These presidential appointees must be confirmed by the Senate. If the Senate rarely votes down a nominee on the floor, it no longer rubber-stamps scandal-free nominees. A nominee may be stopped in a committee. About one out of every twenty key nominations is never confirmed, usually when a committee does not schedule it for a vote.
Confirmation hearings are opportunities for senators to quiz nominees about pet projects of interest to their states, to elicit pledges to testify or provide information, and to extract promises of policy actions. Subcabinet officials and federal judges, lacking the prominence of cabinet and Supreme Court nominees, are even more belatedly nominated and more slowly confirmed.
As a result, presidents have to wait a long time before their appointees take office. Five months into President George W. No wonder presidents can, and increasingly do, install an acting appointee or use their power to make recess appointments.
In , two nominees for federal court had been held up by Democratic senators; when Congress was out of session for a week, President Bush named them to judgeships in recess appointments. Bush had no choice but to make a deal that he would not make any more judicial recess appointments for the rest of the year.
Presidents make policies by executive orders. Executive orders are directives to administrators in the executive branch on how to implement legislation. Courts treat them as equivalent to laws. Dramatic events have resulted from executive orders. More typically, executive orders reorganize the executive branch and impose restrictions or directives on what bureaucrats may or may not do.
Law of the land. Kind of cool. Executive orders are imperfect for presidents; they can be easily overturned. Moreover, since executive orders are supposed to be a mere execution of what Congress has already decided, they can be superseded by congressional action. Opportunities to act on behalf of the entire nation in international affairs are irresistible to presidents.
Presidents almost always gravitate toward foreign policy as their terms progress. Domestic policy wonk Bill Clinton metamorphosed into a foreign policy enthusiast from to Bush was undergoing the same transformation. President Obama has been just as if not more involved in foreign policy than his predecessors. Congress—as long as it is consulted—is less inclined to challenge presidential initiatives in foreign policy than in domestic policy.
War powers provide another key avenue for presidents to act unilaterally. Sometimes, presidents amass all these: in his last press conference before the start of the invasion of Iraq in , President Bush invoked the congressional authorization of force, UN resolutions, and the inherent power of the president to protect the United States derived from his oath of office. Congress can react against undeclared wars by cutting funds for military interventions.
Such efforts are time consuming and not in place until long after the initial incursion. But congressional action, or its threat, did prevent military intervention in Southeast Asia during the collapse of South Vietnam in and sped up the withdrawal of American troops from Lebanon in the mids and Somalia in It established that presidents must consult with Congress prior to a foreign commitment of troops, must report to Congress within forty-eight hours of the introduction of armed forces, and must withdraw such troops after sixty days if Congress does not approve.
All presidents denounce this legislation. But it gives them the right to commit troops for sixty days with little more than requirements to consult and report—conditions presidents often feel free to ignore.
And the presidential prerogative under the War Powers Act to commit troops on a short-term basis means that Congress often reacts after the fact. Since Vietnam, the act has done little to prevent presidents from unilaterally launching invasions. President Obama did not seek Congressional authorization before ordering the US military to join attacks on the Libyan air defenses and government forces in March After the bombing campaign started, Obama sent Congress a letter contending that as commander in chief he had constitutional authority for the attacks.
The White House lawyers distinguished between this limited military operation and a war. Public approval helps the president assure agreement, attract support, and discourage opposition.
Presidents with high popularity win more victories in Congress on high-priority bills. Presidents face contradictory expectations, even demands, from the public: to be an ordinary person yet display heroic qualities, to be nonpolitical yet excel unobtrusively at the politics required to get things done, to be a visionary leader yet respond to public opinion. Presidents differ largely in the rate at which their approval rating declines.
Presidents in their first terms are well aware that, if they fall below 50 percent, they are in danger of losing reelection or of losing allies in Congress in the midterm elections. Depictions of economic hard times, drawn-out military engagements e. Under such conditions, official Washington speaks more in one voice than usual, the media drop their criticism as a result, and presidents depict themselves as embodiments of a united America.
Short-term effects wane over the course of time. Narrowly reelected in , Bush saw his approval sink to new lows around 30 percent over the course of his second term.
Naturally and inevitably, presidents employ pollsters to measure public opinion. After the devastating loss of Congress to the Republicans midway through his first term, President Clinton hired public relations consultant Dick Morris to find widely popular issues on which he could take a stand.
Even when public opinion data have no effects on a presidential decision, they can still be used to ascertain the best way to justify the policy or to find out how to present i. Polls can identify the words and phrases that best sell policies to people. President George W. After a poll showed that some people did not believe that President Obama was a Christian, he attended services, with photographers in tow, at a prominent church in Washington, DC.
Presidents speak for various reasons: to represent the country, address issues, promote policies, and seek legislative accomplishments; to raise funds for their campaign, their party, and its candidates; and to berate the opposition. They also speak to control the executive branch by publicizing their thematic focus, ushering along appointments, and issuing executive orders.
In their speeches, presidents celebrate, express national emotion, educate, advocate, persuade, and attack. Why Presidents Respond Frequent speechmaking is a mainstay of the modern presidency. Future Research in an Era of Polarized Politics and New Media The bulk of the literature on going public is quite clear that presidents engage strategically in speechmaking to affect a variety of actors and institutions.
Conclusion Going public is a central feature of presidential leadership. Further Reading Baum, M. War stories: The causes and consequences of public views of war. Berinsky, A. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Canes-Wrone, B. Who leads whom? Presidents, policy, and the public. Cohen, J. Presidential responsiveness and public policymaking. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Going local: Presidential leadership in the post-broadcast age.
New York: Cambridge University Press. Doherty, B. Edwards, G. On deaf ears: The limits of the bully pulpit. The strategic president: Persuasion and opportunity in presidential leadership. Eshbaugh-Soha, M. Breaking through the noise: Presidential leadership, public opinion, and the news media. Heith, D. The Presidential road show: Public leadership in an era of party polarization and media fragmentation. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers.
Kernell, S. Going public: New strategies of presidential leadership 4th ed. Kumar, M. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Laracey, M. Presidents and the people: The partisan story of going public. Neustadt, R. Presidential power and the modern presidents: The politics of leadership from Roosevelt to Reagan. New York: The Free Press. Rottinghaus, B. The provisional pulpit: Modern presidential leadership of public opinion. Vaughn, J.
The rhetoric of heroic expectations: Establishing the Obama presidency. References Aberbach, J. Keeping a watchful eye: The politics of congressional oversight. Abramowitz, A. Is polarization a myth? The Journal of Politics, 70 2 , — Bailey, M. Presidential persuasion on social issues: A two-way street?
Political Research Quarterly, 56 1 , 49— Barrett, A. Gone public: The impact of going public on presidential legislative success. American Politics Research, 32 3 , — Press coverage of legislative appeals by the president. Political Research Quarterly, 60 4 , — When the president comes to town: Examining local newspaper coverage of domestic presidential travel.
American Politics Research, 35 1 , 3— Baum, M. New media and the polarization of American political discourse. Political Communication, 25 4 , — Baum, M A. Has cable ended the golden age of presidential television? American Political Science Review, 93 1 , 99— Behr, R.
Television news, real world cues, and changes in the public agenda. Public Opinion Quarterly, 49 1 , 38— Assuming the costs of war: Events, elites, and American public support for military conflict. Journal of Politics, 69 4 , — Blackstone, B. Presidential rhetoric toward the Supreme Court. Judicature, 97 , — Boydstun, A.
Brace, P. Presidential activities from Truman through Reagan: Timing and impact. Journal of Politics, 55 2 , — Bradshaw, S. Newspaper attention to major presidential addresses: A reexamination of conceptualizations, predictors, and effects.
Communication Reports, 27 , 53— Cameron, C. Presidential Studies Quarterly, 41 3 , — American Journal of Political Science, 45 2 , — The conditional nature of presidential responsiveness to public opinion. American Journal of Political Science, 48 4 , — Cavari, A. The short-term effect of going public. Political Research Quarterly, 66 2 , — Coe, K. The major addresses of modern presidents: Parameters of a data set.
Presidential Studies Quarterly, 41 4 , — Presidential rhetoric and the public agenda. American Journal of Political Science, 39 1 , 87— The presidency in an era of hour news. Presidential leadership in public opinion: Causes and consequences. Building public support from the grassroots up: The impact of presidential travel on state-level approval. Presidential Studies Quarterly, 35 1 , 11— Collins, P.
Covington, C. Staying private: Gaining congressional support for unpublicized presidential preferences on roll call votes. Journal of Politics, 49 , — Druckman, J. Does presidential rhetoric matter? Priming and presidential approval. Presidential Studies Quarterly, 34 4 , — How elite partisan polarization affects public opinion formation. American Political Science Review, 1 , 57— The strategic president : Persuasion and opportunity in presidential leadership.
Overreach: Leadership in the Obama presidency. Presidential approval: A sourcebook. Who influences whom? The president, Congress, and the media.
American Political Science Review, 93 2 , — Presidential press conferences over time. American Journal of Political Science, 47 2 , — The politics of presidential speeches.
Congress and the Presidency, 37 1 , 1— Presidential leadership of the news media: The case of the press conference. Political Communication, 30 4 , — Mercieca Eds. The president on Spanish-language television news.
Social Science Quarterly, 95 2 , — Presidential rhetoric and Supreme Court decisions. Presidential Studies Quarterly, 45 4 , — Presidents and the economic agenda. Political Research Quarterly, 58 1 , — Presidential Studies Quarterly, 36 4 , — Presidential Position Taking and the Puzzle of Representation. Presidential Studies Quarterly, 43 1 , 1— From the days of the early republic through the end of the nineteenth century, presidents were limited in the ways they could reach the public to convey their perspective and shape policy.
Inaugural addresses and messages to Congress, while circulated in newspapers, proved clumsy devices to attract support, even when a president used plain, blunt language. Some presidents undertook tours of the nation, notably George Washington and Rutherford B. Others promoted good relationships with newspaper editors and reporters, sometimes going so far as to sanction a pro-administration newspaper. One president, Ulysses S.
While President Abraham Lincoln was not the first president to be photographed, he was the first to use the relatively new power of photography to enhance his power as president and commander-in-chief. Here, Lincoln poses with Union soldiers a during his visit to Antietam, Maryland, on October 3, President Ulysses S.
Rather, most presidents exercised the power of patronage or appointing people who are loyal and help them out politically and private deal-making to get what they wanted at a time when Congress usually held the upper hand in such transactions. But even that presidential power began to decline with the emergence of civil service reform in the later nineteenth century, which led to most government officials being hired on their merit instead of through patronage.
Only when it came to diplomacy and war were presidents able to exercise authority on their own, and even then, institutional as well as political restraints limited their independence of action. Theodore Roosevelt came to the presidency in , at a time when movie newsreels were becoming popular. Roosevelt, who had always excelled at cultivating good relationships with the print media, eagerly exploited this new opportunity as he took his case to the people with the concept of the presidency as bully pulpit , a platform from which to push his agenda to the public.
His successors followed suit, and they discovered and employed new ways of transmitting their message to the people in an effort to gain public support for policy initiatives. In the post—World War II era, television began to replace radio as the medium through which presidents reached the public. This technology enhanced the reach of the handsome young president John F. Kennedy and the trained actor Ronald Reagan. At the turn of the twentieth century, the new technology was the Internet.
The extent to which this mass media technology can enhance the power and reach of the president has yet to be fully realized. Other presidents have used advances in transportation to take their case to the people. Woodrow Wilson traveled the country to advocate formation of the League of Nations. OSO version 0.
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