Presidential Rhetoric
نویسندگان
چکیده
While presidents are often credited with agenda-setting powers over the public, empirical support is limited. Important exceptions to this limited evidence were provided by Cohen (1995, 1997) and Hill (1998). They found a link between the content of State of the Union addresses and subsequent pub lic concern about policy problems for the period 1953-1989. Recently Baum and Kernell (1999) demonstrated that the rise of cable television has undercut the president’s ability to communicate directly to the public. Has this end of the ‘Golden Age of Presidential Television,’ affected the impact of presidential rhetoric on public opinion? Looking at the period 1954-2003 we find evidence that presidential rhetoric today has less impact than it did prior to the rise of cable television.
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