The myth of the bully pulpit runs deep in the DNA of political journalists, so it’s no surprise that the importance of the president’s annual State of the Union address to the president’s political standing is so often overstated by the press. With President Obama set to deliver this year’s address Tuesday night, we’re again republishing my mediaprebuttal (below) to try to preempt some common mistakes and promote a reality-based view of the SOTU’s effects.
Journalists are thankfully becoming more skeptical about claims that speeches can transform Obama’s political standing—after the past few years, how could you not?—but the temptation to portray the address as a potential turning point in preview coverage will still be powerful. The State of the Union is an easily observable event that can be framed as a potential pivot in the narrative tracing the president’s struggles since his 2012 re-election. Journalists are thus already relying heavily on “change of direction” metaphors in SOTU preview stories, which note that the speech “offers Obama an opportunity to start fresh” and “reinvigorate his presidency” at a time when he is“looking to rebound from what many have judged to be the worst year” of his administration. But as I explain below, the evidence is clear that while State of the Union addresses may help make issues or proposals somewhat more prominent, they’re unlikely to change Obama’s approval ratings much or increase Republican support for his agenda in Congress.
After the speech, the most common mistake media outlets make is to suggest that instant polls of speech-watchers are informative about the views of the American public as a whole. In reality, these polls overrepresent supporters of the president and the most politically attentive Americans and thus tell us little about public opinion. If outlets insist on conducting instant polls, they should label them appropriately, which CNN political editor Paul Steinhauser showed is possible last year.
Ultimately, media outlets that cover the State of the Union as a story about Obama’s popularity are missing the real news being made. Rather than hyping political stakes, journalists might instead try to hold viewers’ attention by communicating the gravity of the issues at stake and the possible consequences if, for instance, Obama becomes more aggressive in his use of executive orders or pursues foreign policy initiatives that don’t require the approval of Congress. State of the Union addresses are unlikely to do much to persuade lawmakers or the mass public—but they’re still an important signal of the priorities of an administration that has three years left in office and the powers of the executive branch at its disposal.
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January 24, 2012
A State of the Union Media Prebuttal
Instead of overhyping the SOTU, here’s what reporters should do
NEW HAMPSHIRE — Tonight, President Obama will address Congress and the nation in his 2012 State of the Union address. The SOTU has become both an important civic and political ritual and a signal about the administration’s policy priorities for the coming year. However, the drama of a televised presidential speech also encourages hype by political reporters who have been taken in by the myth of the bully pulpit.
Politico’s Carrie Budoff Brown and Glenn Thrush, for instance, led their story on the State of the Union with the claim that “The Republican candidates… are about to get a sharp lesson in the power of the presidency.” But as Bloomberg’s Al Hunt pointed out in a column published locally in the Concord Monitor, “Obama’s speech before a joint session of Congress is likely to prove as ephemeral as those of these predecessors.”
In particular, the evidence is clear that presidents don’t tend to get a “bounce” in approval levels from the SOTU. These findings reflect a more general misperception. Despite what many reporters believe, the president can rarely change public opinion on domestic policy with this or any presidential address.
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