Public Opinion and the Media

I.                   Shaping Public Opinion

1. Popular rule—the Constitution, of course, was meant to be a brake on popular rule. The expectation was that the diverse population in the United States would also act to tamp down popular rule, since various groups would need to compete—and cooperate—with each other to achieve their goals
2. What Is Public Opinion?—Being able to discern the opinion of the public is more difficult than many poll takers would have you believe. Although we are inundated with public opinion polls that seem to tell us exactly what Americans are thinking, these polls only can only tell us how the people asked feel about the question at the time they are asked. This is not to imply that these polls are useless, because they obviously are quite valuable—but mainly for judging how people feel about a particular, fairly simple issue.
3. Role of Political Activists—Most people give little concern about politics. Political elites (political operatives, pundits, candidates, etc.) think a lot about politics, and think differently about it—and it is they who largely control the whole process.
4. Free Press—In the United States, the press (including all media) operates independently of the government, and often as an adversary. This relationship, along with the propensity of government officials to “leak” selected and passage in 1966 of the Freedom of Information Act, have made the United States government extremely transparent—and, from a governing perspective, made it very difficult to maintain secrets.
5. Distrust of the Government—Many Americans express a distrust of their government (a distrust and frustration that is growing today). The reasons for this are various, and will be examined in greater detail below. But it should be noted that the current unhappiness with government is in part caused by the comparison to the 1950s and early 1960s, an economically prosperous time for many in the United States. The growing dissatisfaction is also effected by the economic struggles the country has experienced since the latter part of the 1960s.

1. Vietnam—the seeming lack of success during the war, and the revelations that the government misled the American people at nearly every turn—in regard to the execution of the war, as well as the reason for US involvement—created a great deal of distrust of the government.
2. Watergate—While Richard M. Nixon contributed to the distrust created during the Vietnam War (the secret invasion of Cambodia, the Christmas bombing of Hanoi, etc.), it was the Watergate scandal that is his greatest political legacy. The cover-up of a third-rate burglary brought down his administration, after one of the largest margins of victory in a Presidential election in US history in the 1972 election.
3. The “Outsider” candidate—politicians, after Watergate, began to present themselves as “Washington outsiders” to make themselves more attractive to the American people; Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, both Bill Clinton and businessman Ross Perot both ran as “outsider” candidates in 1992 (only Perot was an outsider in 1996), Ralph Nader and George W. Bush (the son of a president!!) both presented themselves as political outsiders in 2000.
4. The Impeachment of Bill Clinton—although Clinton was certainly guilty of lying under oath about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky, most Americans did not consider it an impeachable offense, and Republican insistence on pursuing impeachment—even after two Republican Speakers of the House had to resign over their involvement in similar extra-marital affairs—certainly undermined their case.
5. The Iraq War—Revelations that much of the information used to convince the American people that the Iraq war was tied to Saddam Hussein’s possession of “weapon of mass destruction” proved to be false is the most recent instance of the government engendering mistrust of the American people.

6. The Origins of Political Attitudes

1. The Role of the Family—Party identification is largely inculcated within the family—if your parents identified as Republicans, then it is likely that you identify as a Republican, also. This is not meant to imply that you adopt their entire political outlook without question, but that the values you are taught while growing up will be shaped by them. Many more people today declare themselves “political independents”—which in practice means that they pay little attention to politics outside of election cycles.
2. Effects of Religion—Because religious involvement is largely a moral commitment, it is not surprising that born-again or evangelical Christians differ from other voters on issues that deal with questions of morality.
3. Education—generally, the more education a person has, the more likely they are to hold liberal political views. This is even more true for those people who hold advanced degrees in the humanities and social sciences.
4. The Gender Gap—During the 1950s, women were more likely than men to vote Republican, in large part because Republicans had historically backed issues important to women—gun control and Prohibition. Today, women are more likely than men to vote Democratic, because of the anti-war perception many people have of the present Democratic Party, among other issues.

7. Cleavages in Public Opinion

1. Occupation—Although recent evidence suggests that occupation is becoming less of a factor for the divergence of public opinion, it remains an important factor. The most recent example of this would be the opposition to Senate Bill 5 in Ohio, with opposition coming from the still-substantial union member households.
2. Race—While occupation has become less important in explaining diverging public opinion, race has become a more important factor. Black have become the most consistently liberal group within the Democratic Party. Not surprisingly, blacks consistently support the extension of civil rights protections. While a majority of black believe themselves to be better off than they were 10 years ago, and that their children will lead better lives than themselves, better-off blacks are more likely to express skepticism about American society, and to report that they have experienced discrimination.

3. Region—With the divisive experience of the Civil Rights era, the (white) South has become a reliably Republican region, whereas historically (into the 1980s, in fact) it was a reliably Democratic region. Because these new Republicans also tended to belong to evangelical churches, the Republican Party has become much more conservative on social issues—anti-choice, anti-gay, promoting “family values,” etc.

8. Political Ideology—most people do not identify with the two main branches of political ideology, conservative or liberal, in part because most people do not approach politics with a rational attitude—they do not have a coherent and consistent set of beliefs that guide them in deciding which programs to support.

1. Consistent Attitudes—What constitutes consistency is very much in the eye of the beholder. While most people probably like to think that they have a consistent attitude toward issues, their own personal experience often impedes that process.
2. Activists—Are much more likely to think in ideological terms and to take “consistent” positions on various issues—largely because they are most often called upon to give reasons for the positions that they take.
3. Various Categories of Opinion—In the political realm, categories of opinion can be divided into three convenient categories:

                                                              i.      Economy

                                                            ii.      Civil Rights

                                                          iii.      Personal Conduct

4. Analyzing Consistency—Although this is an extreme simplification of what is generally a very complex thought process, the following labels are useful in discerning one’s stand on a particular issue

                                                              i.      Liberals—Pure liberals take liberal stances on both economic and social issues—they advocate a bigger role for government in the economic sphere, more taxation of the wealthy, and are more tolerant of behavior considered outside of the norm.

                                                            ii.      Conservatives—Pure conservatives, on the other hand, are conservative on both economic and social issues—they believe in smaller government, less taxation, and are less tolerant of behavior considered outside of the norm.

                                                          iii.      Libertarians—Tend to be conservative on economic issued, while tolerant of behavior outside of the norm.

                                                          iv.      Populists—Tend to be liberal on economic issues, while being less tolerant of behavior outside of the norm.

9. The Impact of the Media—The changes that the media have undergone in the last eighty years have deeply affected the way it covers politics. In 1939, newspapers simply never ran a picture of President Franklin Roosevelt in a wheel chair (which is one reason why his portrayal at his new monument was so controversial), nor any word of his extra-marital affair was ever leaked; in the late 1990s, every detail of Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewisnky was broadcast into American living rooms.
10. The Structure of the Media—Politicians attempt to use the media to their advantage, and at times the media returns the favor, using politicians to both inform and entertain their audience.

1. Degree of Competition—While newspapers have become less competitive (as their advertising dollars dry up), television stations competition has heated considerably. Although there is a growing centralization, must media is locally owned and operated, and still must cater to a local audience.
2. The National Media
3. The Internet and Political Blogs

11. Rules Governing the Media

1. Freedom of the Press
2. Regulation and Deregulation

12. Government and the New

1. Prominence of the President
2. Coverage of Congress

II.                Interpreting the News

1. Are News Stories Slanted?

1. Routine Stories
2. Feature Stories
3. Insider Stories

2. News Leaks
3. The Influence of Media Opinions on Opinion and Politics
4. The Influence of Politicians on the Media

Federalism

I.                   Structure of Government

A.    Government Structure

1.      Federalism—a political structure in which local units of government, as well as a national government, make final decisions on at least some governmental activities, and whose existence in specifically protected.

a.       Federalism is protected usually by a constitution; but it is also protected by the habits, preferences, and disposition of its citizens.

b.      Federalism is also protected by the actual distribution of political power in the society.

2.      Distribution of Power in the United States—although the distribution of political power in now heavily slanted toward the national government in the United States, that power is largely exercised in a relatively benign fashion. The national government largely acts upon local governments, and largely through its powers of taxation and the distribution of those proceeds.

B.     Federalism—Good or Bad?—A measure of the importance of federalism is the controversy that surrounds it. To some critics, federalism means allowing states to block actions, prevent progress, upset national plans, protect powerful local interests, and cater to the self-interests of hack politicians. Its defenders insist that the “virtue of the federal system lies in its ability to develop and maintain mechanisms vital to the perpetuation of the unique combination of governmental strength, political flexibility, and individual liberty, which has been the central concern of American politics.”

1.      Increased Political Activity—a federal system, by virtue of the decentralization of authority, lowers the cost of organized political activity; a unitary system (such as in Great Britain and France), because of the centralization of authority, raises the cost of organizing protests and discourages local groups from challenging governmental decisions

2.      Decreased Chance of Political Change—despite the decentralization of authority, real political change is difficult to implement, which was also one of the purposes of the Constitution, in the eyes of the Framers.

C.     The Founding—the Framers, it is clear, saw federalism as a decision to protect personal liberty, while at the same time tamping down on what they saw as the excesses of democracy.

1.      A Bold New Plan—the federal republic (as the Framers called it) derived its powers directly from the people (“We the People”), as do the states. As the Framers envisioned it, both levels of government—the national and the states—would have certain powers, but neither would have supreme power over the other.

2.      Elastic Language—The need to reconcile the competing interests of large and small states, and of northern and southern states, especially as they affected the organization of Congress, was sufficiently difficult without trying to spell out exactly what relationship ought to exist between the national and state levels of government. Though some clauses bearing on national-state relations were reasonably clear, other clauses were quite vague. The Framers knew that they could not make an exact and exhaustive list of everything the federal government was empowered to do; circumstances would change, and new exigencies would arise. This permitted people who held opposing views on what exactly federalism meant (like Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton) could still support the concept.

D.    History of Federalism—the Civil War settled on part of the argument over national supremacy versus states rights. The war’s outcome made it clear that the national government was supreme; this was determined not only by force of arms, but also by the theory that sovereignty was derived directly from the people of the country, and states could not lawfully secede from the Union. But virtually every other aspect of the national supremacy issue was debated until the mid-twentieth century.

1.      The Supreme Court Speaks—the Court was led in its early formative phase by a staunch Hamiltonian Federalist, John Marshall. In a series of decisions, Marshall strengthened the powers of the central government (and the Supreme Court).

a.       McCulloch v. Maryland (1819)—the state of Maryland attempted to levy a state tax on a branch of the Bank of the United States. The decision hinged on two elements: whether Congress had the authority to establish the Bank; and whether a federal bank could be taxed by a state. Marshall’s decision in both instances strengthened the powers of the central government over the states.

2.      Nullification and War—the issue of states’ rights came to center on the doctrine of nullification, which was first put forth during the Hartford Convention, whose participants threatened secession over the War of 1812. By the end of the next decade, John C. Calhoun was arguing that the states, because they had agreed to join the Union, could also chose to leave. This issue was finally solved by the American Civil War, of course, but the conclusion was affirmed by the Supreme Court in Texas v. White (1869).

3.      Dual Federalism—after the Civil War, the debate about the meaning of Federalism focused upon the interpretation of the commerce clause. This interpretation focused upon the idea that there was interstate commerce, which Congress was authorized by the Constitution to regulate, and intrastate commerce, which it was not, and would therefore by strictly within the domain of the states. With increased industrialism and the growth of capitalist enterprises, however, this became a less viable distinction, and by 1940 or so the Court was allowing the central government to regulate large parts of all commerce.

4.      The States Get Some Authority Back (?)—In recent years the Supreme Court, in a series of 5-4 decisions, has begun to breathe life back into the idea that states have Constitutional authority that Congress cannot set aside; in 1995 the Court decided that the power of Congress to regulate interstate commerce did not give it the right to ban the carrying of handguns within 1000 feet of a school, and in 1997 the Court refused to require local enforcement officers to do background checks on people purchasing handguns. Of course, in 2010 the Court also decided in McDonald v. Chicago that the city of Chicago could not ban the possession of handguns within the city, either.

II.                The Division of Powers: Federal and State

A.    Fiscal Federalism

1.      Land Grants—predate the Constitution. The federal government granted states federally-owned land so the states could finance road and canal building, colleges and universities, etc.

2.      Grants-in-aid—cash sent from the central government to the states. Grants-in-aid remained a small program until the 1960s. Between 1960 and 1966, the amount of money sent to the states in grants-in-aid doubled; between 1966 and 1970, the amount doubled again; and from 1970 to 1975, the amount of money sent doubled a third time.

3.      Grants-in-aid System—grew rapidly because it helped states and local officials to resolve a dilemma. On the one hand, they wanted access to the superior taxing power of the federal government. On the other hand, prevailing constitutional interpretation, at least until the late 1930s, held that the federal government could not spend money for purposes not authorized by the Constitution. The solution, obviously, was to have federal money put in the states’ hands: Washington would pay the bills; the states would run the programs.

4.      Rise of Federal Activism—until the 1960s, federal grants-in-aid were conceived by, or in cooperation with, the states, and were designed to serve essentially state purposed. During the 1960s, however, the federal government began devising grant programs based upon what national officials perceived to be important national needs.

5.      The Intergovernmental Lobby—state and local governmental officials began to organize themselves to lobby federal officials for money for local projects—including spending public money for these lobbying efforts.

6.      Categorical Grants Versus Block Grants—categorical grants must be spent on specific programs or for specific projects. Block grants give local governments much greater leeway in determining where to spend the money, and therefore are the more desirable of the two types of grants. Local governments looked to block grants to provide local tax relief. This has not happened as plan, because the amounts of the block grants have not grown at the rate local governments anticipated—and because the “no strings” money also came with strings attached.

B.     Federal Aid and Federal Control—Federal aid became so important for state and local governments that many governors and mayors, along with others, began to fear that Washington was well on its way to controlling state and local governments.

1.      Mandates and Conditions of Aid—Members of Congress and federal officials feel an obligation to develop uniform national policies with respect to important matters, and to prevent states from misspending the money the federal government sends them. State and local governments argue that these restrictions (mandates and conditions of aid) prevent them from best applying the funds to local conditions.

2.      Rivalry Among the States—As federal money became more important to state and local governments, the competition among the states of course has intensified. This debate has intensified even more with the postwar population shift to the sunbelt, and the deindustrialization of the snowbelt

III.             Conclusion—Evaluating Federalism

The tensions in the federal system do not arise from one level of government or another being callous or incompetent, but from the kinds of political demands with which each must cope. Because of these competing demands, federal and state officials find themselves in a bargaining situation in which each side is trying to get some benefit while passing on to the other side most of the costs.

      The bargains struck in this process used to favor local officials because members of Congress were essentially servants to local interests—they were part of local political organizations and supported local autonomy. Beginning in the 1960s, however, changes in American politics shifted the orientation of many members of Congress toward favoring Washington’s policy needs over local needs.

Civil Rights

I.                   Race and “Strict Scrutiny”

A.    The “Separate But Equal” Doctrine

1.      1875 Civil Rights Act—the last gasp of the Radical Republicans, the 1875 Civil Rights Act was introduced by Senator Charles Sumner in an effort to protect the civil rights of African Americans, which were coming under increasing attack as the Republican Party determination to protect those rights was waning.

2.      1883 Civil Rights Cases—the Supreme Court, in a series of decisions that have become known as the Civil Rights Cases, declared that major portions of the 1875 Civil Rights Act were unconstitutional, because they attempted to police not only state actions, but individual actions, as well. This opened the way for a series of discriminatory practices to come into use, from restrictive covenants (restricting certain parcels of property from being sold to certain groups), to permitting owners of hotels, theaters,  and restaurants to refuse service to groups they didn’t like (mainly African Americans).

3.      1896 Plessy v. Ferguson—the state of Louisiana passed a law that required railroads operating in the state had to provide separate railcars for white and African American passengers. This upset a number of Creoles near New Orleans, especially since the state had also enacted a “One-Drop Rule” to determine who would be considered African American for the purposes of these new restrictive laws. Homer Plessy, an “octoroon” (that is, a person who was 1/8^th black), agreed to take part in this test case, funded in part by railroad companies who objected to the expenses they would incur to follow this Louisiana law. The Supreme Court in 1896, in its most infamous decision after Scott v. Sandford, held that as long as accommodations were “equal,” they could be “separate.” This decision, as well as that handed down in the Civil Rights Cases, opened the floodgates for similar legislation to be passed throughout the South (as well as the North), and permitted the institution of Jim Crow—the American version of apartheid. This largely remained the law of the land until 1954.

4.      1954 Brown v. Topeka Board of Education—in this momentous decision, a result of several decades of work by the NAACP’s Legal Defense Team, led by Thurgood Marshall, overturned most of the previous 75 years worth of legal precedent. The Court found that African Americans could not be discriminated against in educational institutions. This led to the Court later deciding to extend these protections to other realms of life, later striking down restrictive covenants. The outlawing of private discrimination—including employment—would await the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act

B.     Race as a Suspect Classification—after handing down the Brown decision, any law passed that made a racial distinction was subject to strict scrutiny by the courts.

1.      Suspect Classification—this does not mean that the government cannot treat the races differently; the Court has not held that the Constitution is “color-blind.” The law may still make racial distinctions as long as the purpose for those distinctions is to remedy the consequences of past discrimination.

a.       1968 Green v. New Kent County—the Court banned a “freedom-of-choice” desegregation plan, and decided that blacks and white had to actually attend the same school.

b.      1972 Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education—the Court decreed that students may be bused in order to achieve a better racial balance in desegregated schools.

2.      Affirmative Action—today, we associate the term “affirmative action” with other terms, like “set-aside” or “quotas”; that is, actions taken to “guarantee” a certain number of positions or contracts will go to members of minority groups. When the Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964, however, it only required companies to implement plans of their own devising to address past wrongs that their discriminatory practices had caused.

a.       1970 Philadelphia Plan—suggested to President Richard M. Nixon by his Secretary of Labor George Schultz, the policy was meant to serve a dual purpose: to appease some of the critics of the administration on the issue of race, and to drive a wedge between Democrats on one of its core constituencies—trade union members. The Philadelphia Plan required jobs on projects funded by the federal government to go to workers from minority groups in proportion to their share of the local population.

b.      Education—one of the hottest of the hot-button issued in the late 1960s and early 1970s was the court-ordered busing of school children to achieve an integrated school system. The Court found, in several decisions (for example, see Swan v. Charlotte and Mecklenburg above) that permitting families to “choose” a school was not good enough, largely because whites would choose to maintain the status quo, and no change would happen. The Court in a number of instances, including in Detroit and in Boston, ordered that school children be bused in order to reach a standard that approximated what they judged to be “integrated.” In places like Louisville, Kentucky, that included busing children to and from the surrounding suburbs, when it was proven to the Court’s satisfaction that those suburbs had participated in discriminatory practices. These decisions have been greatly amended in the recent past, as we will discuss in greater detail below.

                                                              i.      University of California Regents v. Bakke—Allan Bakke, a Vietnam War veteran, applied to the medical school at the University of California-Davis in 1973 and 1974, but was rejected both years in favor of candidates from minority groups with lower test scored than Bakke. Bakke sued in court, and won judgment in his favor. The California Regents, who had recently passed a state-mandated plan to encourage a larger minority enrollment, countersued, and it is this countersuit that made its way to the Supreme Court.

c.       “Reverse discrimination”—with this new interpretation of what “affirmative action” meant, white litigants began to argue that using race as a criteria in school admissions or job applications—even to address the wrongs done to African Americans by past discrimination—was “reverse discrimination.”

                                                              i.      1995 Adarand Constructors v. Pena—a construction company in Colorado that lost out on a subcontract bid to build guardrails on a highway to a minority-owned firm, sued the contractor, claiming violation of 5^th and 14^th Amendment rights—in effect, that they had been victims of reverse discrimination

                                                            ii.      2003 University of Michigan Admissions cases—in a mixed decision, the Court found that, while universities can use race as one consideration when deciding who to admit, it has to be tailored to only seek to create greater diversity on campus.

II.                Sex and “Reasonable Classification”

A.    “Suspect” v. “Reasonable” Classification—the Court has held that laws that put women in a special category were made for different purposes than those which put African Americans in special categories.

1.      1908 Muller v. Oregon—Oregon passed a law that limited the number of hours a day a woman could work outside the home to 10 hours (men were permitted to “choose” to work longer each day) Curt Muller, who owned a laundry that employed large numbers of women, sued, since he would have to employ more women to comply with the law, and his costs would appreciate. Louis Brandeis, future Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, argued that the state had a compelling interest in limiting the workday of women, because of their importance to raising future generations. The Court accepted Brandeis’ argument, and this decision remained largely unchallenged into the 1970s.

2.      1964 Civil Rights Act—not only outlawed discrimination on the basis of race, but also on the basis of color, religion, national origin—or sex. This final clause was inserted by Virginia senator Harry Smith, an ardent segregationist. His detractors argued that he did so in the hope of killing the bill; he insisted it was because of his close relationship with feminist Alice Paul. At any rate, it was because of the work of Michigan senator Martha Griffith that the clause remained in the act. With the advent of Title IX, the field of education was added to the list of places where discrimination was outlawed.

B.     Privacy and Sex—regulating sexual matters has traditionally been left to the states, which regulate them using their police powers (making certain acts illegal, and enforcing them with police).

1.      1973 Roe v. Wade

2.      1989 Webster v. Reproductive Health Services

3.      1992 Planned Parenthood v. Casey

4.      2000 Boy Scouts of American v. Dale

5.      2003 Lawrence v. Texas