Presidential Strategies in Statements of Administration Policy

Abstract

Presidents routinely employ Statements of Administration Policy (SAPs) to inform Congress about the executive's thoughts and position on pending legislation. Such statements are used for a variety of purposes, including bill promotion, suggesting changes, issuing veto threats, and addressing perceived threats to traditional powers. While SAPs have been identified as an important vehicle for interbranch communication and a key source of insight into presidential preferences, many questions remain as to how presidents make use of SAPs' full range of potential. Using a novel data set of over 4,600 SAPs across multiple administrations, we explore the content of these interbranch communications to uncover how, when, and why presidents use such statements over time. Ultimately, we demonstrate the many ways that presidential use of SAPs is strategic based on political contexts.

Analyzing arguments in executive veto messages

“…Word counts are a measure of how much a president has to say to Congress about a bill, with lengthier veto messages signaling that a president spent more time and attention on an issue. Prior presidential research has used message length as a measure of presidential attention (Ostrander & Sievert, 2022) and indicative of attempting persuasion (Collins & Eshbaugh‐Soha, 2019, pp. 37–38).…”

“…In both cases, the differences are significant at the p < 0.01 level in a two‐sample t test. While word counts are a blunt measure, past studies of presidential communications have indicated that length is a measure of a president's attention to an issue as well as an indication that they are attempting to persuade (Collins & Eshbaugh‐Soha, 2019; Ostrander & Sievert, 2022). Lower word counts may imply that presidents felt less need to justify their actions when using pocket vetoes because Congress cannot directly reply with an override.…”