Overview

Going public to gain support, especially through reliance on national addresses and the national news media, has been a central tactic for modern presidential public leadership. In Going Local: Presidential Leadership in the Post-Broadcast Age, Jeffrey E. Cohen argues that presidents have adapted their going-public activities to reflect the current realities of polarized parties and fragmented media. Going public now entails presidential targeting of their party base, interest groups, and localities. Cohen focuses on localities and offers a theory of presidential news management that is tested using several new data sets, including the first large-scale content analysis of local newspaper coverage of the president. Although the post-broadcast age presents hurdles to presidential leadership, Going Local demonstrates the effectiveness of targeted presidential appeals and provides us with a refined understanding of the nature of presidential leadership.

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9780511807718

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Reviews

'Throughout the book, Cohen is exceptionally clear and straightforward. He consistently provides a clear foundation for his work and relates it to the appropriate prior research, and he makes all of his assumptions and methodological choices transparent to the reader.' Tim Groeling, Public Opinion Quarterly A timely analysis of how presidents have changed their leadership styles in response to developments in the media. This book will engage scholars and undergraduates alike. - Brandice Canes-Wrone, Princeton University In recent years Jeffrey Cohen has single-handedly kept political science research up to date with presidents' continuous strategic adaptations to rapidly changing mass communications technology. In Going Local Cohen demonstrates how presidents have responded to an increasingly fragmented media environment by targeting their public appeals to specific constituencies. - Samuel Kernell, University of California, San Diego With his usual skill, Jeffrey Cohen tackles an important topic in a detailed study that is sure to be read by pundits and scholars alike. As the political parties continue to fragment, and as presidents receive far greater scrutiny from the press, much of it negative, the public seems to be paying less attention. Presidents have responded by taking their message to more select audiences. Cohen's book is a masterful treatise on how this new political dynamic is reshaping the presidency. It is must-reading. - Richard Waterman, University of Kentucky Going Local makes an important contribution to the literature on how presidents seek to build support in the public. Cohen's argument updates Kernell's `going public' hypothesis for a world in which the mass media and the political parties have changed. This is an important aspect of presidential leadership, and Cohen's research will be of interest to scholars in political science and communications, as well as to general readers. - M. Stephen Weatherford, University of California, Santa Barbara

'Throughout the book, Cohen is exceptionally clear and straightforward. He consistently provides a clear foundation for his work and relates it to the appropriate prior research, and he makes all of his assumptions and methodological choices transparent to the reader.' Tim Groeling, Public Opinion Quarterly

Author Information

Jeffrey E. Cohen is Professor of Political Science at Fordham University and Visiting Senior Research Scholar at the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University. He is the author of 11 books and monographs - including The Presidency in an Era of 24-Hour News - and more than 50 journal articles. Professor Cohen's areas of interest focus on American politics, especially the presidency and public policy.

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