¹ Mueller, John, ‘Presidential Popularity from Truman to Johnson’, American Political Science Review, 64 (1970), 18–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kernell, Samuel, ‘Explaining Presidential Popularity’, American Political Science Review, 72 (1978), 506–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Gilens, Martin, ‘Gender and Support for Reagan: A Comprehensive Model of Presidential Approval’, American Journal of Political Science, 32 (1988), 19–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

² Edwards, George, ‘Congressional Responsiveness to Public Opinion: The Case of Presidential Popularity’, in Luttbeg, Norman, ed., Public Opinion and Public Policy (Itasca, Illinois: Peacock Publishers, 1981), pp. 379–97.Google Scholar

³ But, for a study of the impact of the press on presidential popularity, see Brody, Richard and Page, Benjamin, ‘The Impact of Events on Presidential Popularity’, in Wildavsky, Aaron, ed., Perspectives on the Presidency (Boston: Little, Brown, 1975)Google Scholar. Also see Brody, Richard, ‘International Crises: A Rallying Point for the President’, Public Opinion, 6, no. 6 (1984), pp. 41–3, 60.Google Scholar

⁴ Mueller, , ‘Presidential Popularity from Truman to Johnson’Google Scholar; Kernell, , ‘Explaining Presidential Popularity’Google Scholar; MacKuen, Michael, ‘Political Drama, Economic Conditions, and the Dynamics of Presidential Popularity’, American Journal of Political Science, 27 (1983), 165–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁵ Ranney, Austin, Channels of Power (New York: Basic Books, 1983)Google Scholar; Grossman, Michael and Kumar, Martha, Portraying the President: The White House and the News Media (Baltimore, Md: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981)Google Scholar; Nimmo, Dan and Combs, James, Mediated Political Realities (New York: Longmans, 1983)Google Scholar; and Joslyn, Richard, Mass Media and Elections (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1984).Google Scholar

⁶ For an exception, see MacKuen, Michael, ‘Exposure to Information, Belief Integration, and Individual Responsiveness to Agenda Change’, American Political Science Review, 78 (1984), 372–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and also ‘Political Drama, Economic Conditions, and the Dynamics of Presidential Popularity’.

⁷ Robinson, Michael, ‘Public Affairs Television and the Growth of Political Malaise’, American Political Science Review, 70 (1976), 409–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁸ Graber, Doris, Mass Media and American Politics, 2nd edn (Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly, 1984).Google Scholar

⁹ The classic studies in the area include Lazarsfeld, Paul, Berelson, Bernard and Gaudet, Hazel, The People's Choice (New York: Columbia University Press, 1944)Google Scholar and Hovland, Carl, Lumsdaine, Arthur and Sheffield, Fred, Experiments on Mass Communication (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1949).Google Scholar

¹⁰ McLeod, J., Becker, L., and Byrnes, J., ‘Another Look at the Agenda-Setting Function of the Press’, Communication Research, 1 (1974), 131–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hofstetter, C. R. and Zukin, Cliff, ‘TV Network Political News and Advertising in the Nixon and McGovern Campaigns’, Journalism Quarterly, 56 (1979), 106–15, 52CrossRefGoogle Scholar; MacKuen, , ‘Exposure to Information, Belief Integration, and Individual Responsiveness to Agenda Change’Google Scholar; and Page, Benjamin, Shapiro, Robert and Dempsey, Glenn, ‘What Moves Public Opinion?’ American Political Science Review, 81 (1987), 23–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹¹ Iyengar, Shanto and Kinder, Donald, News That Matters: Television and American Opinion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987)Google Scholar; and Krosnick, Jon A. and Kinder, Donald R., ‘Altering the Foundations of Popular Support for the President Through Priming: Reagan and the Iran-Contra Affair’, American Political Science Review, 84 (1990), 497–512.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹² Brody, Richard and Shapiro, Catherine, ‘Policy Failure and Public Support’, Political Behavior, 11 (1989), 353–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also see their chapter, ‘A Reconsideration of the Rally Phenomenon in Public Opinion’, in Long, Samuel, ed., Political Behavior Annual, vol. 2 (Denver: Westview Press, 1989).Google Scholar

¹³ McGuire, William, ‘Persuasion, Resistance, and Attitude Change’, in de Sola Pool, Ithiel, ed., Handbook of Communication (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1973), pp. 216–52Google Scholar and ‘The Nature of Attitudes and Attitude Change’, in Lindzey, Gardner and Aronson, Elliot, eds, Handbook of Social Psychology, 2nd edn, vol. 3 (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1969), pp. 136–314.Google Scholar

¹⁴ There also were significant, albeit negative, correlations between television exposure and citizen assessments of Congress. In the September panel, the tau correlations were –0·10 (p < 0·05) for overall assessment and –0·13 (p < 0·001) when strength of opinion was measured.

¹⁵ Miller, Arthur, Goldenberg, Edie and Erbring, Lutz, ‘Type-Set Politics: Impact of Newspapers on Public Confidence’, American Political Science Review, 73 (1979), 67–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Erbring, Lutz, Goldenberg, Edie and Miller, Arthur, ‘Front-Page News and Real-World Cues: A New Look at Agenda-Setting by the Media’, American Journal of Political Science, 24 (1980), 16–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁶ Robinson, Michael and Sheehan, Margaret, Over the Wire and On TV (New York: Russell Sage, 1983), pp. 186–94.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Grossman, and Kumar, , Portraying the President: The White House and the News Media.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Iyengar, and Kinder, , News That Matters.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Stimson, James, ‘Political Support for American Presidents’, Public Opinion Quarterly, 40 (1976), 1–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁰ Some researchers have included measures of policy performance, i.e., approval ratings for inflation and the like, as factors used to explain overall job performance. However, my analysis indicates that these factors are interrelated and therefore conceptually not very distinct. A more reasonable strategy would be to incorporate citizen evaluations of economic performance overall, rather than a job performance rating of the economy. The latter is contaminated by feeling towards the president and therefore does not provide a clear indicator of economic views.

²¹ Bartels, Larry, ‘Expectations and Preferences in Presidential Nominating Campaigns’, American Political Science Review, 79 (1985), 804–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²² To test for the possibility of racial differences in media effects, this analysis was conducted first for the overall sample and then for whites only. The results were nearly identical and the figures reported here are based on the results for the overall sample.

²³ The items measuring citizen perceptions of presidential leadership in 1980 were ‘How well does strong leadership describe Carter as President?’ and in 1984 ‘How much would you say “provides strong leadership” fits your impression of Ronald Reagan: a great deal, somewhat, a little, or not at all?’ It may appear that perceptions of presidential leadership are highly colinear with approval. Therefore, to make sure that the television effects were not biased by this factor, I re-estimated the models without presidential leadership as an independent variable. The television effects were virtually the same as reported in this article.

²⁴ Questions used in 1980 to measure views about real-world economic and foreign policy events included ‘What about the economy? Would you say that over the past year the nation's economy has gotten better, stayed about the same, or gotten worse?’ and ‘Where would you place what the federal government is doing at the present time?’ (a seven-point scale question where I is that it is ‘important to try very hard to get along with Russia’ and 7 is that it is a ‘big mistake to try too hard to get along with Russia’). In 1984, the following terms were used: ‘Now, still talking about the country as a whole, would you say that over the past year the nation's economy has gotten better, stayed about the same, or gotten worse?’ and ‘During the past year, would you say that the United States’ position in the world has grown weaker, stayed about the same, or has it grown stronger?'

²⁵ Markus, Gregory, ‘Political Attitudes during an Election Year: A Report on the 1980 NES Panel Study’, American Political Science Review, 76 (1982), 538–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and MacKuen, Michael and Brown, Courtney, ‘Political Context and Attitude Change’, American Political Science Review, 81 (1987), 471–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁶ Kernell, , ‘Explaining Presidential Popularity’, pp. 515–16, 519–20.Google Scholar

²⁷ Kernell, Samuel, Going Public: New Strategies of Presidential Leadership (Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly Press, 1986), p. 1.Google Scholar

²⁸ Rose, Richard, The Postmodern President (Chatham, NJ: Chatham House Publishers, 1988)Google Scholar; and Barilleaux, Ryan, The Post-Modern Presidency (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1988).Google Scholar

²⁹ For a more general argument about constraints on the president, see Bond, Jon and Fleisher, Richard, The President in the legislative Arena (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990)Google Scholar; and Peterson, Mark, Legislating Together (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990).Google Scholar

³⁰ Brody and Shapiro point out that opinion leaders play a decisive role in public responses to policy failures, thereby compounding the consequences of problematic events themselves. See Brody and Shapiro, ‘Policy Failure and Public Support’.