Diane J. Heith

Harry and Louise Go to Washington: Political Advertising and Health Care Reform

Political advertising by interest groups trying to influence public policy has proliferated recently. Formerly the preserve of election campaigns, advertising has spread to policy arenas, such as abortion, trade, and health care. This article examines group lobbying for and against President Clintons health care reform plan. Using a study of advertisements, a content analysis of news coverage, interviews with half a dozen leading figures in the debate during the spring of 1995, and an analysis of three national public opinion surveys designed to gauge the public response to health care ads, we investigate the media campaign on health care. Ads directed against the Clinton plan played a crucial role in the publics attaching negative connotations to some of its key elements. Grassroots campaigns can work either by mobilizing public opinion or by persuading political leaders that grassroots opposition exists to a particular program.

Staffing the White House Public Opinion Apparatus: 1969-1988

A public opinion apparatus is not officially part of the formal White House organizational structure. However, since 1969 public opinion information has routinely been purchased for use in White House activities. This article examines the efforts to incorporate public opinion into White House decision making by exploring staff communication patterns. Exploring archival documents from four administrations, the author found different staffing mechanisms developed to coordinate disbursal of public opinion information throughout the Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Reagan White Houses. Presidents and senior staff members reviewed and utilized public opinion data. Moreover, staffers involved in efforts to court public support and to facilitate the presidents agenda relied on poll data more than others. Few things are more important to the modern White House than public opinion. Presidents need public support to create a favorable legislative environment to pass the presidential agenda, to win reelection, and to be judged favorably by history. As a consequence, modern presidents spend millions of dollars annually (through the national party organizations), monitoring the ups and downs of citizen sentiments. Despite the importance of public opinion, little is understood about the presidential polling apparatus. No organizational chart of any White House highlights formal structures or guidelines that govern the use of public opinion in presidential activities. To date, scholarly accounts have examined the infancy of presidential polling. Most notable, Lawrence Jacobs and Robert Shapiro illustrated how public opinion polling became an integral part of the institution of the presidency during the Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administrations. Building on these prior efforts, this article examines how the Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Reagan administrations routinized the incorporation of public opinion data and analysis into the office of the presidency

One for All: Using Focus Groups and Opinion Polls in the George H. W. Bush White House

Democratic theory promises that the public influences elected officials, and thus policy. Since the Nixon administration, presidents have employed a public opinion apparatus in order to capture and employ public attitudes. Public opinion polls, by virtue of statistical certitude, appear both scientific and representative of the public. However, there is another tool in the public opinion arsenal, albeit an unrepresentative one. President George H. W. Bushs administration employed not only public opinion polls but also focus groups during his tenure. When challenging the use of polls, the media, elites and even scholars rarely condemn the practice as poorly representative of the public; focus groups, in contrast, are discussion sections of approximately 20 people considering questions of policy, rhetoric, and performance. Using archival documents, this article compares the use of focus groups with the traditional application of the polling apparatus during the Bush presidency. Despite the inherent consequences of employing such a narrowly representative tool, the Bush White House employed focus groups in much the same manner as the statistically driven polling apparatus.

Reaching Women: Soft Media in the 2004 Presidential Election

Where and how citizens get their political information remains a key component of political decision‐making. While traditional media outlets remain significant, new and newly discovered forms of media are growing in importance. One media grouping, womens magazines, emerged as a full‐fledged source of political information in the 2004 presidential campaign. Politics is not a routine subject for magazines like O, the Oprah Magazine; Ladies Home Journal; or Latina. Even style magazines like Vogue covered the 2004 campaign. Despite their typically “softer” focus, these magazines covered the same issues and provided the same level of attention to softer, style‐based concerns as current events magazines. However, soft and hard news outlets differed significantly in the use of partisan terminology and the emphasis on strategic behavior. Womens magazines did not subscribe to the game coverage typically prevalent in presidential coverage.