Cable and the Partisan Polarization of the President's Audience

In January 1998 President Bill Clinton found his presidency embroiled in scandal over allegations that he had an affair with intern Monica Lewinsky. The administration immediately went into damage control, culminating in a hastily arranged television address in which the president emphatically asserted, "I did not have sex with that woman." Shortly afterwards, as Clinton polished his upcoming State of the Union address, new evidence surfaced that squarely contradicted his claim. Allies and adversaries alike urged him to postpone the speech while Congress investigated charges, which now included lying to the American people. But Clinton pressed on and delivered his State of the Union address as scheduled to a large, rapt prime-time audience. (1) The next day's news accounts quoted pundits and politicians of every partisan persuasion proclaiming that the president had "hit a home run." Their judgments appeared to be confirmed by the president's poll numbers that turned upward over the next two weeks. (2) A CBS/NY Times survey team, which had gone into the field just after fresh evidence of Clinton's affair surfaced, nimbly scheduled post-speech reinterviews with those respondents who had previously expressed an opinion on Clinton's job performance. In the second interview, respondents were asked if they had watched the speech and, if so, what they thought of it and the president. This two-wave panel created a kind of quasi-experiment in which watching the speech served as the treatment. Over 40% of Republican detractors in the first survey switched to approval after watching his address. This compares to a 10 percentage-point gain among their counterparts who said they had skipped the speech. Similarly, more than 50% of the president's Democratic and independent disapprovers who watched the speech changed to approval (Kernell 2007). (3) Through rhetoric President Clinton appears to have converted a large number of his critics and helped rescue his presidency. (4) Few presidential addresses can be expected to move public opinion so dramatically. (5) Yet evidence of some effect abounds in the research literature. Druckman and Holmes (2004) conducted an experiment in presidential agenda setting by exposing subjects to excerpts of presidents' State of the Union addresses. Those who watched the presidential segments weighed issues the president had introduced more heavily than did the control group in subsequently answering questions about the president's job performance. (6) Rosenblatt (1998) relied on pre- and postspeech panel surveys to demonstrate President Ronald Reagan's success in changing public opinion about U.S. military involvement in Lebanon and Grenada. In a nationally televised address, just four days after 241 U.S. marines were killed in a bombing in Lebanon and one day after the U.S. invasion of Grenada, the president defended his actions. Among respondents who reported watching the speech, a fifth more switched to approval of the Grenada invasion, and 13% more endorsed his decision to keep troops in Lebanon. Assessments by those respondents who missed the speech did not move much--up three percentage points for Grenada actions and down six points for Lebanon policy. These studies point to another important relationship. Just as President Clinton scored his strongest gains among his disapprovers, so, too, did Reagan in public support for military involvement in Lebanon and Grenada. Some of Reagan's biggest gains in support were from his detractors. He saw a 5% increase in approval of keeping troops in Lebanon among supporters who watched the speech. Meanwhile, he enjoyed a 12% gain in support for troops in Lebanon among his detractors who watched the speech (Rosenblatt 1998). (7) The president's critics are susceptible to his persuasion--if, of course, he can gain their attention. Therein lies the challenge that has recently arisen for presidents. Specifically, the challenge takes the form of cable television. …