The Polls: Can Presidential Rhetoric Affect the Public's Economic Perceptions?

A small but important literature has found that major presidential speeches may improve the level of public approval toward the president under certain conditions (Ragsdale 1984, 1987; Brace and Hinckley 1992). (1) Ragsdale (1984, 980) reports that each major speech lifts presidential approval by about 3 percentage points. In a refinement, Brace and Hinckley (1992) find that major speeches during a president's first term will boost his popularity by about 6 percentage points (p. 56) but will display no impact during the second term (p. 60). Ostrom and Simon (1989) and Simon and Ostrom (1989) argue that speeches will have an impact on approval under limited conditions and find that the public responds with greater levels of approval for the president only when an approval-enhancing event accompanies the speech. All agree, though, that when popularity boosts occur, they are short-lived, disappearing almost as fast as they arrived. (2) This influential literature has laid an important foundation for understanding the impact of presidential speeches on public opinion but leaves important terrain on the topic unexplored. First, published studies may not have paid enough attention to how major speeches should be classified. We argue below that different types of speeches may have different impacts on public opinion. Thus, while Brace and Hinckley (1992, 95) distinguish between foreign policy and non-foreign-policy speeches, they bundle foreign policy speeches with other foreign policy activities; they do not compare the impact of foreign policy speeches on public opinion with other types of speeches, which we do below. Simon and Ostrom (1989, 76) offer a more refined categorization of speeches, five types based on their content, but they do not suggest why one would expect the different types of speeches to affect public opinion differently. In any event, they detect no differences in impact on public opinion across their speech types. Theoretically, more work needs to be devoted to conceptualizing the linkages between speech type and public opinion. We argue that foreign policy speeches will have greater impact on the public than other types, for instance, economic or domestic policy speeches, because foreign policy ones are better at portraying the president as a strong leader, a public image that is necessary for presidential leadership of public opinion. Also, current studies focus almost exclusively on public support for the president as the dependent variable. Boosting public support is important to presidents, but it is not the only aspect of public opinion that presidents would like to influence. Speech effect studies may benefit by exploring the effects of speeches on other aspects of public opinion important to presidents. As Kernell (1993) argues, presidents also "go public" to alter public thinking about policies or to influence public impressions of the president. Hinckley (1990) stresses the symbolic aspects of presidential speech, and Cohen (1995, 1997) shows that presidential speech may be used to influence the public's agenda. Presidents may also speak to affect the public's mood, such as its orientation toward the future, its sense of optimism or pessimism, our topic in this article. Finally, analyses may benefit from conceptualizing popularity other than as the dependent variable or ultimate end of speech making. Critics often complained that Ronald Reagan, for instance, tried to instill a "false" sense of well-being and future optimism in citizens. However, one may argue that Reagan might have calculated that an optimistic public would allow him greater latitude in policy choice and would be more likely to follow his lead. He might have further calculated that his ability to foster a sense of optimism would be greatest when he was popular with the public. Hence, instilling an atmosphere of optimism was part of his overall leadership strategy, and he used his popularity to instill such optimism. …