Persuading the Persuaders: Presidential Speeches and Editorial Opinion

Abstract

Presidential public relations activities, especially national public addresses, are a crucial part of presidential leadership strategies. Although much work has focused on the relationship between presidential speeches and the public, less is known about how presidential public activity is conveyed to the public through the mass media. This study attempts to explain variation in editorial coverage and assessment of presidential speeches using a variety of "environmental," ideological, and political factors, such as economic indicators, partisan bias, and popular and elite support. The speeches used were State of the Union messages from 1970 to 1995. The media surveyed were a sample of masthead editorials from a wide range of American newspapers. Environmental factors had no impact, indicating that editorials on the State of the Union message are not influenced by the "real" state of the Union. Partisan bias, such as editorial endorsement of the President or his party, was found to be an important factor in explaining variation in editorial support. Political factors, especially presidential popularity and degree of elite support, were also significantly related to editorial assessments of presidential speeches. These findings show that, apparently, the "professional persuaders" on the editorial pages are more positively persuaded by the President when the political context is more favorable, lending support to Neustadt's (1980) proposition that presidential power is tied to a President's political approval by various constituencies.