The Party Politics of Presidential Rhetoric

Abstract

By bringing together two bodies of literature - the presidency and political parties - this book makes two important contributions. First, it addresses the gap between presidential public actions and the perceived limited effect they have on public opinion. By examining the short-term effect of speeches of presidents on the entire public, the long-term effect of the speeches on their partisans, and on the reputations of their parties for handling policy, the book shows that presidents are effective leaders of public opinion. Second, the book adds to the scholarly interest in how political parties are viewed by the electorate in terms of policy substance. It suggests that Americans possess coherent reputations of the parties for handling policy challenges, and that these reputations contribute to the party identifications of Americans. The effect of presidents on the reputations and, in turn, party attachments position them as leaders of the party system.

In the Name of the President

“…Referencing former presidents can also serve as a political tool to bolster public and partisan support, and to achieve electoral gains. Although all presidents carry a partisan label (Brewer, 2009;Cavari, 2017;Jacobson, 2019), some presidents enjoy a general public support that is above the political fray, while others are viewed by their party labels. Similar to their political use of direct references of the parties (Coleman & Manna, 2007), presidents can reference former presidents strategically to appeal to various constituencies.…”

“…Several of these presidents are hailed for creating the American political system rather than being mere holders of the office (Abbott, 1990). They are widely viewed as responsible for or associated with contemporary policies and events and are held as leaders of their parties in the public mind (Cavari, 2017;Jacobson, 2019). Referencing former presidents can therefore carry significant weight in the public mind.…”

Comparative Policy Agendas

“…Second, demographic groups vary in their attention and response to media coverage of different issues (Berinsky and Karpowitz, 2005;Cavari, 2017). Mainly, groups with most at stake in a given issue are more sensitive than others to changes in that area.…”

“…The two countries differ considerably in the main issues that are on the political agenda. In the United States, a majority of Americans focus on economics followed by defense and foreign affairs (Cavari, 2017). In Israel, a clear first among a majority of the Israeli public is defense and foreign affairs (Galnoor and Blander, 2018).…”

The problem of Donald Trump and the Static Spectrum Fallacy

“… 3. A president’s ability to change the opinions of partisans has been documented in recent scholarship (Cavari, 2017), and Trump’s presidency has offered further proof of this phenomenon (Barber and Pope, 2019). …”