Conditional Presidential Priorities: Audience-Driven Agenda Setting

• Date: 01 July 2022
• Author: Rebecca Eissler,Annelise Russell
• DOI: 10.1177/1532673X221074359
• Published date: 01 July 2022
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

American Politics Research

2022, Vol. 50(4) 545–549

© The Author(s) 2022

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DOI: 10.1177/1532673X221074359

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Conditional Presidential Priorities:

Audience-Driven Agenda Setting

Annelise Russell

1

and Rebecca Eissler

2

Abstract

The president’s agenda-setting ability has a rich research history, with studies most often derived from the State of the Union

Address. While a president communicates many of his policy priorities via the public address, the presidential agenda is more

complex and variable than can be understood in one speech. Presidents have a number of tools to articulate their priorities, and

how we understand presidential agenda-setting is linked to the tool and its intended audience. This research note illustra tes the

important variation in presidential agendas across venues by comparing the publicized agenda from the State of the Union with

the policymaker-focused priorities conveyed in the annual Budget Message. Using the coding scheme of the U.S. Policy Agendas

Project to assess presidential agenda setting over more than 35 years, we illustrate the audience-driven variability in presidents’

agendas and highlight how the intended audience reveals presidents’strategic choices.

Keywords

agenda-setting, policy agenda, president

Introduction

Studies of presidential agenda setting have long focused on State

of the Union (SOTU) messages in order to understand the

presidential policy agenda. Presidential staff recommend looking

at the State of the Union because the president’s“top priorities will

always appear in the message at some point”(Light, 1999,p.6).

The State of the Union is a highly partisan event where presidents

seek broad support for their agenda, and the primary audience is

the American people. The State of the Union represents a version

of the president’s policy agenda that meets the expectations of its

intended audience, the public, to gain their support. And though

presidents try to command the bully pulpit, presidents also have a

role to play in inter-institutional agenda setting among policy-

makers (Edwards & Wood, 1999). Contrary to public-facing

messaging, presidential budget messages are annual written

messages attached to the proposed budget that target the attention

of policy elites, which we def‌ine as Congress, the bureaucracy,

special interest actors, and the media. The budget messages serve

an agenda-setting purpose, like the SOTU, but that signal is not

meant to capture the public’s attention. Presidents have to work

with policymakers inside the Beltway to pursue their agenda, as

presidents cannot simply achieve their policy goals via bureau-

cratic appointments and more direct actions (Wood, 1988;Wood

& Waterman, 1994), meaning that appealing to elite audiences is

just as important as the signals that presidents send for a public

audience. What makes this messaging signif‌icantly different from

the SOTU address is that the message contains specif‌ic numbers

for the proposed spending embedded in the rhetoric, offering an

explicit indication of priorities compared to the major address.

President Joe Biden notably said “Don’t tell me what you value,

show me your budget, and I’ll tell you what you value,”

1

and the

budget message pairs that presidential rhetoric with numbers, so

the budget message is the time when those numbers specify

priorities.

In an era of hyper accessibility to lawmakers through social

media and television, it might appear that all presidential agendas

are public facing, but in reality, policymaker-oriented messaging

like the annual budget message captures importance nuances in

presidential agenda setting. While anyone can look at the budget

and the president’s budget message online, very few do, as the

public is not the intended audience. Critically,the issues that matter

to policy elites, such as bureaucrats, are different than the issues

that matter to the public at large. The differing needs of these

audiences contour the presidents’policy priorities. For example,

Gallup surveys, like the Most Important Problem, show that the

public routinely prioritizes the economy and healthcare, and while

the relevant bureaucracies care about those issues, members of the

bureaucracy are additionally attuned to government reorganization

1

University of Kentucky, KY, USA

2

San Francisco State University, CA, USA

Corresponding Author:

Annelise Russell, Martin School of Public Policy and Administration,

University of Kentucky, 429 Patterson Off‌ice Tower, Lexington, KY

40506-0027, USA.

Email: anneliserussell8892@gmail.com