The Opportunistic President: How US Presidents Determine Their Legislative Programs

• Author: Jeremy Gelman,E. Scott Adler,Gilad Wilkenfeld
• Published date: 01 August 2015
• Date: 01 August 2015
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/lsq.12080

JEREMY GELMAN

University of Michigan

GILAD WILKENFELD

E. SCOTT ADLER

University of Colorado

The Opportunistic President:

How US Presidents Determine

Their Legislative Programs

The president is the most influential policy actor in US politics, and his legislative

program greatly influences Congress’s agenda. Yet little research has focused on what

factors affect the president’s choices when constructing his agenda. We develop a theory

that determines when a president will include an issue in his program. We hypothesize

that presidents structure their agendas around the congressional calendar for considera-

tion of expiring laws and salient issues. Using data over 28 years and across 12 policy

areas, we find presidents build their programs around these policymaking opportunities.

We assert that presidential agendas are less driven by individual priorities than previous

accounts have concluded.

Introduction

In his f‌irst public comments after the 2012 election, Speaker John

Boehner told reporters he expected “the president to lead” on legislative

issues including the f‌iscal cliff, taxation, and immigration (Condon

2012). Others noted the unrealistic expectations this created since

presidents have tremendous diff‌iculty “[advancing] a coherent agenda”

in divided government (Lizza 2013). While most legislative analysis

focuses on what legislation the president can get passed, these discus-

sions allude to an equally important aspect of the lawmaking process—

the items that make it onto the president’s policy agenda.

The president’s legislative program,

1

which is the set of proposals

sent from the president to the legislative branch, is viewed as pivotal in

presidential-congressional relations. We see evidence of the privileged

place these requests have in three ways. First, they shape Congress’s

lawmaking agenda. Over 70% of the president’s issue priorities get

LEGISLATIVE STUDIES QUARTERLY, 40, 3, August 2015 363

DOI: 10.1111 /lsq.12080

V

C2015 The Comparative Legislative Research Center of The University of Iowa

congressional consideration, and signif‌icant legislation sent by the

administration is almost always debated (Edwards and Barrett 2000;

Peterson 1990). Second, these policy proposals are traditionally viewed

as a tool the president can use to open policy windows and create more

accommodating lawmaking environments. Kingdon reports that “no other

single actor in the political system has quite the capability of the president

to set agendas in given policy areas...” (1984, 23). Third, these proposals

provide cues to legislators about which issues they can successfully politi-

cize by opposing or supporting the president’s policy ideas (Lee 2009).

As the president’s program heavily inf‌luences legislative attention

and the level of partisanship within Congress, it is also crucial to under-

standing the broader policymaking process. To that end, we examine

why presidents select some issues to promote in their legislative agenda

and not others.

When deciding what issues to prioritize, presidents must balance

their desire to get a new policy passed with the likelihood it will actually

be enacted by Congress. To overcome these challenges, we argue

presidents build their agendas around reliable legislative opportunities

(Edwards 2009) created by Congress’s internal lawmaking calendar and

the level of public demand for action in a policy area. Their focus on

specif‌ic legislative opportunities ensures their requests will receive con-

sideration while providing presidents additional bargaining advantages

over Congress.

To test our theory of legislative opportunities, we examine presi-

dential policy requests in 12 prominent issue areas from 1981 through

2008. We also consider two alternative hypotheses—that fulf‌illing

campaign promises and presidential capital dictates policy priorities. The

promise-keeping hypothesis claims presidents build their programs

around the pledges they made on the campaign trail. The presidential-

capital hypothesis proposes presidents expand their programs when they

are more popular, win a large electoral victory, or face a favorable

Congress. The f‌indings conf‌irm our hypotheses: expiring laws and issue

salience help determine when presidents focus their attention on a policy

area. Additionally, we f‌ind some evidence presidents emphasize cam-

paign promises in their legislative agendas, but presidential capital

does not signif‌icantly affect the content of the program. These results

indicate why presidential programs remain generally consistent in

their size and scope even as factors such as Congress’s composition

and presidential approval vary over time. Presidents act strategically

by focusing on legislation that Congress is likely to consider anyway,

establishing their position at the outset of legislative bargaining. In

this sense, the president can be described as a pragmatic opportunist

364 Jeremy Gelman, Gilad Wilkenfeld, and E. Scott Adler