Who Speaks for the People? The President, the Press, and Public Opinion in the United States

The U.S. president, the press (or media), and public opinion survey data are all stand-ins--substitutes--for the American people. In the United States as a federal republic, the U.S. president is the sole elected representative of all Americans. Among the president's chief attributes is his role as a rhetorician and national communicator; one person, the president, gives voice to the mass public. He serves as the personification and the symbol of the United States (Ceasar et al. 1981; Cohen 2004; Hart 1987; Wattenberg 2004). Furthermore, the president's role as chief communicator has dominated media attention over the last several decades, albeit at the expense of Congress members, other members of government, and other members of his political party (Rozell 2003). What the public learns about government often comes from what the president imparts. The press, for its part, provides the forum for and content of public discourse. Reportage by journalists of what politicians, government officials, businesspersons, and professionals say or write; published or spoken commentary by known figures; guest editorials; letters to the editor; and Web logs by known and unknown members of the public constitute the public sphere. Almost all of what Americans know about national politics, the U.S. government, their fellow citizens, and the larger world is communicated through the media. The persons, ideas, and arguments of national politics and government are what members of the public absorb from watching television; reading newspapers, magazines, and other publications; and being on the Internet. The press (or media, to use the terms interchangeably) may distort political reality in predictable ways (Bennett, Lawrence, and Livingston 2007; Sparrow 1999; Cook 1998), but for practical purposes media reality is political reality. Public opinion polls, too, speak for the American public. If public opinion had once been an amalgam of public correspondence, politicians' conversations, letter-writing campaigns, petitions, and public demonstrations, this has not been the case for more than a half century. Scientific public opinion surveys have effectively made public opinion identical to polling results, and polling results are typically now the only indicator used for the determination of popular views and personal behaviors with respect to particular persons and issues. Vox Populi, Vox Dei. Dick Cheney's infamous recent response (the vice president replied "So?" to an ABC News interviewer's declaration that two-thirds of Americans believe that the war in Iraq was not worth fighting) is the exception that proves the rule (Raddatz 2008): Few politicians or public figures can publicly speak out against, or voice opposition to, the American public. And very few politicians or officials, if any, can do so consistently. On the contrary, politicians, government officials, and the public pay attention to public opinion reflected in polling data. While public opinion may not ultimately settle issues, it almost always factors in decision making, as accounts of the operations of the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations indicate. And if public opinion is especially one sided, it may actually be controlling. If this introductory set of comments seems obvious, perhaps less obvious is how these three institutions--the presidency, the press, and the polls--interrelate. They cannot all represent the public's voice, obviously, unless they are in full agreement. Yet much of the time, and possibly most of the time, this is clearly not the case. Does one of these institutions better represent the public than the other(s)? Does any one (or any two) dominate the other(s)? Or, are there separate spheres in which one (or more than one) of these public voices is (are) privileged? The purpose of this article is to reconsider these three institutions--the first, formal, the latter two, informal--and their role in the political system. …