Provisional Pulpit: Modern Presidential Leadership of Public Opinion

Preface

Preface In this book I pose a simple but critical question that is at the core of modern presidential politics: when and under what conditions do presidents find success at leading public opinion? To address this question and begin this investigation, in this preface I make an informal (but instructional ) survey of three moments of attempted presidential leadership . In assessing the interaction of period, president, and policy, we hope to uncover which factors helped produce successful leadership of public opinion. Or, if leadership was not successful, we want to know which factors are to blame. This is a difficult task because there are countless factors that could be considered and only sparse notions of the predictable conditions under which we might expect presidential success. In the three vignettes that follow, I examine President Franklin Roosevelt’s rhetoric and the steady entry of the United States into World War II, President Ronald Reagan’s solutions to the budget issues of the s, and President George W. Bush’s race to “save” Social Security at the onset of his second term. Franklin Roosevelt and the Onset of War Longstanding historical impressions suggest that President Franklin Roosevelt could lead public opinion with the click of a radio dial. The president, elected in tumultuous times, seemed to have an uncommon bond with the American people, due in part to his popular position as the “savior” of the country in dire economic times. This perception was also due to his techniques. A pioneer in the use of radio to communicate his (often complicated or controversial) message to the voters across the country, President Roosevelt is often viewed as a successful leader of public opinion. In some instances this was accurate, but in leading the public into World War II, the president faced a reluctant public and Congress. His growing concerns about the threat posed by Nazi Germany and a widening of the war in Europe were not shared by an isolationist public. In a true test of presidential leadership, President Roosevelt, still relatively popular after an unprecedented reelection to a third term in , xii : PREFACE had to convince a recalcitrant American public to accept the potential international German threat and get the public to embrace his plans for U.S. economic intervention in the conflict. As the European conflict heated up in the summer of , President Roosevelt utilized a “fireside chat” in May to attempt to move public opinion to accept an “unlimited national emergency.” President Roosevelt argued, “The first and fundamental fact is that what started as a European war has developed, as the Nazis always intended it should develop, into a world war for world domination. Adolf Hitler never considered the domination of Europe as an end in itself. European conquest was but a step toward ultimate goals in all the other continents. It is unmistakably apparent to all of us that, unless the advance of Hitlerism is forcibly checked now, the Western Hemisphere will be within range of the Nazi weapons of destruction.” The president’s message was clear: the world must fear and prepare for German aggression , and the United States must do its part. What was the effect of the president’s leadership efforts? His intent was to gain additional public approval to supply Great Britain with the economic and military tools to continue to fight the war against Germany herself. Even though Roosevelt exhaustively catalogued the growing threat of conflict on the seas and the country’s strategic security vulnerabilities , the president’s pollster, Hadley Cantril, found no significant movement after the president’s speech in terms of the percentages of the public approving of continued assistance to England in fighting the war. On the justification for the war, Cantril argued that “there have been no significant shifts in percentages” where, after the president’s speech, only % of the public agreed England is fighting for democracy (compared to % arguing that she was fighting to “keep her power and wealth”). The president’s rhetoric clearly failed to move public opinion. Why didn’t the public follow the president? Cantril noted that “I believe the main reason [the speech] had comparatively little effect was that [Roosevelt] failed to indicate any new, overt policy that people could readily conceptualize, and that the ‘national emergency’ meant little when it required no change whatever in daily life.” Even more specific references, though, Cantril argued, would not necessarily have hastened any movement in the percentage of the public feeling that the president’s assistance of...