FEATURES The Contemporary Presidency: “Going Local ” to Reform Social Security

Presidents have turned increasingly to local media to build support for their policy initiatives, as evidenced by President George W. Bush’s recent and unprecedented efforts to reform Social Security. In this article, we examine local newspaper coverage of the president’s reform tour and the success he had “going local. ” We find that local newspapers tended to be positive, but mostly descriptive, in their coverage of the president’s reform tour. Local news stories not only differ from national coverage but also from each other: a newspaper’s size and location affect the content of local news coverage of the presidency. We conclude with an assessment of the usefulness of a “going local ” governing strategy in light of these findings. Leading the media, public, and Congress through speeches is at the core of presi-dential governance. But just as the modern political environment requires presidents to appeal for support through speeches, presidents are increasingly unable to cultivate it. Presidents who attempt to lead the nation are faced with a public that tunes out the president’s prime time addresses (Baum and Kernell 1999) and news media whose attention to presidential addresses is fleeting (Peake and Eshbaugh-Soha 2003). As