Building Public Support from the Grassroots Up: The Impact of Presidential Travel on State-Level Approval

On September 11, 2001, as terrorists were attacking the World Trade Center ant the Pentagon, President George W. Bush was visiting a Florida school, publicizing and promoting his educational policies. Of course, a terrorist attack of that magnitude rare, but a domestic presidential trip is a common occurrence. As Figure 1 displays, from 1981 through 1999, presidents made an average of 59 visits to the states per year, aver aging nearly 79 travel days per year. (1) Furthermore, the figure shows an increase in presidential travel to the states over that period. Presidential travel is an increasingly important aspect of the public presidency, with the public presidency being one of the signature developments of modern presidential leadership (Brace and Hinckley 1992; Hart 1987; Lammers 1982). The public presidency involves, among other things, presidential speeches to the public aimed at increasing presidential visibility and mobilizing public support for the president and his policies. A considerable body of research has aided our understanding of the many types of presidential activities that make up the public presidency. We know, for instance, about the factors that motivate many presidential public activities, such as press conferences and political speeches (Hager and Sullivan 1994; Kernell 1986; Powell 1999). We also know that major presidential speeches lift presidential job approval, albeit briefly (Brace and Hinckley 1992, 1993; Kernell 1986; Ostrom and Simon i985; Ragsdale 1984, 1987; Simon and Ostrom 1989). In contrast, we know almost nothing about the impact of presidential trips around the nation despite their frequency. In this study, we investigate the impact of presidential travel on state-level public approval. Not only do we steer our analysis to a topic rarely studied, we also shift our focus from national- to state-level effects. A shift in focus from the nation to the states is important because presidents often target state publics in traveling around the nation. When traveling to a state, presidents may aim to boost their own approval, generate support for local politicians running for (re)election (Cohen, Krassa, and Hamman 1991), build support for their policies among members of Congress (Cohen et al. 1991; Kernell 1986; Powell and Schloyer 2003), and enhance their own reelection prospects. The role of the Electoral College in presidential elections and the importance of states as political units in the American federal system also underscore the importance of looking at state-level effects of presidential travel. This study looks specifically at the job approval implications of presidential travel to the states. Despite a conventional wisdom that the public activities of presidents reap approval gains, research provides a mixed assessment of the success of presidential efforts to influence public opinion. Some studies, especially those focusing on major public speeches (Brace and Hinckley 1992, 1993; Kernell 1986; Ragsdale 1984, 1987; Ostrom and Simon 1985) and campaign appearances (Cohen et al. 1991; Shaw 1999), find that presidents can affect public opinion. Other studies, however, have raised doubts about presidents' ability to gain the public's attention and influence the direction of public opinion (Edwards 2003). Given these varying assessments, domestic travel provides a useful setting for testing these competing expectations about presidential leadership of public opinion. In the next section, we present a theoretical explanation of how presidential travel affects public opinion. Then we discuss a new data set that allows us to examine the impact of presidential travel on state-level approval from 1981 through 1999 (Beyle, Niemi, and Sigelman 2002).2 For the first time, we are thus able to match appropriate levels of analysis--travel to the states with state-level approval. (3) We then present our data analysis and conclude with some thoughts on the impact of public presidential activities on presidential approval and suggestions for future research. …