audiences and used the tools as a way to avoid exhaustive travel. Franklin Roosevelt’s paralysis and Dwight Eisenhower’s declining health inhibited them from vigorously engaging in speaking tours throughout the country. Both saw their respective communication mediums as their best means for “going public” to the American people. In fact, during the 1956 campaign, Eisenhower was only away from Washington for 13 days, 6 of which were devoted to stops explicitly for television appearances. ¹³

With the exception of the Gerald Ford and the first terms of Harry Truman and George W. Bush, every president after Franklin D. Roosevelt gave over 50% of all speeches in each four-year term in Washington, DC. Harry Truman gave 38.3% of his speeches in Washington, DC, during this first term though he increased to 56.1% in the second. Gerald Ford gave 43.6% while George W. Bush was at 48.3%. Three presidents (Reagan 54.4%, George H. W. Bush 52.3%, Barack Obama 53.3%) gave slightly over half of their speeches in the nation’s capital during this first term. The remainder (Eisenhower 66.9%, Kennedy 66.9%, Johnson (1963–1968) 71.9%, Carter 60.8%, Reagan 62.9%, Clinton 60.6%) all gave at least 60% of their total first-term speeches in Washington, DC. Second terms are slightly different. Every second-term administration gave at least 50% or more of their speech totals in Washington, DC. Most administrations (Truman 56.1%, Nixon 65.6%, Reagan 65.7%, Bush 43 59.3%, Obama 58.2%) gave a higher percentage in Washington, DC, in their second term when compared to their first. Eisenhower (59.4%) and Clinton (53.3%) were distinctive because they gave a smaller percentage in Washington during in their second term in office.

These numbers suggest presidents conduct a large portion of the public discourse in the nation’s capital. The focus should be self-evident considering presidents in modern times use the White House as not only a residence, but also their seat of power. The White House functions not only as a home, but also their base of operation. The West Wing and nearby Executive Office Buildings house employees within the Executive Office of the President (EOP) and the Executive Branch bureaucracy. These staffers exist to better inform the chief executive and perform the duties of the branch. It is natural, therefore, to assume presidents tend to give the bulk of their speeches within the Washington, DC, vicinity.

Percentages, however, are different than volume. Broadly speaking, each American president speaks more frequently than his predecessor. Exceptions exist, but usually these outliers involve extraordinary circumstances like the premature resignation of Nixon during his second term. The first terms of Truman and Eisenhower both have under 300 public speeches in Washington, DC, with 228 and 275, respectively. While Truman almost doubles in his second term to 447, Eisenhower barely increases to 307. John Kennedy, even with a truncated first term, has a far higher speech number (523) in Washington, DC, than his two predecessors. Lyndon Johnson presents a conundrum because of the unusual nature of this presidential term. During the time he served out Kennedy’s first term, Johnson gave 321 public speeches in Washington, DC. It is a remarkable number for the remaining 425 days of Kennedy intended term. Johnson’s full term clocked in with 909 public speeches in Washington, DC, more than the combined two full terms of either Truman or Eisenhower. Johnson is followed by an equally unusual administration with Richard Nixon. His first term was lower than his two immediate predecessors, but more than Truman or Eisenhower with a total 457. The abbreviated second term was shockingly low with only 162 public speeches in Washington, DC. The second term of Richard Nixon lasted 567 days. If we were to compare Nixon’s shortened term to Johnson in 1963–1964, Nixon averaged fewer than 3 Washington, DC, speeches every 10 days with Johnson at around 7 and a half. The final atypical term is the presidency of Gerald Ford who served out the remainder of Nixon’s second term in office. He gave 557 public speeches in Washington, DC, during his 896 days in office with an average of 6.2 speeches every 10 days. With the Carter administration, we see an increase in public speeches in Washington, DC. Carter and Reagan both were under a thousand public speeches in Washington during all their terms. Carter was at 886, and Reagan, 983 and 940, respectively. The first terms for both Bushes were very similar to the elder at 1060 public speeches in Washington and the younger at 1056. George W. Bush increased in his second term up to 1092. Barack Obama was also in the range of the Bush presidents with 1079 Washington speeches in his first term though he declined to 915 in his second. While there has clearly been a collective increase since the Nixon administration, Bill Clinton’s public speaking numbers are unique and stand apart. His first term is almost 500 speeches higher than any other president. At 1560 speeches, Bill Clinton spoke in Washington, DC, on a very regular basis. Though it declined to 1412 speeches in his second term, it is still well and above any other American president. When averaged out, Clinton spoke enough in Washington, DC, almost once a day. As a comparison, Clinton’s aggregate overall totals of every speech average toward 17 speeches for every 10 days in office.

Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, Reagan, and Clinton all gave over 60% of their public speeches in that city. In fact, Reagan perhaps epitomized the image of a presidency that spent a majority of its time either in DC or presidential residences such as Camp David or his personal home at Rancho del Cielo in California. Presidents seem to prefer to use tools at their disposal they consider the most comfortable. Public speeches in Washington, DC, give the chief executive a level of control over his public image. Speeches in these locations allow for both stronger security and more power over access. In this “bubble” within DC, chief executives can more easily convey information they want while risking little to their public image. Reagan, a product of the motion picture studio system, gave the most speeches in DC since Lyndon Johnson’s second term. A later chapter will explore the increasing usage of presidential retreat locations as places to work as well as escape from the pressures of the position.

Ultimately, what do numbers imply? Presidents speak more, but have mostly concentrated fewer of their speeches in the Washington, DC, area since the Reagan presidency. Prior notable exceptions of decreased DC speeches include Nixon and Ford, but these administrations also have palpable rationales for avoiding the press corps (i.e., Watergate). What does this mean for “going public”? If we agree on presidents indeed “go public” during their presidencies, can we look at the process in differing ways? During their terms in office, presidents have the ability to speak anywhere and generally on any topic. Almost any occasion where the president speaks publicly will draw attention from a local, if not national or international audience. When a president makes the choice to speak, it becomes a matter of public record, permanently archived in his public papers. Therefore, it can be somewhat safe to assume every president carefully chooses his words on most occasions, scripted or unscripted. When a president decides to speak in a particular location, it can be inferred the administration or the man has made a conscious choice to interact with the public or media. Sometimes, it is not as important what he says, than where he says it. “When a president chooses to travel around the country he leads in order to meet the people he represents, his decision to go to a specific place and not others can reveal a great deal about his strategic priorities.” ¹⁴ Has the president decided to draw attention to a locale for a specific policy purpose, or is he attempting to connect with people?

Richard Neustadt states in Presidential Power, “presidential power is the power to persuade.” ¹⁵ Neustadt offers what can best be described as suggestions for presidents on the nature of power and the challenges of governing. If presidential power truly is the “power to persuade,” how does that influence manifest itself? Many point to the power behind rhetoric as a focal point for his authority. However, is presidential rhetoric the same as the rhetorical presidency? ¹⁶ The former examines the actuality while the latter refers to a broader theoretical approach to conceptualizing the public actions of chief executives.

Carefully chosen words wield tremendous power if implemented effectively. However, does language lose its sway when comes to resemble a cacophony of information? “One of the great ironies of the modern presidency is that as the president relies more on rhetoric to govern, he finds it more difficult to deliver a truly important speech, one that will stand by itself and continue to shape events.” ¹⁷ Ceaser et al. prescribe a change in the character of rhetoric. They suggest presidents, referring specifically to Carter, should speak less, and thereby cause their words to carry more weight. ¹⁸ Over the next twenty years, if anything, presidents spoke more than ever. “The greatest loss from the evolution of the rhetorical presidency has been a decrease in the integrity of the word.” ¹⁹ American presidents’ appearances are higher, ²⁰ but researchers question how much the public actually listens to their message.

At one time, television appeared to offer the president the ideal way to send his message out to the national American public. In March 1969, Nixon’s prime-time press conferences were watched by 59% of American television households. By 1995, only 6.5% of households viewed prime-time news conferences. ²¹ In March 2009, Barack Obama had 25.9% of television households watch his press conference on economic recovery. ²² What caused this shifts to occur? While current viewership is generally higher than the mid-1990s, it is still significantly lower than during the 1960s. More importantly, how has this change affected presidential rhetoric? Theodore Windt suggests the “technological media era of politics has created a new ‘checks and balances’… Congress now serves principally has a legislative check on the presidency, and media news – primarily television – functions as a rhetorical check on presidential pronouncements.” ²³

With the decline of national viewers, presidents rely more upon image than content. “Publicity has become essential to governing.” ²⁴ Image appeal overrides content thus making national speeches less content driven. ²⁵ In short, television has become “our emotional tutor” ²⁶ offering intimacy without any personal involvement. Social media platforms with messages sent out directly to our personal devices has only amplified this effect. Richard Nixon once wrote, “the media are far more powerful than the president in creating public awareness and shaping public opinion, for the simple reason that the media always have the last word.” ²⁷ National speeches allow for instantaneous criticism over the president’s address. Analysis often exists as thinly veiled denigration without the capacity for rebuttal. “Flippant and insinuating comments by television personalities have, on such occasions have a way of undermining presidential authority.” ²⁸ Some scholarship ²⁹ suggests that the televised “bully pulpit” may not be as powerful as many people think while others ³⁰ refute their assertions. Many Americans rely upon sound bites or recaps to learn about the content of presidential speeches. Studies indicate content retention is much lower for these people than ones who watch the speech in its entirety. “For a president to be successful using a televised address to communicate his message to the American people, it is essential they watch the address rather than rely on the stories on television, radio, and newspapers that edit, interpret and include counterarguments to the president’s remarks.” ³¹ George Edwards asserts such speeches do not have their desired impact because presidents are primarily “preaching to the converted” ³² and do not expand their public support. Amnon Cavari asserts “Americans who watch a president’s speech are more supportive of the president’s policy than those who do not watch the speech” ³³ and “the tool of public address does not fall on deaf ears.” ³⁴ Elvin Lim finds that over time, presidents have changed the way they speech in an attempt to appeal to listeners. “Contemporary presidential rhetoric may have become more conversational and anecdotal, but it has brought the orator down from the pulpit to a closer intellectual and emotional rapport with his audience.” ³⁵ Presidents use speeches both to “manipulate their popularity ratings” ³⁶ and “lead public opinion on specific policies.” ³⁷ While a wealth of scholarship exists on agenda setting, ³⁸ little has been done exploring the aggregate commonalities regarding locations of speeches. Granted, presidents wield a wealth of resources associated with the office. Jeffrey Cohen ³⁹ accurately points out the interpersonal skills of the office holder makes the utilization of these resources highly variable from occupant to occupant. Presidents are neither passive nor incompetent media managers. In light of the difficulties of national addresses, a shift has inevitably occurred toward regional media. Local media sources offer both an escape from national commentary and an attempt to reforge connections to alienated voters. Why would presidents go into local areas to address the public? Some suggest local news provides more positive coverage than national outlets. ⁴⁰ “The negativity and process orientation of national news coverage encourage (presidential) candidates to take their campaign on the road where they can general intense local media coverage in strategically chosen locations and wrest control of the political agenda from the national media.” ⁴¹ Local audiences became of paramount importance particularly to the George W. Bush administration. “President Bush made targeting local news central to his media relations strategy and a top priority throughout his tenure.” ⁴² Local speeches, in many cases, have supplanted long-standing patterns of both concentrated DC speeches, as well as speeches in the largest media areas of the USA. “Getting local media coverage is important because it is a more trusted source of news than national newspapers and television.” ⁴³

Power derives from the importance others place upon your thoughts, ideas, and agendas. People often seek power as a means to influence society in their own vision. “Absent the power to command, the president’s power to compel may be the most significant tool in the White House’s arsenal of persuasive techniques.” ⁴⁴ One of the more focal ways to achieve this status is through winning public office. Elections in the USA often serve as validation for ideology. Victorious candidates consider their electoral successes as a mandate for the implementation of their ideas. The more powerful the office, the more powerful we consider the person occupying it. Political elections are essentially collective action issues. “Collective action results from changing combinations of interests, organization, mobilization, and opportunity.” ⁴⁵ The goal of the political contest usually involves winning more votes than your opponent. However, turnout is more complex than simply trying to get the most supporters to turn out and cast ballots. “Turnout, defection, and abstention” ⁴⁶ are all objectives for successful political appeals. It is not enough to simply positively influence turnout in one candidate’s favor. In close elections, every person who identifies with another party that can be influenced to stay away effectively is a vote for your party. Leege et al. assert presidential candidates attempt to minimize turnout by encouraging the opposition’s supporters to stay home. ⁴⁷ Through honing in on ideas and values, savvy candidates can sway their core to turn out while simultaneously dissuading others away from the polls. Cohen and Powell found “presidents can achieve a modest boost in state-level approval through strategically crafted public appearances.” ⁴⁸

The implications of this dynamic idea are enormous. Presidential speechmaking seeks to situate the populace in a retrospective voting mind-set. ⁴⁹ Retrospective voting encourages the constituent to evaluate the performance of the incumbent without seeking out information about the challenger. Presidential speeches effectively demand the same thought process out of the populace. If Fiorina and Leege et al. are correct, the president aims at developing just enough cross-partisan collegiality to discourage some voters inclined to disagree with him from either seeking out additional information or voting (depending on the timing of the speech). “One source of presidential power, and one that can provide the leadership for modern presidents not present in other forms of influence, is the president’s power to signal.” ⁵⁰ Presidents have the ability to guide their audiences toward information they feel relevant. “Leaders must actively engage in that process of investigation that will allow them to sift among available options for their audience, determine what might be best among those options, and construct a message of some kind that would help the audience to align itself with that alternative.” ⁵¹ Bernard Cohen puts forth the concept of agenda setting within the media. While the media do not explicitly tell people what to think, they do give them the material to think about. ⁵² With episodic coverage ⁵³ and evidence about attitude instability ⁵⁴ or non-attitudes, ⁵⁵ concerns emerge about media manipulation. “Manipulation may be by the media, by experts, by bureaucrats, and it may even be self-imposed by people’s prejudices.” ⁵⁶ Page and Shapiro raise concerns about choices when government controls either information or misinformation occurs. ⁵⁷ Framing ⁵⁸ therefore becomes paramount for information control. The ability to present information in specific ways allows those who control the source of the material to mold coverage to their advantage. “Americans who watch a president’s speech are more supportive of the president’s policy than those who do not watch the speech.” ⁵⁹ Presidents can utilize regionalism in presidential speechmaking to better influence their press coverage. A “local media strategy is a fruitful one if the White House desires positive news coverage.” ⁶⁰ Local media sources offer both an escape from national commentary and an attempt to reforge connections to alienated voters. “The White House communications team focuses on local coverage because the president generally receives positive coverage when he travels to localities around the country and people have a high degree of trust for their local newspapers and television news programs.” ⁶¹ Local media gives the chief executive an outlet for potentially better favorable coverage.

This approach encourages a sectionalist view of the country. Particularized areas want redress on specific issues. Regional appeals offer many advantages to the president. Local speeches involve captive audiences listening to the full content of the president’s address. Roderick Hart contends “voters are alienated … because politics is now grey and lifeless, drained of the human connectedness once found in the New England village.” ⁶² When a president arrives in a community, constituents become excited because the national leader has singled them out to hear him speak. Presidents, in return, receive supportive audiences to rally around him. Through regional appeals, presidents may help restore political trust among constituencies through public appearances. The president trumps Congress through the ultimate “going public” ⁶³ ploy. He reconnects alienated voters to the public sphere but forges the primary connection between the president and the people, not the people and their other elected representatives. “Preaching to the choir, may, however, reinforce and energize the president’s base.” ⁶⁴ Moreover, the president achieves this goal while skirting the glare of national scrutiny. Barrett and Peake find “presidential trips generate more extensive coverage in local newspapers than national press” and “local newspaper coverage of presidential trips was more positive.” ⁶⁵ Sanguine local news coverage helps seal this new relationship and reinforce the image of “president as local advocate.” Presidents receive very positive descriptive local news coverage ⁶⁶ that helps reinforce their image as a leader and promoter of the people. “Rather than have the short edited footage of the presidential visit and remarks that cable news might or might not run, local television will air the full speech and interview others connected to the speech.” ⁶⁷

“The idea of ‘voter’ or ‘citizen’ is socially constructed in symbolic ways.” ⁶⁸ During the past thirty years, Americans have “constructed a selection process that discourages appeals to unity, rewards empty appeals to candidate identification, and shuns the politics of civic action.” ⁶⁹ Is it possible the president offers himself as a surrogate for societal “connectedness”? Presidents can place a topic on the public agenda simply by mentioning a problem. ⁷⁰ Presidents now compete with cable television for attention. ⁷¹ “As the broader media environment has evolved, mass and digital media technologies have transformed the president into a visual, personal entity for individuals to encounter on a regular basis.” ⁷² How can presidents compete when it is easy for people to check their phone or viewers to turn the channel and watch the synoptic highlights continuously running on 24-hour news channel? Administrations increasingly rely upon a social media strategy to bypass traditional journalism in favor of an “unfiltered” lens directly from the White House. While the usage of social media by the executive branch has exponentially grown over the past 20 years, it does carry a weight of aggregate impersonality toward itself. It does filter directly to individuals via their personal devices, yet messages are still broad for their widest appeal. Kernell and Rice look at the impact of cable news upon market polarization. They found audiences unreceptive to the president’s message are more likely to tune out or avoid the message which can be problematic if “the president needs to convert to his point of view.” ⁷³ The same point can be extrapolated toward social media though perhaps even more amplified than television. Social media, television, and other similar forms of communication offer connectivity at the leisure of the recipient. Throughout much of the modern presidency era through today, presidents have used speechmaking as a way to bridge the impersonality of a leader in Washington to people throughout the entirety of the country. Whether it is radio, television, or twitter, presidents try to connect to the people as a way to impress their views upon the country. These methods, while often effective toward receptive audiences to ignite discourse, are not a replacement for the attention a community will give to presidential visit for a local or regional speech. “Presidential travel is linked to campaigning and governing” ⁷⁴ with the lines often blurring between them. The attention given to a location by a president helps better inform us about choices and priorities. Words convey message, but so does place. Milieu matters as does when the speech occurs. Presidents not facing an election season often travel around the country in different ways than those either campaigning or stumping for themselves or others.

Many scholars ⁷⁵ point to the decline of American parties, while many others ⁷⁶ have shown its resurgence. Fiorina, ⁷⁷ in particular, draws forth the cyclic nature of parties and puts forth the idea we are in a zenith phase of partisan identification. Partisanship has become less of a social club and more of a social and cultural identification. Many scholars have noted how closely people relate their party affiliation with income, religion, or other similar social values. ⁷⁸ “Presidents, for example, speak in public more frequently during election years and as more households subscribe to cable television.” ⁷⁹ Reed Welch documents the power of presidential speeches, but points out how competition on television undermines their effect. ⁸⁰ Party emerges as a cultural identification more than just a cognitive shortcut on the political spectrum. It helps situate ourselves and others onto the partisan landscape and signal to the world your generalized views.

Have presidents over the past thirty years have increasingly regionalized their speeches? In other words, do they focus primarily upon Washington, DC, as their primary speech loci or do they travel around the country giving speeches? If they do travel, do patterns shift at times across presidencies, parties, or eras? Do different presidents focus upon different areas or do they all generally cluster in similar ways? The possible regionalization of rhetoric has serious implications upon the content and context upon presidential discourse. This research explores presidential speeches in the modern presidency era to better understand patterns and highlights their similarities and divergences.

During previous eras, the president (or surrogates) traveled from locale to inform the public about his policy with a personal touch. In doing so, the aim was to promote party platform, candidates, and agendas. With the advent of airplanes and the Internet, recent presidents do not risk being “out of the loop” when they leave Washington to campaign. Modern technology allows them to visit several states within one day while remaining in close contact with their staff. Increasingly, some presidents seem to forgo national media appeals in favor of smaller, regional audiences when advocating domestic issues. However, others entrench themselves in larger national areas with minimal regional engagement. Though presidents have increased their total speeches over the past seventy years, they no longer solely rely upon the national media to convey the message to the American people. Presidents display savvy knowledge about trends among the population. They target specific constituencies to help mobilize support within Congress, particularly among marginal seats. Presidents attempt to rally support for legislation they consider important for their vision of America. How much of their pressure occurs outside the Washington area? It is well-established presidents will call legislators, cajole, and make deals in order to win support. During close votes (i.e., budget), does the president step up speechmaking in congressional districts where the congressperson’s vote is undecided or uncommitted?

Going Public presents “a strategy whereby a president promotes himself and his policies in Washington by appealing to the American public for support.” ⁸¹ An integral part of “going public” involves presidential posturing. In essence, the president wields the public as a tool to force the Congress into a delegate role. The interaction between the president and the public reflects a dynamic procedure. Samuel Kernell develops his thesis via a general appeal to the public at large. Lyn Ragsdale ⁸² posits these techniques with presidential addresses may cause short-term surges in the public’s support that may help push policy through Congress. Edwards ⁸³ refers to the tool as a core governing strategy of presidents. The “going public” thesis is the idea the president goes over the heads of Congress to the public to then pressure Congress (via the public) to support his policies. “Going public,” as conceived by Samuel Kernell assumes the president will use this tool in a national fashion. By introducing a regional or local element to the “going public” idea, it goes beyond the original concept. A regionalized “going public” functions with far more precision and finesse than the blunt force of national pressure. Going local strategies ⁸⁴ work to enhance positive coverage while encouraging support for administrations throughout the country. Campaigns for election or reelection of congressional seats can become platforms for presidential policy reinforcement. Speeches in support of these candidates allow the president to customize his message to better connect with the regional public. National speeches force a unified agenda. Regional speeches allow for diversification to better emphasize key points that resonate with the audience. Though Eshbaugh-Soha and Peake ⁸⁵ question the ability of the translating the positive coverage into legislative support, they do acknowledge its capacity for better news coverage for the administration.

Simon Blumenthal says a major feature of American democracy is permanent campaigning. Blumenthal asserts party has been usurped by consultants for the cultivation of image branding. Consultants “stimulate the public’s wish fulfillment … enticing voters to believe that the candidate can satisfy their needs.” ⁸⁶ Politicians no longer exist to simply govern, but to reflect back onto the public its own needs and desires from authority. Blumenthal and other permanent campaign researchers believe presidents engage in an ongoing promotional campaign plan from the day they take office (actually from the moment they declare candidacy) until they step down from power. The basic premise is the president constantly uses the publicity tools of the presidency to further his policies. In essence, the election campaign never ends, but shifts from an electoral to a governing strategy. In fact, the idea has become so important that the “permanent campaign has become a permanent feature of the contemporary presidency.” ⁸⁷ Bruce Miroff asserts many modern presidencies exist as a “spectacle.” The presidency exists as a mechanism to provide a distraction as well as entertainment. “The audience watching a presidential spectacle is, the White House hopes, as impressed by gestures as results. Indeed, the gestures are sometimes preferable to the results.” ⁸⁸ Government in some ways becomes a play with the president as the lead actor. Theodore Lowi furthers this claim when he wrote “the president has become the embodiment of government, it seems perfectly normal for millions upon millions of Americans to concentrate their hopes and feats directly and personally upon him.” ⁸⁹ The president can direct his message directly into our lives with more and more precision. Between social media, email, newspapers, and magazines, the White House can simultaneously control a variety of messages aimed at very different audiences. As eloquently put by Brendan Doherty “[A] president’s time is perhaps his scarcest resource.” ⁹⁰ With limited time but often unlimited resources, a president needs to maximize their effectiveness with a minimal commitment. They have to make people aware of their intentions quickly and efficiently. To that end, presidents often use symbolism to conjure illusions. The symbolic president is “a particular set of expectations about the office that are held by the public, described by journalists and teachers, and encouraged by the presidents themselves.” ⁹¹ They will often utilize spectacles as symbolic events where “particular details stand for broader and deeper meanings.” ⁹² In addition, “a spectacle does not permit the audience to interrupt the action and redirect its meaning.” ⁹³ Miroff implies “the contemporary presidency is presented by the White House (with the collaboration of the media) as a series of spectacles in which a larger-than-life main character and a supporting team engage in emblematic bouts with immoral or dangerous adversaries.” ⁹⁴ In Bowling Alone, ⁹⁵ Robert Putnam grapples with the decline of social capital within America. He argues we have become increasingly disconnected from each other as our civic and social engagement within society has frayed. As our populace has grown more disconnected, we as citizens have also grown more tribal in our social and cultural preferences. These atomized preferences manifest themselves in viewing ourselves in new ways.

Marketing research has been on the cutting edge of developing techniques to better understand American behavioral attitudes and patterns. We all like to think of ourselves as individuals, but a wealth of marketing data suggests otherwise. Americans are fragmented, but we are consistent in our diversity. In The Clustered World, Michael J. Weiss shows through applying market databases to demographics, Americans can be largely divided into distinct geopolitical clusters, or lifestyle types. “These clusters are based on composites of age, ethnicity, wealth, urbanization, housing style, and family structure.” ⁹⁶

These lifestyles represent America’s modern tribes, sixty-two distinct population groups each with its own set of values, culture, and means of coping with today’s population. A generation ago, Americans thought of themselves as city dwellers, suburbanites, or country folk. But we are no longer that simple, and our neighborhoods reflect our growing complexity. Clusters, which were created to identify demographically similar zip codes around the U.S., are now used to demarcate a variety of small geographic areas, including census tracts (500-1,000 households) and zip plus 4 postal codes (about ten households). Once used to interchangeably with neighborhood type, however, the term cluster now refers to population segments where, thanks to technological advancements, no physical contact is required for cluster membership. ⁹⁷

Understanding clusters involves more than simply deciphering magazine, food, and music preferences. Clusters give us the means to make the fragmented society more coherent. Traditional voting blocs like the New Deal coalition no longer exist as a comprehensive group. Clusters give us the ability to organize and understand society around personal and cultural similarities. Certain groups consistently vote in specific ways though they may live in disparate regions of the country. Clusters allow us to transcend crude delineations based solely on physical location, ethnicity, age, or job type by allowing us to understand multiple preferences within geographical areas. “Collective labels for segmenting markets are a windfall for small businesses: they motivate efforts to attain quality and distribute information on products that were previously anonymous and unable to speak for themselves. A collective label creates a message that partially compensates for the absence of a brand message.” ⁹⁸ In many ways, voters are customers. Parties have a product they peddle to the public in hopes of winning the largest customer share. The product can, at times, be considered the candidate, but more often, it is the party themselves. The parties aim to have the voter loyal to their brand. They do not want them to even consider seeking other voting alternatives. “Trying to increase your market share means selling as much of your product as you can to as many customers as you can. Driving for share of customer, on the other hand, means ensuring that each individual customer who buys your product, buys only your brand of product, and is happy using your product instead of some other type of product as a solution to his problem.” ⁹⁹

The “share of customers” approach to marketing has direct relevance to targeting voters. “In fact, focusing on the share of customer, instead of overall market share, is probably the least expensive and most cost-efficient means of increasing overall sales – and incidentally, market share- today.” ¹⁰⁰ Customer loyalty roots itself within this tactic. The goal involves making you a sole consumer of that product, be it laundry detergent or political party. Brand loyalty is a key to success. They would rather have consistently 100% of your business than give out coupons to attract temporary consumers. Pepper and Rogers refer to this technique as “one to one” (1:1) marketing. By attracting more of any one customer’s business, companies become more efficient and less wasteful. “A mass marketer tries to differentiate his products while a 1:1 marketer seeks to differentiate his customers.” ¹⁰¹ One-to-one marketing attempts to cultivate relationships between the business and individual customers. By focusing in on specific needs, concerns, or desires, companies foster product allegiance. This marketing style signals a marked change from traditional methods. Marketers are not targeting the traditional economies of scale, but rather economies of scope. Economies of scope are not competing for market share, but instead, customer loyalty. By learning as much as they can about you, companies that go for your scope over scale attempt to find out as much as they can about you and your personal preferences. In short, companies steer themselves toward direct, not mass marketing, approaches. Political parties, at times, have employed both market share and customer share tactics. While at the risk of overgeneralizing, the Democratic Party has often focused on market share while Republicans on customer share. In September 2016, Pew found 48% of all registered voters identify as Democrats, while 44%, Republicans. ¹⁰² In colloquial marketing terms, the Democrats have attempted to get people to buy more cars, while the Republicans have endeavored to encourage people to only buy Elephant brand cars. Republicans work on loyalty over sheer volume.

People like to have things defined for them. When they can situate an idea or person into categories, it provides a sense of security. “If the brand is trustworthy, it reduces anxiety and doubt. It makes our decision making easier and safer.” ¹⁰³ This idea is important because branding is not always a material object. Marketing literature also addresses the importance of emotional branding, or “the desire to transcend material satisfaction, and experience emotional fulfillment.” ¹⁰⁴ Brands can give meaning which can “describe their content and sense of direction.” ¹⁰⁵ More important, “[b]rands do not simply identify projects. The brand legitimates the product.” ¹⁰⁶ while also serving as “both the memory and future of its products.” ¹⁰⁷ In a political sense, parties seek to simultaneously control both their brand and the brand of their opposition. Their goals involve developing such strong loyalty that voters will not seek out alternatives no matter the candidate presented for elected office. It often manifests in highlighting the accolades of their nominees while vilifying their competition as the worst possible alternate. In Propaganda, Bernays states “[T]he conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses in an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.” ¹⁰⁸

Is one man’s marketing, another man’s propaganda? Why does society place such negative connotations upon propaganda, yet happily accept the same tactics as clever marketing? As society has grown more sophisticated throughout the twentieth and now twenty-first centuries, so has product marketing. Companies have become incredibly clever at reading consumer patterns to better serve and retain customers. Some companies, like Target, collect purchase information to make very accurate assumptions about changes in your personal life to send coupons and advertisements customized for your specific patterns. ¹⁰⁹ “Over the past few years, thanks to technological advances and an escalating arms race between the parties, Republicans and Democrats have gone to great lengths to make campaigning more like commercial marketing.” ¹¹⁰ Political parties do the similar things, scraping massive amounts of public information, ranging from magazine subscriptions and car registrations to self-reported personal habits. The parties, through organizations like Voter Vault, Demzilla, and other similar data mining companies or services cull information from state voter databases, the Census, and direct marketers to create profiles of you and your neighbors. “In the wake of the 2000 election, each political party, convinced that its opponent was getting ahead, stepped up its investments in technology and information-gathering.” ¹¹¹ It can all be distilled down into both aggregates and individual level information to craft appeals which resonate best with either the voter or consumer.

What are the political implications of these techniques? Evidence suggests selling a political party in this way may not be all that different from other types of more conventional products. It is commonly held that personal contact affects turnout. Voters are more likely to show up to the polls if they have met the candidate or been personally contacted by their supporters. This increase in turnout explains why candidates go door-to-door, hold rallies, and have their supporters call potential voters encouraging them to show up on Election Day. They also repetitively email identified potential allies soliciting donations and support. Voting as a marketing strategy embraces this concept and molds it to suit their needs. Voters are no longer the masses. Instead, parties have the ability to sell themselves on a personal level with messages that appeal the most to each individual. By mining resources to find topics people hold most dear, groups can use this information as a tool to influence market choice, or in this case, voting decisions.

So, why does it matter? Why should we be interested in whether a company wants to have all of your soap business or all of your voting? It matters in part because humans are fairly lazy information gatherers. “A strong brand is one that projects its values and manages to segment the market according to its own standards.” ¹¹² In The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg looks at the importance of habit loops and their effects upon human behavior. They are important because of their impact upon our daily lives. We learn habits, and when we do, they become quite fixed and are often performed “nonconsciously” to allow our brains to focus upon higher priority matters. ¹¹³ “An efficient brain also allows us to stop thinking constantly about basic behaviors, such as walking and choosing what to eat, so we can devote mental energy” elsewhere. ¹¹⁴ Political actors have become either consciously or subconsciously adept at managing both branding and habit loops for their own ends. Habit loops ¹¹⁵ provide a sense of satisfaction and a need for completion once they have been engrained and established. The loop generally functions in this way: cue or trigger, routine or behavior, reward or payout. People gravitate toward a party or candidate because, if branded in an appealing way, creates a sense of safety within the label. The party or candidate then works to either develop or reinforce habit loops for their constituencies. Voters who have inculcated both partisan habit loops and customer share branding have the potential to be very loyal regardless of situation or political climate. Parties, and especially the Republican Party, have excelled at these techniques and developed a base which often rejects Democratic challengers simply at face value. Supporters have been primed through media to view other options as problematic simply because of strong brand loyalty. Certain bases among the Democratic Party also behave in similar fashions with generational support for the label more than the candidate. In close elections, parties rely heavily upon these habit loops to drive out their bases. They fight over the independent voters, or in these terms, people who do not have clearly established loops or branding for one party over the other. In many ways, neuroscience sets up a depressing case for electoral politics. Habit formation is so strong within humans that we live large parts of our daily lives within these loops. It is also why changing behaviors can be next to impossible in many instances. “When a habit emerges, the brain stops fully participating in decision making. It stops working so hard, or diverts focus to other tasks. So until you deliberately fight a habit – unless you find new routines – the pattern will unfold automatically.” ¹¹⁶ In a political context, once you make a decision about a party or even a candidate, your brain potentially turns off to any new information. They fortify these decisions with like-minded media or social circles which prevent serious challenges to their positions. Therefore, unless they actively decide to question themselves with other material or points of view, their brains are not primed to take in additional material to usurp established patterns. People vote party X because they always vote party X and receive a cognitive reward within their loop for supporting that activity. Brands can also “enhance our higher needs for esteem, socialization, and self-actualization.” ¹¹⁷ People stop listening when they have developed a pattern. They have a sense of security within a well-branded group composed of people with similar views. The only way to shift habits involves self-awareness of the activity followed by habit reversal therapy which often substitutes the routine in the habit loop for something else. ¹¹⁸ Thus, if constituents do not see unwavering support as part of a larger cognitive pattern, change will not occur. Throughout most of October 2008, several major polls gave George W. Bush a disapproval rating in the 70% range with approval in the low 20% range. ¹¹⁹ These numbers were higher and lower than anything comparable in the Obama administration though Clinton had comparable numbers on several occasions in 1999. One of the takeaways from these presidential approval polls is approximately 20% of the population will support a president in all circumstances. Are they willfully obstinately supportive, or simply so embedded in a habit loop they will not challenge themselves to break it? People want validation for their choices and change is often uncomfortable. It forces people out of their loops into areas they have not previously considered. From a cognitive and social point of view, these decisions demand active and not passive activity. Bluntly, it goes against deeply embedding hard wiring with the risk of little emotional reward. Parties want to make their core more brand loyal. Through developing personal connections between party and person, voters are no longer taken for granted. They are instead courted as individuals to make their vote seem important and pertinent to their party’s success. Even independents may find themselves targeted in these approaches. “The new databases and statistical tools allow candidates to seek out individuals by predicting what personal characteristic, or what combination of characteristics, makes a voter worthy of a tailor-made outreach approach. In other words, someone who appears nonpartisan, someone who thinks of themselves as nonpartisan, may nevertheless have a political DNA that the parties will be able to decode.” ¹²⁰ For example, the state of Texas is officially less aligned with Republican Party than many people realize. In Texas, a voter declares party affiliation at a primary. In 2016, though 78% of the voting population of Texas eventually registered to vote in the general election ¹²¹ only 21.5% of the eligible population voted in the March primaries. ¹²² While Texas is often considered a dominant Republican state, almost 80% of the total voting population may lack a party identifier. The political parties within Texas must make appeals in ways that entice the nonaligned voters into their camp. Granted, the vast majority likely believe they are one party or another because they are unaware of the criteria of primaries as the point of declaration. It does not change the reality that the political parties in Texas have to extrapolate information based upon trends and gather necessary insights from materials they know can help better identify their potential voters.

This project’s goal is not to upend or challenge voting behavior with market research and cognitive science. It is interested in presidential speechmaking, especially where presidents give speeches throughout the USA. As several chapters will develop further, many presidents engage in base reinforcing activities rather than base outreach. In other words, when presidents’ travel, most go to places they are already popular. The few exceptions are the ones that travel places where their party is not dominant. There are many reasons, but a key idea involves reinforcing constituents as well as message. Many successful presidents and administrations have pulled from ideas (though perhaps not overtly) to encourage enthusiastic support. Therefore, in campaign seasons or periods of contested elections, do presidents change the locations of speeches compared to other years? Do all or some presidents seem aware of the need to court voters and seek to incorporate regions, markets, or locales into their respective camps?

When presidents give foreign speeches, does there exist commonalities or threads that tend to run through the locations chosen? Every president also needs time away from the White House. Many administrations have had official residences while others have not. The research for this project led to very interesting conclusions about presidential vacation time away from the White House. Some administrations (i.e., Nixon) spent almost half the entire presidency traveling to, from, or at a vacation residence. Others (i.e., Obama) barely spent any time away from the White House on vacation.

Clear patterns and preferences exist within and across administrations. They hopefully help us raise questions about the modern political landscape. While the presidency indeed changes from person to person, many things remain constant. All presidents have to communicate with the people. This book looks at the speeches given outside of Washington, DC, from a variety of perspectives to help explain how certain aspects remain predictable though also dynamic at the same time.

Notes

1. 1.

   Stephen Skowronek, The Politics Presidents Make: Leadership from John Adams to Bill Clinton (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997).

    
2. 2.

   Jason Barabas, “Presidential Policy Initiatives: How the Public Learns About State of the Union Proposals from the Mass Media,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 38, no. 2 (2008): 215.

    
3. 3.

   Jose D. Villalobos, Justin S. Vaughn, and Julia R. Azari, “Politics or Policy? How Rhetoric Matters to Presidential Leadership of Congress,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 42, no. 3 (2012); Roderick P. Hart, Jay P. Childers, and Colene J. Lind, Political Tone: How Leaders Talk & Why (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2013).

    
4. 4.

   Amnon Cavari, “The Short-Term Effect of Going Public,” Political Research Quarterly 66, no. 2 (2013): 347.

    
5. 5.

   Lewis Gould, The Modern American Presidency (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2003).

    
6. 6.

   Samuel Kernell, Going Public: New Strategies of Presidential Leadership, 3rd edition. (Washington, DC: CQ Press; 1997); Jeffrey K. Tulis, The Rhetorical Presidency (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987).

    
7. 7.

   Andrew W. Barrett and Jeffrey S. Peake, “When the President Comes to Town: Examining Local Newspaper Coverage of Domestic Presidential Travel,” American Politics Research 35 no. 1 (2007); Jeffrey E. Cohen, Going Local: Presidential Leadership in the Post-Broadcast Age (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010); Brendan J. Doherty, The Rise of the President’s Permanent Campaign (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2012); Matthew Eshbaugh-Soha and Jeffrey S. Peake, “‘The Contemporary Presidency’: ‘Going Local’ to Reform Social Security,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 36 no. 4 (2006); Matthew Eshbaugh-Soha and Jeffrey S. Peake, “The Presidency and Local Media: Local Newspaper Coverage of President George W. Bush,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 30, no. 4 (2008); Brandon Rottinghaus, The Provisional Pulpit: Modern Presidential Leadership of Public Opinion (College Station: Texas A&M Press, 2010).

    
8. 8.

   Skowronek, Politics, 28.

    
9. 9.

   Tulis, Rhetorical, 203.

    
10. 10.

    Craig Allen Smith and Kathy B. Smith, The White House Speaks (Westport: Praeger, 1994): 222.

     
11. 11.

    Craig Allen, Eisenhower and the Mass Media: Peace, Prosperity, and Prime Time TV (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993).

     
12. 12.

    Allen, Eisenhower.

     
13. 13.

    Allen, Eisenhower.

     
14. 14.

    Doherty, Rise, 90.

     
15. 15.

    Richard E. Neustadt, Presidential Power, the Politics of Leadership (New York: Wiley, 1960): vi.

     
16. 16.

    Martin J. Medhurst, ed., Beyond the Rhetorical Presidency (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1996).

     
17. 17.

    James Ceaser, Glen E. Thurow, Jeffrey Tulis, and Joseph M. Bessette, “The Rise of the Rhetorical Presidency,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 9, no. 2 (1981): 164.

     
18. 18.

    Ceaser et al., “Rise,” 169.

     
19. 19.

    Carol Gelderman, All the Presidents’ Words: The Bully Pulpit and the Creation of the Virtual Presidency (New York: Walker and Company, 1997): 177.

     
20. 20.

    Scott L. Althaus, Peter F. Nardulli, and Daron R. Shaw, “Candidate Appearances in Presidential Elections, 1972–2000,” Political Communication 19, no. 1 (2002).

     
21. 21.

    Matthew Baum and Samuel Kernell, “Has Cable Ended the Golden Age of Presidential Television?” American Political Science Review 93, no. 1 (1997): 99.

     
22. 22.

    “President Obama’s Previous Press Conference TV Ratings,” TV by the Numbers, accessed January 4, 2018, http://​tvbythenumbers.​zap2it.​com/​cable/​president-obamas-previous-press-conference-tv-ratings/​.

     
23. 23.

    Theodore Otto Windt, “Presidential Rhetoric: Definition of a Field of Study,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 16, no. 1 (1986): 110.

     
24. 24.

    Diana Owen and Richard Davis, “Presidential Communication in the Internet Era,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 38, no. 4 (2008): 665.

     
25. 25.

    Gelderman, All, 176.

     
26. 26.

    Roderick P. Hart, Seducing America: How Television Charms the Modern Voter (Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1999): viii.

     
27. 27.

    Richard M. Nixon, R.N.: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon (New York: Grossett and Dunlap, 1978): 355.

     
28. 28.

    C. Don Livingston, “The Televised Presidency,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 16, no. 1 (1986): 29.

     
29. 29.

    George C. Edwards III, On Deaf Ears: The Limits of The Bully Pulpit (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003); Elvin Lim, “Five Trends in Presidential Rhetoric: An Analysis of Rhetoric from George Washington to Bill Clinton,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 32, no. 2 (2002); Reed Welch, “Presidential Success in Communicating with the Public Through Televised Addresses,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 33, no. 2 (2003).

     
30. 30.

    Cavari, “Short Term.”

     
31. 31.

    Welch, “Presidential,” 362.

     
32. 32.

    Edwards, On Deaf, 244.

     
33. 33.

    Cavari, “Short Term,” 342.

     
34. 34.

    Cavari, “Short Term,” 347.

     
35. 35.

    Lim, “Five,” 348.

     
36. 36.

    Jeffrey E. Cohen, Presidential Responsiveness and Public Policy Making (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999): 53.

     
37. 37.

    Cohen, Presidential Responsiveness, 54.

     
38. 38.

    Paul Brace and Barbara Hinkley, “Presidential Activities from Truman Through Reagan,” Journal of Politics 55, no. 2 (1993); George C. Edwards III, The Public Presidency: The Pursuit of Popular Support (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1983); Kernell, Going Public; Michael B. MacKuen, “Political Drama, Economic Conditions, and the Dynamics of Presidential Popularity,” American Journal of Political Science, 27 (1983); Jeffrey J. Mondak, “Source Cues and Policy Approval: The Cognitive Dynamics of Public Support for the Reagan Agenda,” American Journal of Political Science 27 (1993); Charles W. Ostrom Jr. and Dennis M. Simon, “Promise and Performance: A Dynamic Model of Presidential Popularity,” American Political Science Review 79 (1985); Charles W. Ostrom Jr. and Dennis M. Simon, “The President’s Public,” American Journal of Political Science 32, no. 4 (1988); Charles W. Ostrom Jr. and Dennis M. Simon, “The Man in the Teflon Suit: The Environmental Connection, Political Drama and Popular Support in the Reagan Presidency,” Public Opinion Quarterly 53 (1989); Benjamin I. Page and Robert Y. Shapiro, “Presidents as Opinion Leaders: Some New Evidence,” Policy Studies Journal 12 (1984); Lyn Ragsdale, “The Politics of Presidential Speechmaking, 1949–1980,” American Political Science Review 78 (1984); Lyn Ragsdale, “Presidential Speechmaking and the Public Audience: Individual Presidents and Group Attitudes,” Journal of Politics 49, no. 3 (1987); Corey M. Rosen, “A Test of Presidential Leadership of Public Opinion: The Split-Ballot Technique,” Polity 6 (1973); Dan B. Thomas and Larry R. Bass, “Presidential Identification and Mass-Public Compliance with Official Policy: The Case of the Carter Energy Program,” Policy Studies Journal 10 (1982); Dan B. Thomas and Lee Sigelman, “Presidential Identification and Policy Leadership: Experimental Evidence on the Reagan Case,” in The Presidency and Public Policy Making, eds. George C. Edwards III, Steven A. Shull, and Norman C. Thomas (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1985).

     
39. 39.

    Cohen, Presidential Responsiveness, 54–55.

     
40. 40.

    Barrett and Peake, “When the President”; Eshbaugh-Soha and Peake “Contemporary Presidency”; Eshbaugh-Soha and Peake, “Presidency and Local”; Martha Joynt Kumar, Managing the President’s Message: The White House Communications Operation (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007); Rottinghaus, Provisional Pulpit; D. R. Shaw, and B. Sparrow, “From the Inner Ring Out: News Congruence, Cue-Taking, and Campaign Coverage,” Political Research Quarterly 52 (1999).

     
41. 41.

    Althaus et al., “Candidate Appearances,” 53.

     
42. 42.

    Eshbaugh-Soha and Peake, “Presidency and Local,” 611.

     
43. 43.

    Kumar, Managing, 98.

     
44. 44.

    Rottinghaus, Provisional Pulpit, 191–192.

     
45. 45.

    Charles Tilly, From Mobilization to Revolution (Reading: Addison-Wesley, 1978): 7.

     
46. 46.

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