University of Chicago Press Southern Political Science Association

University of Chicago Press
Southern Political Science Association
The Honeymoon's Over: The News Conference and the Development of Presidential Style
Author(s): Jarol B. Manheim
Source: The Journal of Politics, Vol. 41, No. 1 (Feb., 1979), pp. 55-74
Published by: University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Southern Political Science
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The Honeymoon'sOver:
TheNewsConference
and theDevelopmentof
PresidentialStyle
JAROL B. MANHEIM
Press: Thankyou, Mr. President.

President (Johnson): Did you get your fifteen
or twenty questions?
Press: If you have some answerswe don'thave
questionsfor ...
President: I don't want any of you to feel left
out.
Press: We think you do very well.
From the News Conference of July 18, 1964
Press: Thankyou, Mr. President.

Press: But, Mr. President,we have more ques-
tions.
President (Johnson): rm sure that would be
true if I stayed here all day.
From the News Conference of October 3, 1964
ALTHOUGH PRESIDENTIAL NEWS CONFERENCES had been the subject

of some scholarly inquiry earlier,' the presidency of John F. Kennedy
* The author wishes to acknowledge the assistance of BarbaraL. Romberger,
James Woolford, Lew Sanford, and Paul Hille in developing ideas and gather-
ing data for this analysis. The research was funded by a grant from the De-
partment of Political Science, VPI and SU.
I See, for example, J. E. Pollard, "White House News Conference as a
Channel of Communication," Public Opinion Quarterly 15 (1951), 663-78;
56 THE JOURNAL OF POLITICS, VOL. 41, 1979
and the concomitant advent of live television coverage of such

events in the early 1960s brought with them both significant sub-
stantive changes in the nature of the news conference (most notably
the forging of a direct communications link between the president
and the public) and a renewed interest in what one author has
termed "democracy's confrontation."2 As a result, during the middle
of the decade researchers developed a limited but nevertheless ex-
panded body of knowledge in this area. Probably the most notable
work of the period was that of Cornwell, who, in a series of articles
begun in the late 1950s,3 and later in his book Presidential Leader-
ship of Public Opinion,4 surveyed the development of the White
House public relations function from the administration of Theodore
Roosevelt forward. Cornwell's discussions, though generally de-
scriptive, impressionistic, and lacking in hard comparisons of presi-
dential style or news conference format, have proven of considerable
value in placing the public relations activities of the various chief
executives in temporal context and in giving to later researchers a
sense of the changing nature of the relationship between reporters
and the president. Others, notably Bogardus,s Lorenz,6 and more
recently, Moynihan,7 Blair,' and Reedy,9 have examined the news
conference from similar perspectives.
During the same period, other scholars began the development of
and Elmer E. Cornwell, Jr., "Coolidge and Presidential Leadership: The Press
Conference," Public Opinion Quarterly 21 (1957), 270-4.
2 Delbert MeCuire, "Democracy's Confrontation, I: The Presidential Press
Conference,"JournalismQuarterly44 (1967), 638-44.

3 Cornwell, "Coolidge;"Elmer E. Cornwell, Jr., "The PresidentialPress Con-
ference: A Study in Institutionalization,"Midwest Journalof Political Science
4 (1960), 370-389; Elmer E. Cornwell, Jr., "The Press Conferencesof Woodrow
Wilson," Journalismn Quarterly 39 (1962); and Elmer E. Cornwell, Jr., "The
Johnson Press Relations Style," JournalismQuarterly43 (1966), 3-9.
4 Elmer E. Cornwell, Jr., Presidential Leadership of Public Opinion (Bloom-
ington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1965).
5 Emory S. Bogardus, "Sociology of Presidential TV Press Conferences,"
Sociology and Social Research 46 (1962), 181-5.
6 A. L. Lorenz, Jr., "Trumanand the Press Conference,"JournalismQuarterly
43 (1966), 671-9.
7 Daniel P. Moynihan, "The Presidency and the Press," Commentary 51
(1971), 41-52.
8 J. L. Blair, "Coolidge the Image Maker: The President and the Press
1923-1929," New England Quarterly 46 (1973), 499-522.
9 George E. Reedy, "The President and the Press: Struggle for Dominance,"
The Annals 427 (1976), 65-72.
THE NEWS CONFERENCE AND PRESIDENTIAL STYLE 57
a more rigorously empirical assessment of the presidential news

conference. Sanders, for example, conducted a content analysis of
the first six Kennedy news conferences in which he developed
some preliminary notions of agenda structure and control,10 while
McGuire, using both survey and content analysis techniques, began
to explore the attitudes of participants in the news conference (both
reporters and officials) as well as certain structural characteristics
of the conference itself."
Toward the end of the 1960s, however, interest in the presidential
news conference per se appears to have waned. Dunn,12 Sigal,18
and others have made use of the earlier research in their more gen-
eral analyses of the press-public official relationship, and inquiry in
other areas has resulted in the development of methodologies ap-
plicable to the study of the news conference.'4 But the investiga-
tion of the news conference itself has slowed appreciably. As a re-
sult, many questions, among them perhaps the most interesting,
have been left unanswered. It is the purpose of the present article
to explore some of those questions.
ANALYSIS OF NEWS CONFERENCES
Aside from discussions of secular trends in the development of

news conference formats from one administration to the next, the
literature on presidential press relations has focused relatively little
attention on the systematic development of the chief executive's
relationship with reporters within administrations. Rather, the em-
phasis has been on a comparison of style between presidents. Yet
because they constitute a forum in which the president both de-
velops and exercises his style of leading public opinion, and be-
cause they constitute a relatively consistent long-term source of
quantifiable data on the presidency, news conferences provide us
10 Luther W. Sanders, "A Content Analysis of President Kennedy's First Six
Press Conferences,"JournalismQuarterly42 (1965), 114-5.
11McGuire, op. cit.; and Delbert McGuire, "Democracy's Confrontation,II:
The Presidential Press Conference,"Joumalism Quarterly 45 (1968), 31-41.
12 Delmer D. Dunn, Public Officialsand the Press, (Reading, Mass.: Addison-
Wesley, 1969).
13 Leon V. Sigal, Reporters and Officials: The Organizationand Politics of
Newsmaking (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath, 1973).
14 See, for example, Robert Shelby Frank, 1973. Linguistic Analysis of
Political Elites: A Theory of Verbal Kinesics, Sage Professional Papers in In-
ternational Studies 2, 02-022.
with an opportunity to seek out significant consistencies in the be-

havioral characteristics attendant not only on particular incumbents,
but on the office of the presidency itself. The study of the news
conference may thus lead to conclusions about presidential behavior
which may be generalized across administrations.
In large measure, students of the presidential news conference
appear to have overlooked this potential. Only in the case of the
so-called "honeymoon period," in fact, a period of some two months
or so at the beginning of each new administration generally char-
acterized by a minimum of hostile and probing questions by report-
ers and by a relatively gentle treatment of the new president in the
news media, have most scholars found any regularities of behavior
worthy of note, and even here the supportive evidence has been
largely impressionistic.15 Indeed, many simply assume the existence
of the honeymoon phenomenon without offering any evidence at all.
In the present analysis we shall test this assumption by looking more
closely at the collective news conference behavior of four presi-
dents: Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and Ford. We shall provide
evidence that a shift in news conference behavior does take place
after the second month in office, though not necessarily in the direc-
tion nor even along the dimensions generally assumed, and shall
assess the significance of these findings both for what they tell us
about the presidential news conference, and for what they suggest
about the nature of the presidency as well.
To this end, a stratified random sample of 164 transcripts of presi-
dential news conferences covering the period from January 25, 1961
through December 31, 1975 has been selected for analysis. In-
cluded in the sample are 14 conferences from the "honeymoon"
period (100%o of all news conferences held during the first two
months of the various administrations), and 150 conferences from
later periods. The population sampled consisted of 247 full tran-
scripts of presidential news conferences published in the Congres-
sional Quarterly Weekly Report during this fifteen year period. The
sample thus represents approximately 66% of the population. In
all, the study examined 48 news conferences of President Kennedy,
76 of President Johnson, 24 of President Nixon, and 16 of President
15 Probably the most interesting recent treatment of the honeymoon period
may be found in Elmer E. Cornwell, Jr., "The President and the Press: Phases
in the Relationship," The Annals 427 (1976), 53-64. Cornwell, however,
draws upon public opinion polls to support his arguments rather than on any
direct indicators of the relationshipbetween the parties to the interaction.
Ford, each roughly proportionate to that president's share of the

overall population of conferences. The starting date of January 25,
1961 corresponds both with the first news conference held by Presi-
dent Kennedy and with the first such event to be broadcast live by
television as well.
A "news conference" has been defined as a meeting between the
president and reporters where questions and answers are exchanged
and a written transcript is maintained.16 Using each question and
answer combination within the news conference as the primary unit
of analysis, coders determined the frequencies of occurrence of such
characteristics as press hostility; apparent efforts at agenda control
by the president; the effectiveness of those efforts; the president's
references to action, responsibility, and the future; and certain
other elements of presidential style.17 For purpose of comparison,
these data were then aggregated at the level of the individual news
conference in the form of proportions of the questions or answers
at each conference which were found to display the characteristics
under consideration. With the exceptions of the graphs in Figures
1 and 2, which are based on question-answer pairs aggregated by
time period, the analysis below is based upon these proportions."'
16 McGuire, "Democracy'sConfrontation,I," 639.

17 Intercoder reliabilities for these indicators, as measured by the quantity
(1-q T2), where q 2 is the variance in each measured variable exDlainedby the
differences among coders, ranged from .78 for the variable "action orientation"
to .998 for the variable" statement/answer ratio," with all but three variables
showing reliabilities above .90. All news conferences were randomly assigned
to coders to minimize the potential impact of systematic intercoder variation.
18 Much of the analysis that follows is based on a comparisonof the first two
months of the various presidencies with all subsequent periods, with any ob-
served differences generally being attributed to the so-called "honeymoon."
Two alternative explanations for the variation noted in these data have been
considered and rejected. First, it is possible that presidential style may vary
cyclically so that the first two months of each year in office differ systemati-
cally from all subsequent months of the same year. A comparison of news
conferences from months 13 and 14 of each of the four administrationsin
question with those from months 1 and 2, however, offered little support for
this hypothesis. Similarly,presidentialstyle may be expected to vary somewhat
in response to regularly occuring external events, most notably those on the
congressional calendar. Of the four administrationsincluded in the present
analysis, however, only two commenced at the normal time (Kennedy and
Nixon took office in January at the start of a new Congress, Johnson in No-
vember toward the end of the first half of a congressional term, and Ford in
August just prior to a congressional election), so any such calendar-specific
FINDINGS
The results of this analysis may be summarized as follows.

1) The Role of the Press: Establishing a Working Relationship.
In general, as noted above, the honeymoon period is defined as a
temporal characteristic of journalistic behavior, a time when certain
kinds of questions are less likely to be raised than might be the case
later, and a period when accommodation and good fellowship pre-
dominate.19 Thus if one accepts the traditional notions about the
earliest months of a presidency, he might well expect, among other
things, that news conferences held during this period would be
characterized by relatively low levels of hostility on the part of the
press. Interestingly, however, the present data lead to a rather
different conclusion.
For purposes of analysis, a "hostile" question has been defined
as one which tends to accentuate such negative factors as sensitive
subjects, revelations, credibility problems, or inconsistencies. The
number of such questions has been tallied for each news conference
in the sample. These data reveal a shift in the proportion of news
conferences in which one or more hostile questions are posed from
the honeymoon to the post-honeymoon period, but a shift that runs
precisely opposite to the direction one might expect. Some 29%
of all honeymoon conferences included at least one hostile question,
while only 19%7oof those post-honeymoon conferences sampled
could be so characterized. When examined more closely, the data
show that immediately following the honeymoon months the pro-
portion of news conferences at which some hostile questions are
asked drops to the post-honeymoon level, and that this lower level
of hostility is subsequently maintained rather consistently. Al-
though the magnitude of this shift is not overwhelming, its direc-
tion is most revealing. Presidents, it would seem, generally face
more hostile questions during the first two months of their respective
administrations than at later times. One should also note, however,
that on only two occasions during the entire fifteen years in question
systematic relationshipswhich might be expected to be of consequence in the

long run do not appear to bear significantly upon the present data.
19Michael B. Grossmanand Martha Joynt Kumarhave appropriatelytermed
these months a "period of alliance." See "White House Press Operations and
the News Media: The Phases of a Continuing Relationship,"paper delivered
at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washing-
ton, D. C., September 1-4, 1977.
did the number of hostile questions posed by reporters at any con-

ference coded ever exceed three. In a sense, then, for most presi-
dents the honeymoon may never end.
A second element of reportorial questioning behavior, the par-
ticular topics on which reporters choose to ask questions, is similarly
revealing. For each news conference a count was made of the num-
ber of questions pertaining to the conduct of domestic politics (as
distinct from the making or implementation of foreign or domestic
policy). Included were references to personalities, parties, elec-
tions, public opinion, and the like. Such questions may represent
attempts by reporters to test the president in his role as political
leader, attempts which may be expected to increase in number as
the "silent partnership" of the honeymoon period is dissolved.20
Here, as expected, the data show that relatively fewer news confer-
ences have focused extensively on these political questions during
the first months of an administration (the shift actually comes after
the fourth month) than have done so later. During the honeymoon
period, roughly one-fifth of all conferences were characterized by a
significant emphasis on politics (defined as more than 10% of all
questions asked), while during the post-honeymoon period as many
as one-third of all conferences coded were so characterized. In-
deed, when the data were examined on the basis of question-answer
pairs aggregated by four month periods independent of individual
news conferences, they reflected a three-fold increase in the propor-
tion of "political" questions asked from the first to the last third of
the first year of an administration, with this increase followed by
a subsequent decline to lower levels. Thus it would seem that
political questions become increasingly common during the post-
honeymoon portion of a president's first year, then more concen-
trated into particular news conferences in subsequent years.
One other aspect of reporters' questioning behavior merits atten-
tion in this context: the willingness of newspersons to follow a presi-
dent's lead in the selection of question topics. Here the data show
that in 46% of the honeymoon news conferences a minimum of
twenty percent of all questions posed by reporters pertained to
issues which had first been raised by the president himself in his
opening statement. The comparable figure for the post-honeymoon
period is only 30% of all conferences coded. Thus reporters appear
to be significantly more willing to follow the president's guidance,
20 Ibid., especially 24f.
or at least more likely to concur in his judgment, as to the appro-

priate selection of topics at particular news conferences during the
early months of an administration than is the case later.
Piecing this evidence together, one is led to at least two tentative
conclusions. First and most generally, it seems clear that reporters
use the honeymoon period to test the new president and their re-
lationship with him, but do so within certain widely accepted limits.
Both the style and the substance of their questions change markedly
after the first months of a new administration have passed. Second,
and relating more specifically to the observed direction of change in
the levels of hostile questioning, one is tempted to speculate that,
sensitized as they themselves are to the notion of a presidential
honeymoon and jealous of their own credibility, reporters may
actually overcompensate during the honeymoon period, asking more
rather than fewer probing questions, precisely because they know
their behavior is being observed. Although the present data do not
speak to this motivational interpretation directly, they certainly do
lend to it some credence. In either event, it is evident that the
relationship between president and reporters undergoes systematic
change with the passage of time.
2) The Role of the President: Setting the Agenda. Although
current notions of the presidential honeymoon period focus largely
on the role of the press in defining its relationship with the presi-
dent, it would seem reasonable to argue that the role of the presi-
dent himself in this definitional process may be of equal or even
greater importance. Indeed, the notion of a "honeymoon" may be
even more meaningful in this context. For the first few months of
a new administration are a period of testing and learning, a period
of development, not only for a press corps trying to learn what it
can about the leader of the nation, but for the president as well.
It is a truism of American politics that the only training for a Presi-
dent of the United States is "on-the-job" training. That being the
case, one might expect a president to require some time to learn
the ropes, or in other words, to undergo in-role socialization, with
regard to his relationship with the press as with regard to other
aspects of his job. Thus it would seem appropriate to examine
changes through time not only in the behavior of the press vis-a-vis
the president, but in the behavior of the president vis-a-vis the press.
In the present research several areas of presidential behavior have
been identified which do appear to reflect the operation of a role-
socializing process, albeit one which extends in some instances for

substantially longer than the two month period generally noted.
The first such area is that of agenda control. In general, and
most particularly since the advent of live television coverage, the
presidential news conference may be characterized less as an ex-
ercise in responsive two-way communication between leader and
followers than as an exercise in the purposeful manipulation of
images and symbols by the various presidents. Settings have been
selected for their effect on the questioners and/or viewers, questions
have been planted to give a president the opportunity to demon-
strate his ability to deal with complex issues "spontaneously,"
particular reporters known either for their ideology or their incom-
petence have been called upon so that the president might control
the mood of the conference, and presidents have been briefed ex-
tensively not only on what questions to expect, but on how best to
phrase a response. The presidential news conference, in other
words, has increasingly become a "media event."21
For present purposes we have identified three measures of po-
tential agenda control by a president including (1) the average
number of words per answer to reporters' questions (with longer
answers presumably representing attempts at agenda control both
by minimizing the number of questions than can be asked in a fixed
period of time and by maximizing the president's share of the time
alotted for the news conference), (2) the ratio of the number of
words in a president's opening statement22 to the total number of
words in his answers (an indicator of the relative length of the
opening statement with longer statements, i.e., higher ratios, taken
as attempts at agenda control), and (3) the proportion of answers
to the questions asked at a given news conference which have been
classified as evasive or indirect (including answers which do not
deal directly with a question though they may treat with the issue
at hand, those which indicate the question is not relevant, repeti-
tion of a previous answer, or outright refusal to respond).
As reflected in Table 1, the evidence of differential pattems of
agenda control by the president during the honeymoon and post-
honeymoon periods is somewhat mixed. The two measures of
21Comwell, Presidential Leadership,passim, but especially the later chapters.

22Some 80%oof the news conferences coded began with opening remarks
by the president.
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THE NEWS CONFERENCE AND PRESIENTIAL STYLE 65
quantitative tactics of agenda control, the proportion of news con-

ferences dominated by relatively lengthy answers and the propor-
tion of conferences in which the president makes a relatively lengthy
opening statement, remain more or less constant from one period
to the next. Thus to the extent that presidents may attempt to con-
trol the agenda of the news conference simply by talking, and the
data reported in Table 1 suggest that this may be a significant pro-
portion of the time, they do so equally during and after the honey-
moon period.
As the third item reported in the table suggests, however, that
may be less true of what they say. This item, the proportion of
conferences characterized by various levels of evasive or indirect
answers, provides a measure of more qualitative attempts at agenda
control. Here we find that the proportion of conferences character-
ized by relatively frequent evasions and indirect responses increases
during the immediate post-honeymoon period to levels which are
maintained in the longer run. In other words, as the honeymoon
period ends, a president comes to place greater emphasis on con-
trolling the flow of information by talking just as much but saying
less, or at least by speaking less forthrightly. While his control over
the questions posed by reporters remains at best indirect, the sub-
stance of his answers to those questions, it would seem, becomes
increasingly subject to manipulation.
One additional and related tactic with the potential for agenda
control is varying the frequency with which news conferences are
held. Indeed, during the honeymoon period, the president has met
with reporters an average of 1.9 times each month, or once every
16 days. But in subsequent months he has met with reporters an
average of 1.4 times, or once every 22 days. This means that in
later periods almost 50% more ground must be covered on average
in the time available for the news conference (seldom more than 30
minutes, occasionally less) than is the case during the honeymoon
period. Reporters are thus much more constrained as to both the
depth and the breadth of the questioning they may undertake after
the honeymoon period. In effect, the president controls the agenda
simply by limiting the reporters' access to him.
The effectiveness of these various efforts at agenda control is sug-
gested by the data summarized in Figure 1.23 Here the results of
23 Because all four-monthperiods are of equal importancein Figures 1 and 2,
the data reported in these figures are based on a simple random sample of 159
news conferences from all time periods. In effect, 5 honeymoon period news
66 TH JOURNAL OF POLMTICS, VOL. 41, 1979
FIGURE 1
EFFORTS AT AND EFFECTIVENESS OF AGENDA CONTROL AT PRESIDENTIAL NEWS

CONFERENCES, 1961-1975
35%
30%
25%1 ~
20%
cl
JI
15 clo ,
10% / %
5%O "E
0% _
4 8 12 16 20 24 28 32 36
Months in Office
Percentage of Presidential Responses Judged to be Evasive or Indirect
----- Percentage of Reporters' Questions Judged to be Agenda-Related
N = 159. For details please see Footnote 23.
the content analysis have been aggregated in four month periods to

to summarize the characteristics of questions and answers indepen-
conferences, which have been included elsewhere under the stratificationpro-

cedure in order to maximize the number of cases for comparison, have been
excluded here. Only data from the first three years of each administrationhave
been reported since only two of the presidents on whose behavior data have
been collected served longer and since, partly as a consequence, the number
of cases sampled from later periods was sharply lower.
dent of particular news conferences. The solid line in Figure 1

represents the proportion of all presidential responses for a given
four month period which were judged by coders to be evasive or
indirect. The dotted line represents the proportion of all reporters'
questions which were judged to be related to the president's agenda
as set forth in his opening statement. As is readily apparent, both
lines follow a roughly similar course, with a slight decline during
the first year of a given administration, a sharper increase during
the second year, and a decline during the third. The correlation
coefficient (r) for this relationship, based on four month intervals,
is .43. To the extent that the effectiveness of efforts at agenda con-
trol is measured by the propensity of reporters to focus on topics
initiated by the president himself, then, it would seem that those
efforts are, in fact, at least partially rewarded.
3) The Context: The Development.of a Presidential Perspective.
If, as the evidence reported so far suggests, some of the president's
apparent efforts at agenda control vary systematically between the
honeymoon and post-honeymoon periods, so, too, might other of his
behaviors. Indeed, the present data provide some evidence sup-
portive of this assertion with regard to the president's action orienta-
tion, his future orientation, and his acceptance of the responsibility
for governmental action. Table 2, for example, reports the percent-
ages of news conferences characterized by varying proportions of
action-oriented responses given by a president (exclusive of opening
statements) where action orientation includes specific references to
past, present, or future policy actions or intentions. The table
indicates a substantial decline in the proportion of news conferences
dominated by presidential action references (where dominance is
defined as 30% or more of all responses), and an increase in the
proportion of conferences where such references are few. The
immediate post-honeymoon shift is actually understated here, for
during months three and four action-dominated conferences num-
bered fewer than iWco, rebounding to the long term post-honeymoon
level only toward the end of the first year. Thus the president
seems considerably more likely to reference policy action during
his so-called honeymoon than afterward.
In the remainder of Table 2, the president's action references are
further categorized as pertaining to actions of the president himself,
the government, or some other collectivity which clearly included
the president (termed "first person references"), or alternatively,
actions of others, most notably those of Congress, which clearly ex-
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cluded the president (termed "third person references"). The two

items overlap to some extent since double coding was permitted.
These data suggest little change in the relative importance of third
person references through time, but do show a marked shift toward
higher levels of first person references during the post-honeymoon
period. In fact, over the long run, just under half of all conferences
with any action references were characterized by the exclusive use
of first person references. Thus it would appear that the president
comes to believe quite early in his term that he is quite literally the
nation's first citizen.
Yet during this period of socialization the president learns some-
thing about the constraints under which he operates as well. Ref-
erences to conflict or cooperation with Congress are a case in point.
Although references of any sort to Congress never reach particularly
high levels at any time, some change in the pattern of references
through time is evident. In some 36% of presidential news con-
ferences held during the honeymoon period, at least ten percent of
all presidential responses to reporters' queries have included some
reference to cooperation with Congress. In the post-honeymoon
period, however, only 15%oof all conferences coded may be so
characterized. Similarly, in no honeymoon period news conference
did a president include references to conflict with Congress in as
many as ten percent or more of his answers to questions. In con-
trast, 115%of those post-honeymoon conferences coded included
at least this level of conflict references. Indeed, during the later
months of the first year in office this proportion reached roughly
20%oof news conferences before declining to longer term levels.
What we see, in other words, is evidence of the rapid development
of an adversary relationship between each president and the Con-
gress, but one in which overt conflict is increasingly muted after
the first year. Figure 2 illustrates this process quite clearly.
The graph in Figure 2 reports the ratio for each given four month
period of cooperative references to Congress versus conflictual ref-
erences to Congress by the various presidents. Three elements of
the graph are worthy of note. First, the relatively high ratio of co-
perative to conffictual responses during the first four months of the
presidency is never again attained during the three years for which
reliable data are available. Since this period roughly corresponds
with the so-called honeymoon, the figure provides further evidence
for the existence of a period of grace not only for the president, but
by him as well. Second, the sharp decline in the cooperation/
70 OF POLITICS, VOL.41, 1979
THEJOURNAL
FIGURE2
RATIO OF COOPERATIVE TO CONFLICTUAL REFERENCES TO CONGRESS IN
RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS AT PRESIDENTIAL NEWS CONFERENCES,
1961-1975
Ratio
2.5
2.0
1.5
1.0
0.5
0
4 8 12 16 20 24 28 32 36
Months in Office
N = 159. For details please see Footnote 23.
conflict ratio during the remainder of the first year suggests, as did
the data reported above, that the honeymoon ends rather abruptly.
Since it is generally during this period that a president first has real
dealings with the Congress, these data would tend to support the
notion that during the honeymoon period or shortly afterward the
president quickly discovers the limits of his power. Third, it is
interesting to note that after reaching a low point at the end of the
first year, the cooperation-conflict ratio begins a secular climb dur-
ing the subsequent period which, despite some interruptions, does
re-establish the dominance of cooperative references over conflictual
ones. One is tempted to argue, based on this notable rebound,
either that the president may reach some accommodation with the
Congress after his first year in office or that, at the very least, he
learns the value of public statements that imply cooperation, but the
present data do not permit us to carry this point beyond the realm
of speculation.
Yet another, and perhaps more direct, indicator of the president's
discovery of the limits of his power is his own fixing of the locus
of responsibility for the actions of government. Accordingly, each
presidential response was coded as to whether and where it fixed
this responsibility. Of those news conferences held during the
honeymoon period, one in seven (14%o) was characterized by fifty
percent or more of all presidential responses citing first person re-
sponsibility, while some 22% were characterized by ten percent or
fewer such references. In contrast, only one in a hundred (1%o) of
all post-honeymoon conferences had as many as fifty percent of
responses citing first person responsibility, while almost half (46%o)
were characterized by ten percent or fewer such references. Presi-
dents, in other words, have become much less assertive of their
personal responsibility for governmental action as they have moved
into the post-honeymoon period. Together with the evidence de-
veloped above, this suggests, to the extent that such perceptions
are reflected in his news conference behavior, that a president may
learn two important lessons during his period of in-role socializa-
tion: first that he occupies a very powerful position, and second
that his power is not independent of the actions and powers of
others.24 It is this learning process which may give true meaning
to the concept of a presidential "honeymoon."
4) The Future Is Now. Finally, the present data permit us to
examine one additional question which is at the very least indirectly
related to the issues raised above, and which may help us put a
number of our earlier findings in perspective. That question per-
tains to changes through time in the degree to which a president
may be said to be oriented toward the future, and more particularly,
in the relative frequency with which a president cites plans for the
future. As summarized in Table 3, these data indicate, as one
might expect, that a president spends relatively more time dealing
with the future at his early news conferences than he does at later
ones. One obvious explanation for this observation, of course, is that
with the passage of time the future becomes the present. But such
an explanation would seem to predict a gradual decline through
24 See, for example, Erwin C. Hargrove, The Power of the Modem Presidency
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1974), chapters 7-8.
TABLE 3
PATrERNSOF FUrrUREORIENTATION
IN RESPONSESTO QUESTIONSAT
1961-1975
PRESIENTIAL NEWS CONFERENCES,
Proportion of News
Conferences with
I% Responses
with Future
Time Period N References
<29 >30
Honeymoon 14 29% 71%

Post-Honeymoon 150 66 34
G -.67
time in future references to especially low levels. What the data

show instead, however, is a relatively sharp drop after the first four
to six months of a presidency to longer term levels which are then
maintained. One is thus led to the alternative conclusion that shifts
in the president's future orientation, coinciding as they do with
changes in his action orientation and his assertions of the locus of
responsibility, may be indicative of his increasing disillusionment
and decreasing sense of efficacy, and may provide still further
evidence of the president's learning to recognize the constraints
within which he works.
CONCLUSION
Two conclusions emerge from this analysis. First, it is evident

that the task of dealing with the news media represents for the
president, particularly during the first few months in office, a proc-
ess of testing and discovery, a period of opportunity and challenge,
from which there emerges a relatively consistent set of behaviors.
During this developmental period presidents tend to experiment
with different approaches to agenda control, to become decreasingly
assertive of both their intent and their accountability, and more
generally to revise their manner of treating with journalists and,
through them, with the larger public.25
25 For an analysis relating to this final point see
Timothy R. Haight and
Richard A. Brody, "The Mass Media and Presidential Popularity: Presidential
This apparent development of presidential style in situs is especi-

ally revealing since no modern president has come to that office
without having had extensive prior dealings with representatives of
the news media, either while holding previous office or at least dur-
ing the period of his election campaign. Indeed, successful political
campaigning today, especially for so high an office, virtually requires
of the non-incumbent candidate an extended period of news con-
ferences, interviews, media events, and the like. Yet here we find
that even after so extensive a training period the perceived demands
or capabilities of the presidential office require a further systematic
revision of style. In part, of course, this is attributable to a change
in purpose, from self-promotion to effective leadership, but in point
of fact the differential requirements of the two roles are few, and
the lessons learned in fulfilling the first should readily apply to the
second. One is thus led to the conclusion that it is the context of
presidential relations with the press, that of the presidency itself,
that makes the difference. One aspect of learning to be president,
it would seem, is learning to deal with the press in a "presidential"
manner.
In addition, the present data suggest, though perhaps less directly,
that there is taking place within the American presidency, at least
during the early years of an administration, a more general process
of in-role socialization. During this period, ra,rying variously from
two months to a year or more, the perspective of the president as
reflected in his news conferences changes markedly. He becomes
generally less oriented toward action but more self-reliant as he
ascertains the strengths of his position. He becomes less assertive
of his own responsibility as he learns its limitations. He becomes
less interested in cooperation with Congress, and for a time late in
his first year more openly antagonistic, as he comes to recognize the
dynamics of the separation of powers. He becomes less concerned
with the future, and, as suggested by additional data from the
present study which have not been reported above, shifts his in-
terests somewhat from the arena of domestic policy, where symbols
of conflict and division prevail, to that of foreign policy, where
unifying symbols are more common. The evidence suggests, in
other words, that the concept of a presidential "style" in dealing
with the news media, reflecting as it appears to even the most basic
Broadcasting and News in the Nixon Administration,"CommunicationResearch

4 (1977), 41-60.
perceptions of presidential prerogatives, is far more meaningful than

the simple public relations sense with which the term is frequently
equated.
To a significant extent, of course, these conclusions represent an
extrapolation from the data presented here, one based on the as-
sumption, at present not tested, that changes in the interests and
perceptions of the president are more or less accurately reflected in
his news conference behavior. The substantial temporal consistency
of the data, as well as other elements of the literature on the
American presidency, lend considerable credence to this assump-
tion. After all, one of the most important dimensions of presidential
leadership is the forging of a communications link between the
leader of the nation and his followers, and the news conference has
become one of the major instruments used by modern presidents
to this end. Thus it would seem reasonable to expect the news con-
ference to reflect the president's mood and goals, or at least those
he would wish to project, at the time the conference is held. But
even if this assumption were to be discarded, the data presented
here do suggest that systematic changes in fact occur in the manner
in which the president presents himself to the news media. To the
extent that such changes are reflected in the information about the
president which is then disseminated by those media, public per-
ceptions of both the man and the office may change as well.

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Press: Thankyou, Mr. President.

Press: Thankyou, Mr. President.

ALTHOUGH PRESIDENTIAL NEWS CONFERENCES had been the subject

and the concomitant advent of live television coverage of such

Conference,"JournalismQuarterly44 (1967), 638-44.

a more rigorously empirical assessment of the presidential news

ANALYSIS OF NEWS CONFERENCES

Aside from discussions of secular trends in the development of

with an opportunity to seek out significant consistencies in the be-

Ford, each roughly proportionate to that president's share of the

16 McGuire, "Democracy'sConfrontation,I," 639.

The results of this analysis may be summarized as follows.

systematic relationshipswhich might be expected to be of consequence in the

did the number of hostile questions posed by reporters at any con-

20 Ibid., especially 24f.

or at least more likely to concur in his judgment, as to the appro-

socializing process, albeit one which extends in some instances for

21Comwell, Presidential Leadership,passim, but especially the later chapters.

C.) Q.) >

quantitative tactics of agenda control, the proportion of news con-

EFFORTS AT AND EFFECTIVENESS OF AGENDA CONTROL AT PRESIDENTIAL NEWS

the content analysis have been aggregated in four month periods to

conferences, which have been included elsewhere under the stratificationpro-

dent of particular news conferences. The solid line in Figure 1

cluded the president (termed "third person references"). The two

(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1974), chapters 7-8.

Honeymoon 14 29% 71%

time in future references to especially low levels. What the data

Two conclusions emerge from this analysis. First, it is evident

This apparent development of presidential style in situs is especi-

Broadcasting and News in the Nixon Administration,"CommunicationResearch

perceptions of presidential prerogatives, is far more meaningful than

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