Presidential Campaigns and Presidential Accountability

3. Campaigning on Issues

41 3 Campaigning on Issues To promote accountability, candidates must talk about issues. Fortunately, presidential campaigns are filled with issue talk—in debates, in speeches, in television advertising. Given the quadrennial laments of political observers, this may be a surprising assertion, though it is one increasingly accepted by scholars of campaigns. Take political advertisements, long considered the most debased form of campaign communication (Franz et al. 2007): In the 2000 presidential campaign, 69 percent of the ads aired on television focused on policy issues , and another 24 percent emphasized both policy and personal characteristics . Only 7 percent contained no issue information at all. And the 2000 campaign is not unusual in this regard. Geer (2006) finds, in an examination of presidential campaign ads from 1960 to 2000, that issue appeals make up 56 percent of all advertising appeals.1 Certainly the focus on policy in contemporary campaigns far surpasses that of campaigns in the pre-media era. After all, if a candidate is going to speak directly to the people, he or she must have something to say.2 Consequently, campaigns contain ample issue discussion, though not, perhaps, ample issue debate. The emphasis is on problems and goals. Campaigns, particularly those of the opposition, are largely about calling attention to unfulfilled needs, highlighting problems left unaddressed or unsolved by the current president. In other words, campaigns often emphasize valence issues. Policy proposals are commonly released but not hyped by the candidates (or the media). The policy details and the campaign pledges are for coalition building, to appeal to segments within a party. They are not really intended for the voters at large except to sig- nal seriousness about an issue. Policy specifics underscore a candidate’s commitment. The issue priorities, the much maligned vague statement of goals, are aimed at the mass public. If citizens, broadly, are to have any role in accountability, it will be in evaluating performance on priorities, not fulfillment of detailed policy pledges. Nevertheless, many observers are dissatisfied with how issues are talked about, particularly in campaign advertising, bemoaning the lack of specificity. Journalists decry the lack of controversial issues, what Stokes (1963) called position issues and Patterson (1980) called “clear-cut” issues. The focus on valence issues over controversial ones denies reporters a straightforward way to contrast the candidates. Campaign reformers, as well, wish to improve campaign discourse by making campaigns more informative and civil. Toward that end, reform proposals promote more debates, town meetings, and issue forums to clarify where the candidates stand on the issues (Maisel, West, and Clifton 2007). Political scientists, on the other hand, wish for more precision in the issue talk: for candidates to “state an intention; specify the time when action would be taken; chart the direction of action; and delimit the magnitude of action” (Page 1978, 163).3 An analysis of the issue content of presidential candidates’ position papers, speeches, and interviews finds issue rhetoric wanting. In the 1960 campaign between John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon, for instance, Page finds that only 19 percent of the written and transcribed candidate statements talked about policy. More common, at 46 percent, was talk of goals, problems, and past performance (1978, 156).4 Given the criticisms of campaign advertising, we might expect the 30-second advertising spot to be particularly vapid. And yet, in his detailed content analysis of presidential television ads from 1960–2000, Geer (2006) breaks down the issue appeals, making up 56 percent of all appeals, into position appeals and valence appeals. He finds that 12 percent can be categorized as advocating some position, while 43 percent communicate the candidate’s agreement with broadly consensual goals. The breakdown of rhetoric about policy, general goals, and broad values in presidential television ads is remarkably similar to the breakdown of these themes in the candidate speeches, statements, and papers analyzed by Page (1978). The absence of issue specificity—stating the intention, timing, direction , and magnitude of policy preferences—is clearly not the same as the absence of issue talk. The nearly half of candidate remarks Page categorized as highlighting “goals, problems, and past performance” contain obvious issue relevance. It is just that candidates frequently prefer to emphasize their agenda priorities (goals and problems) rather than pro42 chapter 3 posed policies. As Page notes (1978, 178), “[O]pinions differ on specific policy questions but . . . there is widespread consensus on general goals. . . . A candidate who takes a specific...