When have presidents typically been most effective in influencing the American public?
One of the arguments I try to bring home is that presidents are rarely able to change mass opinion in a big way. Presidents always want to think that they can do this. You see this with the current president as well — he went out there with Social Security reform and thought he could shape public opinion. But the evidence, over time, is that voters are not that likely to change their opinions on policies simply because the president is promoting them, even when presidents are very popular. That’s a lesson that presidents find hard to learn. There are a couple big caveats. On foreign policy, where citizens have less knowledge and fewer fixed opinions, presidents have greater ability to shift people’s views (not to mention more freedom to act as they see fit). And on issues that are technical or on which the public debate is new, citizens may be more inclined to defer to a popular president. But “for the vast majority of domestic policies, voters have fairly well-formed preferences,” Can
