Going Local Presidential Leadership in the Post-Broadcast Age

Going public to gain support, especially through reliance on national addresses and the national news media, has been a central tactic for modern presidential public leadership. In Going Local: Presidential Leadership in the Post-Broadcast Age, Jeffrey E. Cohen argues that presidents have adapted their going-public activities to reflect the current realities of polarized parties and fragmented media. Going public now entails presidential targeting of their party base, interest groups, and localities. Cohen focuses on localities and offers a theory of presidential news management that is tested using several new data sets, including the first large-scale content analysis of local newspaper coverage of the president. Although the post-broadcast age presents hurdles to presidential leadership, Going Local demonstrates the effectiveness of targeted presidential appeals and provides us with a refined understanding of the nature of presidential leadership.

Introduction; 1. Presidential leadership styles; 2. Increasing presidential attention to narrow groups; 3. Presidents and the local news media; 4. A theory of presidential news management and local news coverage; 5. The quantity of local newspaper coverage of the president; 6. Trends in local newspaper coverage of the presidency, 1990–2007; 7. On the tone of local presidential news; 8. Local presidential news coverage and public attitudes toward the president; 9. Conclusions: presidential leadership in the post-broadcast age.

Jeffrey E. Cohen argues that presidents have adapted their going-public activities to reflect the current realities of polarized parties and fragmented media. Going Local demonstrates the effectiveness of targeted presidential appeals and provides us with a refined understanding of the nature of presidential leadership.

Jeffrey E. Cohen is Professor of Political Science at Fordham University and Visiting Senior Research Scholar at the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University. He is the author of 11 books and monographs - including The Presidency in an Era of 24-Hour News - and more than 50 journal articles. Professor Cohen's areas of interest focus on American politics, especially the presidency and public policy.