Presidents And Persuasion

by Stuart Shapiro

It is accepted as relatively conventional wisdom that FDR and Reagan moved the American public with, as political scientist Richard Neustadt put it, “the power to persuade.”  Indeed President Obama is often cited as a disappointment because despite lofty expectations he hasn’t moved the electorate as much as his powerful predecessors.  In a fascinating article describing new research by George Edwards and Frances Lee, Ezra Klein says that Reagan and FDR may not have been as persuasive as commonly believed.

There is no reason to believe that F.D.R.’s storytelling faltered for a single midterm election, or that Reagan lost his persuasive ability in 1982, then managed to regain it two years later. Rather, the causality appears to work the other way around: Presidents win victories because ordinary Americans feel that their lives are going well, and we call those Presidents great communicators, because their public persona is the part of them we know.

By: Stuart Shapiro

Stuart is a professor and the Director of the Public Policy
program at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers
University. He teaches economics and cost-benefit analysis and studies
regulation in the United States at both the federal and state levels.
Prior to coming to Rutgers, Stuart worked for five years at the Office
of Management and Budget in Washington under Presidents Clinton and
George W. Bush.