Policy Signals and Executive Governance: Presidential Rhetoric in the War on Drugs

Abstract

One consequence of the president's use of rhetoric to shape the public agenda, the media, and congressional attention is less recognized: Presidential rhetoric shapes the priorities of the administrative agents over whom he seeks managerial control. We present statistical tests of the managerial power of presidential policy signals in the case of the United States Attorneys' implementation of the federal “War on Drugs.” We find that presidential policy signals shifted the composition of the Attorneys' caseload, although not to the exclusion of other pertinent local, national, and internal factors. Yet, the consequences of presidential rhetoric for executive governance remain real and substantial.