The Politics of Presidential Agendas

Abstract

Past research holds that if presidents are to increase their success in Congress, they must set the policy agenda in their favor. But what determines the propensity of presidents to propose or support different policies? Because presidents influence the agenda-setting stage of the policy process, presidents develop their yearly domestic policy agendas in anticipation of each policy’s success or failure in Congress. After all, presidents want to emphasize their strengths to achieve their goal of policy enactment in Congress. From this assumption, I devise a typology of long-term and important presidential policies, and argue that political limitations and fiscal constraints influence the president’s yearly domestic policy agenda. I show that presidents offer different types of policies as part of their yearly domestic agendas given Congressional makeup and the federal budget deficit.