How do Presidents Gain Credibility through Persuasion?
There are two different, but very closely related, things to consider when answering this question. One is the context that someone with the role of president finds themselves in, which is a unique and singular one that’s going to impact how others see you—especially laypeople in the broader public. You should also consider who the president is trying to persuade. Are they trying to persuade the public that their position is the correct one? What about other politicians, especially in Congress? At the end of the day, however, I think the president’s credibility through persuasion is dependent on how much trust has been vested in them by the people they’re trying to persuade. And how they gain that trust is determined by how they act, the commitments they make, and how often they stick to those commitments.
I think this is, at least partially, the reason that active-positive presidents, as defined by the Barber measure, are most likely to be the best and most popular ones. In any job that you’re given, positive energy and a positive outlook on both yourself and your role both contribute to you doing a better job, and I don’t think the presidency is any different. Psychologically speaking, the energy you give off when making your case will be picked up on by the people you’re addressing—and in the president’s case, that could mean the difference between persuading and not persuading Congress to pass a bill you want to sign, or persuading the public that what you’re doing is the right thing to do. Of course, that by itself doesn’t say anything about whether that particular bill or that particular decision are correct in any factual or moral sense. But the question is about how presidents gain credibility through their ability to persuade, and there is one last factor that needs to be considered.
For anyone taking on the role of president, the decisions that they make are going to have reaching consequences, both for the US and, to a certain extent, the rest of the world. Those consequences reflect on the president and will affect their credibility. If they make a major policy decision that’s shown to benefit the public, that will mean they’ll be more credible, and therefore more persuasive on that issue when making future decisions. If they drop the ball, however, then they’ll have to work harder to regain the public’s trust enough to, in turn, regain the level of credibility they may have had before. In turn though, this may make their post-ball-drop credibility stronger, because it shows that they’re willing to take responsibility for their mistakes. I think this is why, whenever candidates are running, questions about their past decisions and performances in some other office persistently crop up.
At the end of the day, when looking at presidents, we must remember that they’re not just politicians, and they’re not just the space they occupy—political, social, economic, or historical. Presidents are humans too, and therefore subject to the same human nature and psychology as everyone else. How that human nature—and the nature of the individual president—interacts with the space they occupy is, I think, an important factor in explaining how a president has acted and will likely continue to act—and consequently, how that affects their credibility in the eyes of both their colleagues and in the broader public. You’ll get an incomplete, if not outright misleading, picture without it.