Near the end of Going Public, Samuel Kernell poses a question that bears directly
on the concept of presidential power: “Do the fixed preferences of the public motivate
and direct the strategic activities of politicians, or, conversely, do politicians shape the
preferences of the public?” (1997, 256-57). In other words, is Going Public an attempt to
move public opinion, or merely an act of responding to it? The importance of the
question is obvious, but developing a conceptually and methodologically appropriate way
to address it is not. It is tempting to compare a president’s actions to the most recent
public opinion polls, but as the stories below illustrate, such an approach is often
questionable. Sometimes a president will need to lead even when large majorities already
support him. The concept of leadership involves the decision to take a difficult path, and
public opinion polls can be deceptive.
Rather than looking at polls, I explore what presidents are doing in relation to the
public by looking exclusively at what they say and, in particular, how they say it –
without regard to any direct observations on public opinion. The method here codes
fairly abstract types of rhetorical strategies that would indicate when presidents are
attempting to lead public opinion. The major assumption of this approach is that
attempting to change public opinion, against anticipated resistance, will induce presidents
to use certain persuasive methods that would be less useful or even counterproductive
when the president anticipates immediate support.
To distinguish presidential rhetoric that seeks to lead public opinion from rhetoric
that largely exploits or mobilizes existing and readily forthcoming support, we need
features of rhetoric that indicate whether the speech treats the policy as an easy or hard
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The main insight can be illustrated with the rhetoric of parents of young children: If they announce, “We
are having dessert tonight,” they don’t add, “We want you to eat it. Daddy worked hard to prepare it.”
They might say these things about a salad.
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Convention