Changing Public Opinion Is Not Sufficie

Changing public opinion is not sufficient, and the president wants the public to communicate its views directly to Congress. Mobilizing the public has its pros and cons, getting opinion support and political action from people who are passionate and also inattentive about politics are just a few.
The president can use the public to sway Congress. A good example of this is Reagan’s effort to get passage on his tax-cut bill in 1981. He sent out a televised plea asking the people to let their representatives in Congress how they felt. Reagan used the public repeatedly throughout the rest of his presidency.
The press is the principal intermediary between the president and the public. Relations with the press are an important aspect of the president’s efforts to lead public opinion. Because of the importance of the press to the president, the White House monitors the media closely. About one-third of the high-level White House staff members are directly involved in media relations and policy of one type or another, and most staff members are involved at some time in trying to influence the media’s portrayal of the president. Presidents and their staffs can anticipate most of the questions that will be asked and prepare answers to them ahead of time, reducing the spontaneity of the sessions.
Bias is the most politically charged issue in relations between the president and the press. To say that the news contains little explicitly partisan or ideological bias is not to argue that the news does not distort reality in its coverage of the president. The press prefers to frame the news in themes to simplify complex issues and events and to connect person, institutions, and issues.
News coverage of the presidency often tends to emphasize the negative. An example of this is when the story of Clinton’s affair broke regarding his affair with Monica Lewinsky. The desire to keep the public interested and the need for continuous coverage may create in the press a subconscious bias against the presidency that leads to negative stories.
On the other hand, the president has certain advantages in dealing with the press. The White House can largely control the environment in which the president meets the press.
Because the presidency is the single most important office in American politics, there has always been concern about whether the president is a threat to democracy. From the time the Constitution was written, there has been a fear that the presidency would degenerate into a monarchy or a dictatorship. Despite George Washington’s well-deserved reputation for peacefully relinquishing power, he also had certain regal tendencies that fanned the suspicions of the Jeffersonians. Concerns over presidential power are generally closely related to policy views. The Madisonian system of checks and balances remains intact. More potentially important legislation fails to pass under divided government than when one party controls both the presidency and Congress. It has been the president more often the Congress who has said “no” to government growth.