The Ubiquitous Presidency and Democratic Possibility

This chapter considers the various implications of the ubiquitous presidency. It first explores the ubiquitous presidency as a research paradigm, making the case for new scholarship that examines how the contexts of the ubiquitous presidency intersect, that considers expanded forms of effects, that brings together different subfields of communication, and that engages with normative questions. The chapter then explores who will hold ubiquitous presidents accountable, focusing on two constitutional (Congress, the judiciary) and three extra-constitutional (networks and platforms, the press, the public) sites of accountability. The chapter concludes by thinking about the president per se. It argues for the enduring importance of presidents in changing times, and considers the fluidity of presidential legacies in this era. Ultimately, a president’s own strength of conscience is crucial in upholding the presidency and the democracy it is meant to serve.

Expectations of the Ubiquitous Presidency

This chapter assesses journalistic and public expectations of the presidency and its communication. It analyzes news media and public reactions to uncover patterns in how presidents are characterized as “presidential.” The chapter then employs a survey experiment to test how partisanship shapes opinions around acts of presidential communication. It ties the implications to increasing political polarization. The chapter concludes by leveraging national and statewide survey data, including never-before-used measurement approaches, to gain insight into how members of the U.S. population expect presidents to communicate. The cross-sectional survey data, collected in the final weeks of the 2016 presidential campaign and then again during the summer of 2019, include a randomly selected sample of more than 15,000 likely voters across 16 states. The analysis compares the demographic and political factors that influenced standards of presidential communication in the final months of the Obama presidency and at the midpoint of the Trump administration.

Barack Obama

This chapter analyzes Barack Obama’s administration in relation to the components of the ubiquitous presidency, especially how Obama adapted to the changing contexts of accessibility, personalization, and pluralism. It first tracks Twitter attention to Obama across seven years of his presidency, showing how attention spiked in relation to both traditional major addresses and newer approaches (e.g., his own tweets emphasizing elements of the ubiquitous presidency). The chapter then analyzes West Wing Week, a web series pioneered by the first official White House videographer, which takes the form of reality television and reveals the “backstage” of the presidency. Finally, the chapter uses semantic network analysis to track the relationship between the president, the press, and the public on Twitter in the context of the Affordable Care Act (commonly known as Obamacare). These relationships conform to the cascading activation model, in which presidential communication influences the terms used by the press and the public.

Donald Trump

This chapter analyzes Donald Trump’s administration in relation to the components of the ubiquitous presidency, especially how Trump sought visibility and control amid the contexts of accessibility, personalization, and pluralism. It first tracks Trump’s use of MAGA rallies to narrowcast messages to partisans, and then how he commanded attention via Twitter. On Twitter, Trump’s own tweets—as opposed to traditional major addresses, which were more influential in the Obama presidency—were the primary drivers of attention. Paralleling the analysis in Chapter 4, the chapter then uses semantic network analysis to track the relationship between the president, press, and public on Twitter in the context of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). These relationships reveal that Trump’s limited communication about the ACA contributed to an inversion of the traditional cascading activation model. Finally, the chapter explores how Trump’s attacks on pluralism promoted anti-social forms of democratic participation and may have even incited violence.

The Ubiquitous Presidency: A Conceptual Framework

This chapter introduces and critiques the existing mythology of the 20th-century presidency to illustrate the need for a new way of understanding the contemporary presidency, then provides an overview of the book’s argument about the ubiquitous presidency. It discusses assumptions of traditional understandings of presidential communication and outreach—using the “rhetorical presidency” as a key example—and shows how those assumptions fail in the contemporary environment. The chapter then explicates a new framework for understanding the contemporary presidency, which we call the ubiquitous presidency. This framework rests on three goals (visibility, adaptation, and control) and three contexts (accessibility, personalization, and pluralism). The chapter concludes by arguing for a broader array of methods and new objects of study in research on the presidency, and previews the book’s approach and structure.

Epilogue

This chapter updates several of the key themes addressed in the book by considering the events of 2020, including the COVID-19 pandemic, the Black Lives Matter movement, and the presidential election. We discuss how the three contexts central to the ubiquitous presidency—accessibility, personalization, and pluralism—shaped responses to these events. Accessibility was present in President Trump’s frantic communication efforts during the pandemic, as well as in the efforts of other public figures. Personalization was present in the messaging and lifestyle changes necessitated by the pandemic. Pluralism was present in responses to systemic racism and police violence called out by the Black Lives Matter movement.

The Ubiquitous Presidency in Its Contexts

Across six American presidencies, this chapter introduces and examines three key contexts within the broader socio-technological environment that intersect with the goals of presidential communication: accessibility, personalization, and pluralism. First, it defines accessibility based on where the president appears and how the president chooses to engage with audiences. This section tracks the frequency and type of media interviews presidents grant and how the White House website has evolved to include various degrees of interactivity. Second, this chapter reviews personalization and its significance, including techniques of informality and disclosure. This section chronicles how symbolic presidential behaviors disclose aspects of personality. The chapter concludes by discussing pluralism in terms of growing multiculturalism and heightened salience of group identity in the United States. This section analyzes communication that references pluralism or prejudice, awardees of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the frequency with which presidents grant interviews to media outlets marketed to minority audiences.