{"id":{"repo_id":"uiuc","oai_identifier":"oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/82560"},"canonical_url":"https://search.dev.ndltd.org/etd/uiuc/oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/82560","repository":{"repo_id":"uiuc","name":"University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign","base_url":"https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh"},"display":{"title":"Do Presidents Lead or Follow the Public? Using Evidence From Rhetoric to Assess Presidential Strategy","abstract":"I seek to address a fundamental question about the contemporary presidency: Do presidents lead public opinion, or do they mainly follow it? The question is difficult to examine systematically, partly because it is problematic to compare presidential policies with poll results systematically. Additionally, most have approached this question using a very narrow conception of public opinion. The proposal here is for an approach to address the question by relying solely on a content analysis of presidential rhetoric. My thesis is that public leadership can be gauged by analyzing the content of what the president says in his public addresses. Instead of analyzing polls, and presidents' responses to them, I employ a method of characterizing the strategies of speeches on the basis of a content analysis of the speech alone. These speeches are coded for features of rhetoric that reveal efforts to move opinion against resistance: acknowledgement of public fears or opposition, recognition of costs or risks, mentions of objections or counter-arguments, references to support from experts, elaboration of causal claims, and appeals to duty. Conceptually, this approach will bring us closer to identifying public leadership, as it is built upon a model of public opinion that emphasizes the process of communication between elites and masses. The result is a new tool for examining the conditions under which leadership is more or less likely to occur.","abstract_html":"I seek to address a fundamental question about the contemporary presidency: Do presidents lead public opinion, or do they mainly follow it? The question is difficult to examine systematically, partly because it is problematic to compare presidential policies with poll results systematically. Additionally, most have approached this question using a very narrow conception of public opinion. The proposal here is for an approach to address the question by relying solely on a content analysis of presidential rhetoric. My thesis is that public leadership can be gauged by analyzing the content of what the president says in his public addresses. Instead of analyzing polls, and presidents' responses to them, I employ a method of characterizing the strategies of speeches on the basis of a content analysis of the speech alone. These speeches are coded for features of rhetoric that reveal efforts to move opinion against resistance: acknowledgement of public fears or opposition, recognition of costs or risks, mentions of objections or counter-arguments, references to support from experts, elaboration of causal claims, and appeals to duty. Conceptually, this approach will bring us closer to identifying public leadership, as it is built upon a model of public opinion that emphasizes the process of communication between elites and masses. The result is a new tool for examining the conditions under which leadership is more or less likely to occur.","abstract_has_math":false,"creators":["Cunion, William E."],"institution":"University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign","degree_name":"Ph.D.","degree_level":"Dissertation","degree_discipline":"Political Science","degree_department":null,"school":null,"contributors":["Paul J. Quirk"],"advisors":[],"committee_chairs":[],"committee_members":[],"year":2015,"date_issued":"2015-09-25T20:49:20Z","date_published":"2015-09-25T20:49:20Z","updated_at":"2026-07-22T22:26:18Z","subjects":["Political Science, General"],"languages":["eng"],"rights":[],"rights_urls":[],"identifier_entries":[{"key":"dc:identifier","label":"Identifier","values":["(MiAaPQ)AAI3101822"],"render_values":[{"text":"(MiAaPQ)AAI3101822","href":null,"code":true}]}]},"links":{"outbound_url":"http://hdl.handle.net/2142/82560","outbound_label":"Handle","outbound_source":"dc:identifier"},"metadata_groups":[{"id":"people","label":"People","entries":[{"key":"dc:contributor","label":"Contributor","values":["Paul J. 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The question is difficult to examine systematically, partly because it is problematic to compare presidential policies with poll results systematically. Additionally, most have approached this question using a very narrow conception of public opinion. The proposal here is for an approach to address the question by relying solely on a content analysis of presidential rhetoric. My thesis is that public leadership can be gauged by analyzing the content of what the president says in his public addresses. Instead of analyzing polls, and presidents' responses to them, I employ a method of characterizing the strategies of speeches on the basis of a content analysis of the speech alone. These speeches are coded for features of rhetoric that reveal efforts to move opinion against resistance: acknowledgement of public fears or opposition, recognition of costs or risks, mentions of objections or counter-arguments, references to support from experts, elaboration of causal claims, and appeals to duty. Conceptually, this approach will bring us closer to identifying public leadership, as it is built upon a model of public opinion that emphasizes the process of communication between elites and masses. The result is a new tool for examining the conditions under which leadership is more or less likely to occur.","Made available in DSpace on 2015-09-25T20:49:20Z (GMT). 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The question is difficult to examine systematically, partly because it is problematic to compare presidential policies with poll results systematically. Additionally, most have approached this question using a very narrow conception of public opinion. The proposal here is for an approach to address the question by relying solely on a content analysis of presidential rhetoric. My thesis is that public leadership can be gauged by analyzing the content of what the president says in his public addresses. Instead of analyzing polls, and presidents' responses to them, I employ a method of characterizing the strategies of speeches on the basis of a content analysis of the speech alone. These speeches are coded for features of rhetoric that reveal efforts to move opinion against resistance: acknowledgement of public fears or opposition, recognition of costs or risks, mentions of objections or counter-arguments, references to support from experts, elaboration of causal claims, and appeals to duty. Conceptually, this approach will bring us closer to identifying public leadership, as it is built upon a model of public opinion that emphasizes the process of communication between elites and masses. The result is a new tool for examining the conditions under which leadership is more or less likely to occur.","Made available in DSpace on 2015-09-25T20:49:20Z (GMT). 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