Druckman & Holmes (2004) Does Presidential Rhetoric Matter? Priming and Presidential Approval

“The public’s approval of the president plays a critical role in determining the president’s power and policy-making success.” And what the president says has much to do with his approval.

“In this article we examine the direct impact of presidential rhetoric on approval…We show that the president can have a substantial effect on his own approval by priming the criteria on which citizens base their approval evaluations” (755). [Controlling the message].

The media primes its audience, yes. But so do presidents!

Presidents can use rhetoric to shape their own approval. (TROUBLESOME).

By “priming” their audience (presenting the issues by which one will use as evaluative criteria), presidents are able to determine the criteria by which they will be judge. For example if Bush wants to detract attention from the Kyoto Protocol, he can focus on the economy. “Priming occurs when an individual changes the criteria on which he or she bases an overall evaluation, whereas persuasion involves altering what an individual thinks of the president on a given dimension (e.g., does the president do a good job or a poor jo on defense policy?) Priming does not involve changing perceptions of how well the presidenti is doing on an issue—it simply alters the issues on which individuals base their overall evaluations” (757).

“Our focus on priming follows a growing literature that shos how presidents strategically emphasize advantageous issues with the hope of making those issues salient un the mindes of votesr (e.g. Jacobs & Shapiro 1994; Druckman et al. 2004). The president many also influence his approval by persuading voters that they should support his policies, or by convincing them that he is performing well on specific issues…” (757).

Druckman et al (2004) suggests that the success of priming depends on the particular context [the war in Iraq-ideological plugs of patriotism!!], source, and audience.

Source credibility matters (Miller & Krosnick 2000; Druckman 2001). [thus the president’s approval???]

In terms of audience variables, political knowledge matters. [need a place to put it thus need SOME political knowledge—MB]. “Recall that McGraw & Ling (2003) argue with a relativel new issue, more knowledgable people will be more susceptible to priming. Thisis the case because “the more knowledge one has about politics, the more quickly and easily one can make sense of…[a new issue] and the more efficiuently one can srore it in…and retrieve it from, an elabotatie and organized mental filing system” (Krosnick & Brannon 1993, 966; Miller & Krosnick 2000).
Whether or not the issue is personally relevant also matters (Iyengar 1991; Miller & Krosnick 1996, 82).


This role of image is important (Druckman & Holmes 2004, 759; Erich et al. 2001)

METHODS:
Data: use of the State of the Union addresses to study how presidents set the agenda. (following Cohen 1995).

Expected findings: Given that Bush in 2002 overwhelmingly focused on terrorism and homeland security, speech watchers will place more weight on these issues when contructing theirt overll approval evals. Bush primed his audience to evaluate him based on terrorism/homeland security criteria. (Druckman & Holmes 2004, 762).

RESULTS:
The results support our expectations about both issue and image priming. The non-watchers based their overall approval evals on teir issue-specific approval evals of the war in Afgahnistan, the economy, and education, but not terrorism. The image variables and demographics had no effect…In contrast, the watchers based their overall approval opinions on their issue-specific evals of terrorisms and the economy, but not the war or education. This is consistent with the issue piming hypothesis—watching the address led to a significantly greater reliance on terrorism (i.e. the issue most emphasized in the address)…We find that the terrorism coefficient is indeed significantly greater for the watrchers than for the non-watchers. The speech also primed watchers awa froma reliance on the war and education as evaluative croteria; this is not surpormisng, given the lack of attention these issues received” (767).

“Regardless of the impact on overall approval, successfully altering evaluative criteria has substantial implications for what the public expects of the president, how the public holds his accountable, what policies the president addresses, and the presidents role in each of these domains (see Jamieson 2000, 17). In short, presidential rhetoric can play an important role in affecting presidential approval…” (768).

Knowledge results:

These results imply that the speech primed leadership perceptions only for low-knowledge participants, that it primed terrorism approval only for high-knowledlge participants, and that it primed away from war approval only for high-knowledge participants, This is an intruiging result—it suggests that issue priming works o the most knowledgeable, but image priming works on the least knowledgeable…The image priming results suggests that, as mentioned, in contrast to issues, political knowledge may not be necessary for infividuals to connect their image perceptions with the broader picture of presidential approval (see also Miller & Krosnick 2000)” (770).