Opinion and the Presidency

For Wednesday,

• Assignment?
• Reagan, 1983 "Evil Empire" speech in Orlando: both the manuscript (see link here) and the video/transcript
• Peggy Noonan, What I Saw at the Revolution: A Political Life in the Reagan Era (New York: Random House, 1990), ch. 5. (on Canvas).
• Watch the State of the Union tomorrow night

Polling (Edwards 123-124)

• How can 1000 people represent the whole country?
• Random samples
• Response rates

What is public opinion?

• Cognitive (Thinking/Beliefs): Represents knowledge, intellectual capacity, and beliefs about a subject.
• Affective (Feeling/Emotions): Relates to emotional responses, attitudes, and moods toward the subject, such as liking or disliking something.
• Evaluative (Judgment): Assessment of value, good/bad, or success/failure.
• Conative (Action/Intent): Refers to t behavioral intention to act, such as the intention to vote

All dimensions are connected.  Think about implications for presidential communication.

Cognitive

• Limitations of institutional knowledge
• Young voters' knowledge
• International politics
• "From the River to the Sea"
• Locating Ukraine on a map
• Polarization of Knowledge and news sources
• Watch out for nonattitudes

Approval of individuals:  mix of affective and evaluative

• Presidential approval: 
• Decay curve
• 21st century trend toward lower approval (Edwards 135-136, 139-140).  Connect to last Wednesday's discussion of close elections.

Why?

What influences attitudes toward the president?

• Partisanship
• Events

So what can a president do?

Bill Clinton explains "crafted speech":

So what do I use polls for on the issues? What I primarily use polls for is to tell me how to make the argument that's most likely to persuade you that I'm right about what I'm trying to do. ... Okay. I'll give you an example where, according to the polls I have the unpopular position, okay? The Congress passes a repeal of the estate tax, an outright repeal. Now, I can--and I'm going to veto it if it comes to my desk, okay? Now, I can say the following. I can say, "I'm going to veto this because it only helps less than 2 percent of the people and half of the relief goes to one-tenth of one percent of the people, and it's an average $10 million." That is a populist explanation.

I can say, "I'm going to veto it because we only have so much money for tax cuts, and I think it's wrong to do this and say this is our highest priority, when we have done nothing to lower the income taxes of low-income working people with three kids or more or to help people pay for child care or long-term care for their elderly or disabled relatives or to get a tax deduction for college tuition."

Or I could say, "I think there should be estate tax relief." I do, by the way. "I don't care if it does help primarily upper income people. The way so many people have made so much money in the stock markets in the last 8 years, there are a lot of family-owned businesses that people would like to pass down to their family members, that would be burdened by the way the estate tax works, plus which the maximum rate is too high. When it was set, income tax rates were higher, but there was a lot of ways to get out of it. Now the rates are lower, but you have less ways to get out of it. You have to pretty much pay what you owe more." So I could say that.

So it's not fair to totally repeal it. Like even Bill Gates has said, "Why are you going to give me a $40 billion tax break." And he's going to give away his money, and I applaud him and honor him for it.

So I could make either of those three arguments. It's helpful to me to know what you're thinking. I know what I think is right. I'm not going to change what I think is right. But in order to continue to be effective, you have to believe I'm right. So that's kind of what I use polls for.

 

Nixon memo

• Knowledge of predecessors
• Third person discussion of self: "I speak first of the simple idea of warmth. I don't mean by that that we want to get away from the fact that the President is reserved, dignified, etc., but there are numerous incidents of warmth that have not come through. Now here, I want to emphasize a point that will go against what Sa fir e would like everybody wants me to sit down and talk to members of the staff in a puffing way about how "nicey nice" I have been to them. That is not the way to do it. If warmth is to be believable, it must be discovered, and at this stage there are many examples.