Not So Bully

“Public Presidential Appeals and Congressional Floor Votes: Reassessing the Constitutional Threat” by Richard J. Powell and Dean Schloyer, in Congress & the Presidency (Autumn 2003), Dept. of Government, American University, 4400 Massachusetts Ave., N.W., Washington, D.C. 20016.

When a popular president uses the “bully pulpit” of his office, does an aroused public then scare Congress into doing as he wishes? Many scholars have thought so, and some have even fretted that a “plebiscitary” presidency is undermining what passes for deliberative congressional debate. Not to worry, say Powell, a political scientist at the Univer­sity of Maine, and Schloyer, a graduate student at Northwestern University.

They selected 330 controversial key votes in the House between 1961 and 1992, and 299 in the Senate, and examined how the votes were affected by presidential speeches made during the month before they were taken. Powell and Schloyer found that neither the total number of speeches on an issue nor the fact that one or more were delivered in the legislator’s home state made any difference in the legislator’s likely vote. But when the president spoke on national television, “vulnerable” senators, especially those of his own party, were slightly more likely to go along with him. House members, in contrast, were slightly more likely to oppose him, which suggests, say the authors, “that presidents go public when congressional support for a bill is waning.” The odds of winning House converts, particularly in the opposition party, are against them.

So what’s the bully pulpit good for? It improves the chances that legislation favored by the president will at least make it to the floors of the House and Senate for votes.