Ezra's 7 (2/7): Ignore Presidential Speeches?

Intro to this series here; Ezra Klein's post is here.

Ezra says:

2) Presidential speeches don't matter much, either.

The link is to an excellent John Sides post, well worth reading.

Two ways that presidential speeches don't matter: they don't sway entrenched public opinion about the issue at hand, and they don't change public opinion about the president. Those are important, and reporters should know both of them.

Now, that's not to say that presidential speeches don't matter at all (again, Ezra didn't say that; I'm adding stuff, not criticizing).

First, presidential speeches can't sway entrenched public opinion. But they can do some things. On issues for which there is little prior public opinion -- newly emerging issues -- it's likely that supporters of the president will strongly tend to accept the president's arguments, while opponents of the president will be likely to reject those arguments. Moreover, smaller effects such as agenda setting, framing, and priming are all possible. Presidential speeches can raise awareness of an issue; they can affect the way people talk about an issue; and they can affect how presidents are judged on an issue. One helpful concept, I think, is Richard Neustadt's idea of "teaching." Neustadt argued that, at least to some extent, presidents could help themselves by affecting expectations, so that they might avoid blame for bad consequences and get credit for good ones. It's hard to study whether that really can happen, but I think it's likely. My favorite examples are George W. Bush's attempts to sell the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. On the former, he emphasized (in his speech to Congress immediately after the September 11 attacks) that the "war on terror" would be long and difficult, and I think the American people accepted that and did not judge him harshly on his conduct of that struggle. On the other hand, the Iraq war was sold as a cakewalk, and Bush foolishly promised "Mission Accomplished" long before the war was over. Again, it's hard to prove direct effects of this sort of thing, since we don't get to rerun the Iraq war with a president who sets different expectations, but I think the evidence is at least consistent with a teaching effect.

I should add that the reason these effects happen is because they are mediated through the press and other elites. Take agenda setting. One of the ways that reporters "know" which programs a president really cares about is by treating presidential speeches as a good indication of presidential priorities. Therefore, a presidential speech about health care or Afghanistan will produce lots of news stories about those subjects (and fewer about, say, climate and Iraq), and as a result mass publics will tend to believe that health care and Afghanistan are Important Issues. Of course, speeches are not the only indication reporters use -- budgets, allocations of staff, and other markers also count -- but speeches are a pretty useful shortcut.

Also, leaving public opinion aside, Washingtonians act on the information they receive from presidential speeches, using them as cues about presidential priorities and bargaining positions. Indeed, one of the tricks of writing presidential speeches is to address multiple audiences, including both mass publics who pay little attention, and Washingtonians who are apt to carefully parse minute changes in wording (recall the efforts over the summer to deduce Obama's exact position on the public option). Once again, speeches are only one piece of evidence that Washingtonians use, but it's an easy one, so they get used.

So, it's true that presidential speeches don't have a lot of direct, immediate effect on public opinion, but it's not quite true that presidential speeches don't matter.

(Update: Title updated; glitch ate half of it!)

Ezra's 7 (1/7): Campaigns Don't Matter?

Intro to this series here; Ezra Klein's post is here.

Ezra says:

1)Campaigns don't really matter. Elections are largely decided by the fundamentals of the economy. The graphs in this article would've done more to predict the 2008 election than reading Politico every day.

Reporters would be massively better off if they believed this. However, a little complexity never hurts, right?

Let's start with fundamentals. Here's what we know: it's possible to devise a formula to predict presidential general elections that contains only economic information and presidential approval and wind up with pretty accurate predictions. That puts an upper bound on how important campaigns can be -- they can't be much more important than the margin of error in those predictions. And the economy is a major factor in presidential approval.

All that said, there are a few things to be cautious about here. There's more to presidential approval than the economy (Bush's ratings were low before the recession began in December 2007, and of course they were far higher than the economy would have predicted in 2002). Some of the other things that go into presidential approval is beyond the control of the White House, but presidential actions can influence approval. That's outside of campaigns. When it comes to actual campaigns, there's a large literature on whether campaigns matter or not. I believe the prevailing conclusion is that, yes, they can matter a little. Research has found some things that can affect turnout or vote choice, and it's possible for a campaign to get a bit of an advantage by doing those things better than the opposition.

Put it together, and I think the best way to look at it is that there's no way that campaign effects are going to be responsible for any of the blowouts (1964, 1984) or even the solid victories (1980, 1988, 1992, 1996, 2008). Campaign effects may well have tilted the toss-ups (1960, 1968, 1976, 2000). But beware: reporters aren't going to help very much, even there. What usually shows up in Politico-style coverage tends to selectively call whatever the winning side is doing "good" and whatever the losing side is doing "bad." That's a media bias, not analysis.

Now, back up even further. I've been talking about presidential elections, and the general election. I think that's mostly what Ezra was talking about, too. It's worth mentioning, however, that there are lots of elections out there. House (general) elections tend to turn on district composition more than anything else, but differences between voter awareness and perception of candidates turns out to matter a lot, too. And then there are primary elections, where campaigns probably matter quite a bit.

One more thing. By "campaigns don't matter," Ezra is I think talking about the way that campaigns affect voting -- campaigns, he's saying, don't determine which candidate will win. It's worth noting, however, that campaigns have other functions. Candidates take positions on issues of public policy, and then feel constrained once in office by those positions. Of course, candidates break issue promises all the time...but overall, the positions taken during the campaign are a pretty good guide to positions they will take once in office. Had George W. Bush not needed to prove his conservative credentials in order to defeat Steve Forbes, Bush may well have not have campaigned on extreme tax cuts, and not placed such a priority on tax cuts once in office. Had Bush not run in the general election on a platform of "compassionate conservatism," he might not have wound up taken up the issue of education, and then not pushed for NCLB once in office. Another way to put this is that campaigns are about building coalitions, and choices made at that stage have consequences for politicians once they are elected.

More generally, all sorts of non-issue promises are made during campaigns, and Richard Fenno's research shows that politicians are constrained by those promises once in office.

On yet another level, campaigns are also the source of many of the people who make up a presidential administration (or a Congressional staff). Since those people can affect what elected officials actually do, campaigns matter in that way as well.

Again, this isn't meant to be critical of Ezra's list. We'd get much better reporting if journalists suddenly believed that campaigns didn't matter, instead of acting as if every tiny bit of spin and every debate line and whether the balloon fall looks nice at the conventions are the main determinants of who wins the election. Just adding a little complexity.

Ezra's 7: Introduction

Ezra Klein wrote a great post today responding to Politico's silly story about narratives Obama fears...well, he was responding to the White House response, but he was mostly bashing Politico's focus on ephemera and gossip at the expense of substance. It's an excellent post, and not just because it's nice to political science. In fact, I wrote him a note praising the post. Then John Sides wrote a brief post at the Monkey Cage flagging it, and I wrote a comment there commending John for bringing Ezra's work to the attention of political scientists.

...and then, alas, I started thinking. Ezra gives a list of seven stories that Politico fears. He's a great blogger, and he's able to keep things concise...but it started gnawing at me that while each of his seven items is a major improvement over the way that most political stories are told, there's a bit more to most of them. So, here goes: seven response posts to his list of seven items. Heavy on the first three, because those are in areas I'm much more familiar with (if any media scholars are reading, feel free to email suggestions to me), but I think I have something to say about each of them. Ready? Let's go.

Representation and Public Opinion

Seth Masket asks:

Shouldn't public policy reflect public opinion?

It's a good post -- I'll wait while you go and read it.

OK, I'll summarize for lazy readers. Seth points to some interesting examples, including the odd case of the estate tax, which apparently has always been unpopular not because people thought it was inherently unjust, but because most people mistakenly expect to be hurt by it (well, I guess they mistakenly expect their heirs to be hurt by it). He also uses the fictional example of West Wing President Bartlet, who doesn't care about public opinion on a complex arms control question because he (presumably correctly) doesn't believe that the public knows or even can know enough to have reasonable, informed opinions. Seth says:

Obviously, a democratic republic should be biased toward following public opinion, but there are legitimate cases for ignoring it. The trick is figuring out when.

tiI have two responses. The first is that this question is partially solved by political parties. Democracies don't need people to understand nuclear physics; they just need people to choose between Martin Sheen and John Goodman...er., between the Democrats and the Republicans. There are all sorts of complexities that follow, but that's one direction one can explore.

The second (and in my view complementary) way to look at it is through representation. Here, what matteres is the representational relationship between elected officials and constituents, which as Richard Fenno tells us involves cycles of promises, interpretations of promises, actions in office, and explnations of those actions in light of the original promises. The key to understanding this is the nature of promises. Promises made by politicians can be issue promises, such as the ones that Politifact tracks. But sometimes, and I think more importantly, they can be about how the elected official will do his job: "I'll listen to you, not to Washington lobbyists." "I'll fight for the little guy." "I'll be a strong conservative voice." "I'll make sure that our town gets its fair share of the pie." "It's time that we sent a woman to the House."

Fulfilling those promises sometimes means sticking to specific issue positions, but sometimes it doesn't. It may be that different promises, even ones that sound similar, require a different action in Washington. Consider two same-state Senators, one of whom promised to fight for the little guy, while the other promised to listen to her constituents. If both Senators agree that public opinion opposes the estate tax but that the tax would be on balance good for middle and working class voters, the "fight for..." Senator might feel obliged to support estate taxes, while the "listen" Senator may feel constrained to oppose such a tax. Sometimes, however, it's more about the way that elected officials explain their actions and interpret their promises than about policy positions per se. Here's an example: Jed Bartlet was elected in part because he was a real smart guy; he promised, in effect, to be a real smart guy in office. He can't break that problem by taking any particular position on arms control, but he could break it, at least in part, if it were revealed that he didn't understand the issue himself.

Back to Seth's claim that "Obviously, a democracy should be biased toward following public opinion." I think this perspective suggests that Seth isn't right. Democracy should be biased toward developing and supporting strong representational relationships. Sometimes public opinion will be important to those relationships, but sometimes it won't; that's up to the particular politician and the particular constituency, and how they interact with each other.

What's nice about that perspective is that it gets around a whole lot of messy things that we know about public opinion itself (such as how inconsistent and uninformed most voters are on most issues). The representation perspective suggests that it's OK if voters don't have opinions on the details of arms control, or that their opinions about other issues are clearly just a function of following opinion leaders. The important thing, for democracy, is only that they elect politicians who try to keep their promises (properly understood).

That Cheney "Interview"

I should add: while I do think that it's reasonable to give Cheney a platform to express Republican views of the president, I think the critics are correct in their comments about the Politico story as journalism.

It certainly would be nice to know how Cheney, who apparently thinks that Afghanistan was going well until Obama took office, would respond to a question about why the military thought that a significant increase of troops there was necessary after Obama already increased troop levels this year. Does Cheney believe troop levels were correct for the seven years that the Bush/Cheney administration ran that war? If he thinks (as he apparently does) that more troops are needed now -- more quickly than Obama is sending them! -- what does he think changed between January 19, 2009 and January 20, 2009 that suddenly required lots of new soldiers on the ground? At the very least, Allen and Vandehei might have provided a bit of the factual background.

Republicans deserve to be heard, and they're entitled to Cheney if they want him, but they aren't entitled to presenting their views without fear of tough questions.

Cheney Front and Center

This morning's flap was a Politico story giving full publicity to Dick Cheney's latest anti-Obama rants. Putting aside the substance of Cheney's views (apparently everything was going just perfectly in Afghanistan until Obama took office) and the pathetic claims he's making (Cheney really can't be taken seriously when he's babbling about Obama's decision to follow standard diplomatic protocol as if it were either novel or important), I think the more important question is whether Politico and the press in general are doing something wrong by giving Cheney a platform. Cheney opponents -- here's Greg Sargent, Steve Benen, and Andrew Sullivan. As Benen says:

So, why is Cheney's 90-minute tirade against the president the lead Politico story today?

OK, I have an answer for that.

First of all, it is the press's obligation to give a platform to both parties.

Second, each party should have the opportunity to determine its own positions on issues of public policy, and which people should give voice to those positions.

For the in-party, that's easy: clearly the main people the press should give platforms to include the president and his designated spokespeople, the Speaker of the House, the Majority Leader of the Senate, and relevant committee chairs.

For the out-party, it's more complicated. Cheney (and Bush, who isn't talking) have some credentials to speak for the Republicans; so do McCain and Palin; so do Boehner and McConnell; so do the leading presidential candidates for the next cycle, and the relevant committee ranking members. I suppose I should add that mad bloggin' Michael Steele (update: nothing for the last eight days). American parties aren't set up the way that many world parties are organized, with a clear leader of the opposition and shadow ministers who are the recognized leaders on various topics. Instead, it's a mishmash.

So, how can we tell if journalists get it wrong? That's fairly easy: it's the job of the out-party to keep them honest. If Politico tried to pass off someone from Obama's collection of retired GOP officials who support health care reform as the Official Voice of the Republicans, we would know they got it wrong from the howls of protest from current Republicans, including rapid policy contradictions.

Where does that leave Cheney -- and McCain, who Benen also complains about, or even talk-show faves Giuliani and Gingrich, who get tons of air time despite minimal and aging credentials? Apparently, reporters are doing little wrong by using them for the Republican party line. After all, the complaints, as far as I can tell, exclusively coming from opponents of the Bush/Cheney administration. Those complaints are wrong: opponents of the Republicans don't get a vote on which Republicans should get quoted. Moreover, Republicans do seem to follow Cheney's lead, whether it's on his complaints about torture, the KSM trial, or "dithering."

However, it's possible that things are changing. Greg Sargent reports that Republicans are now complaining off the record about Cheney. That's interesting, as it hints at the possibility that there may be considerable inner conflict among Republicans about their current public leadership. But it also makes it clear that, for now at least, Cheney is winning that battle. Republicans could isolate him overnight by dismissing him, publicly (including refusing to quote his lines and subscribe to his positions and arguments), and by making it clear to reporters privately that he doesn't speak for them, but that's not what's happened so far.

Quick summary: Republicans are entitled to be heard, and Republicans, not their opponents, get to decide who represents them.

If they want someone who sounds like a "random right-wing radio loudmouth in a third-tier market," well, that's their choice.

Balance of Power

As regular readers know, I'm a big fan of Ezra Klein (want to understand what's going on with health care right now? See what he says here and here), and I'm certainly all for quoting Mann and Ornstein, but I don't think this post really gets things right. Ezra says:

[I]t's worth reminding folks that the legislative branch is the first branch mentioned in the Constitution, and the powers of the House are outlined before the Senate is discussed. Scholars of this stuff will tell you that the Founders meant for Congress to be more powerful than the president and the House to be more powerful than the Senate. The proof is in the pudding, or at least in the Constitution: Congress can write and pass legislation, while the president can merely veto, and his veto can be overridden. "All bills for raising Revenue" must originate in the House, while the Senate doesn't get a special power of its own. The hierarchy is pretty clear, and makes sense: The House is, after all, the most democratic body in our government.

Well...yes and no. Yes, Congress is in some sense the "first branch." I wouldn't say that the framers of the Constitution "meant for Congress to be more powerful than the president." I think a better way to think of it is that they believed that in a democracy (they called it a republic, but I've been convinced that it's best to think of those terms as synonyms in most cases), the "democratic" parts were apt to dominate -- and that therefore a guiding question of the Constitution was how to restrain representative bodies chosen by the people. Their problem, as they eventually realized, was that in America there wouldn't be anything with which to constrain democratic institutions. There would be no aristocracy, or crown, or offical Church -- no other Estates. Eighteenth century doctrine followed Montesquieu and insisted on a balance of powers, but in America there was nothing to balance. There were no Powers ; there was only one power, the people.

I think there are two ways to interpret the Constitutional solution. One is that the framers somehow managed to create something other than the people -- that the (original, at least) Senate and the presidency are somehow less democratic than the House, and that the Constitution is all about constraining democracy. That was, more or less, the anti-federalist argument at the time, and it's been a popular interpretation ever since. In large part, the Federal Papers are a response to this argument. There are lots of very defensive essays about how the president isn't going to be a king -- No Really! He has hardly any powers at all! -- and the Senate isn't going to be an aristocracy, and so on.

I think a better interpretation of what the framers were up to, however, is that they realized that in America there would be nothing other than the people, but that institutional design could still achieve the benefits of balance of powers by duplicating the people into different parts of the government. Even in their original forms, that interpretation argues, the Senate and the presidency (and, perhaps, even the courts) are just as democratic as the House of Representatives, because they ultimately depend on the same constituency: the people. Yes, election was indirect, while election in the House was direct, but that's not nearly as important as the obvious fact that ultimately it all comes down to the same electorates. From the very start, there was nothing of the House or Lords or the Roman Senate in the United States Senate. In that sense, both the Jacksonian idea of the presidency as the people's branch and the eventual decision to remove the indirect election of Senators and (mostly) the president are contained within the original idea of those institutions. They always were intended to be democratic.

Why, then, balance of power? Two reasons, one familiar and one less so. The familiar reason is Madison's in Federal 51; everyone, even the people, need constraints, and separated institutions sharing powers (in Neustadt's wonderful phrase) is the way to do that. Ambition checks ambition, and so on. And that's fine as far as it goes. It is a mistake, however, to see balance of powers as purely a negative force. Mixed government is powerful -- Rome was powerful -- because each element adds something to the mix. So we can turn Madison's "ambition must be made to counteract ambition" around and emphasize not the "counteract" part but the creation of power -- the creation of lots and lots of ambition, seen in this sense as a good thing, a creative energy. As Hannah Arendt argues, power is not a zero-sum game, and one can argue that the American system is especially good at generating lots of power.

So which is the most powerful branch? That's not a question that the Constitution answers. Yes, the House is given some Constitutional advantages (revenue bills, a Speaker, direct election), but so is the Senate (more control over the executive and judicial branches through nominations, long terms), and so are the president and the courts. Each branch, and each House of Congress, can throw down roadblocks; each branch, and each House of Congress, can also innovate and initiate action. I would say that Ezra is wrong in concluding that "the House is less powerful than the modern Senate and Congress has taken a back seat to the president." It's true that, as he says, attention is focused on the Senate, but that's not the same thing as the Senate having the most power. Indeed, to the extent that the Senate is unable to act, it becomes a weak player in the system. As for the president, we're accustomed to attributing policy changes to the White House (see for example here), but that's mostly convention and simplification, not analysis. What I would say is that the Constitution gives plenty of opportunity to a shockingly large array of actors to create policy, while leaving the outcomes of their efforts largely undetermined by formal rules.

I feel like I should add a few footnotes, or at least references...I highly recommend Gordon Wood, The Creation of the American Republic; William Lee Miller, The Business of May Next; and Hannah Arendt, On Revolution.