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Politics or policy? How rhetoric matters to presidential leadership of congress
- Source :
- Presidential Studies Quarterly. September, 2012, Vol. 42 Issue 3, p549, 28 p.
- Publication Year :
- 2012
-
Abstract
- In this article, we examine the linkage between presidential policy proposal messages and legislative success. Employing a data set on presidential legislative proposals that covers the years 1949-2010, we find that politics matters less than policy. Purely political messages that reference the electoral logic of mandates or appeal to a sense of bipartisanship appear to have no impact on presidential legislative success, nor does policy signaling, though highlighting the role of agency-based policy experts in crafting legislation does. From these results, we conclude that although the way presidents communicate their messages to Congress represents an important component of presidential-legislative relations, it is instead the perceived quality of the legislation that more strongly shapes congressional support of presidential policy efforts.<br />Three days after his historic inauguration, Barack Obama communicated the following message to then-House Minority Whip Eric Cantor and other Republican congressional leaders on Capitol Hill: 'I won' (Calmes and [...]
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 03604918
- Volume :
- 42
- Issue :
- 3
- Database :
- Gale General OneFile
- Journal :
- Presidential Studies Quarterly
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- edsgcl.299343824