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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Conceptualizing And Measuring White House Staff Influence On Presidential Rhetoric, Justin Vaughn, José Villalobos
Conceptualizing And Measuring White House Staff Influence On Presidential Rhetoric, Justin Vaughn, José Villalobos
José D. Villalobos
Scholars have debated extensively the impact of presidential rhetoric on public opinion and congressional behavior, but have largely ignored the determinants of what the president actually says. This inattention is partly the result of the difficulty of acquiring systematic observations of presidential speech crafting. We devise a method of quantifying White House staff influence over the composition of rhetoric that captures the multistage negotiations between the president's speechwriters and his policy advisors and provides a framework for future studies on the determinants of presidential rhetoric. We employ our method to study influence over the writing of President George H. W. …
When Made To Choose: Cross-Pressured Republican Senators And George W. Bush’S Private Account Plan, José Villalobos
When Made To Choose: Cross-Pressured Republican Senators And George W. Bush’S Private Account Plan, José Villalobos
José D. Villalobos
President George W. Bush's "60 Stops in 60 Days" Social Security reform tour provides a best-test case study of high transparency where presidential persuasion, public opinion, and member self-interests clash amid continual media coverage. Whereas most research is limited to roll call voting, this study provides a thorough and unprecedented examination of representative attendance and position-taking by introducing a new unit of analysis -- the presidential stop. I focus on Republican Senators who are cross-pressured between growing negative public opinion and loyalty to the president. Utilizing fractional polynomial logit analysis, I re-test hypotheses about presidential and public opinion influence on …