Studies of presidential leadership have focused heavily on the ability of presidents to sway public opinion and shape congressional action. Richard Neustadt's (1960) axiom, expressed in Presidential Power, that the president's influence is vested in his “power to persuade” ignited a rich scholarly tradition that explores how presidents use public speechmaking to set the policy agenda. In this important study, Andrew B. Whitford and Jeff Yates move beyond the standard focus on persuasion and build upon the established theoretical frameworks of “agenda setting” and “going public.” They explore the ways in which presidential rhetoric can not only shape opinion but also can influence policy implementation and bureaucratic action.

Focusing their analysis on drug policy, the authors demonstrate that presidents can exert leadership authority and change the behavior of even entrenched administrative constituencies through public rhetoric. The detailed case study provides rich historical context documenting presidential administrations' responses to the “war on drugs” dating back to the 1930s. The authors use a multimethod approach in order to provide empirical evidence that supports their argument that persuasion can translate into action. This study establishes a new benchmark for research on presidential rhetoric.

Whitford and Yates address the core question of whether or not the president can successfully use speechmaking to change the way that public policy is implemented by agents in the field in accordance with his goals. Managing agency officials poses a challenge for presidents as they struggle to convey a sense of mission to career employees and long-term appointees who mostly work outside of Washington, DC. The authors argue that presidents can define the terms of policy debates, and construct, redefine, and extend frameworks for understanding public problems by means of their rhetoric. When articulating public problems, presidents rely on set rhetorical mechanisms, such as appealing to public morals and evoking threats to national values. These themes, as conveyed by presidential speechmaking and media coverage, can define and control public perceptions, influence legislative decision making, and set the priorities of agents on the front lines of policy implementation. Notably, the social construction of policy issues provides guidance to bureaucratic officials seeking to allocate resources and take action. A president's public messages about policy are especially relevant when the agency charged with enforcement has ambivalent goals and operating procedures. Presidential rhetoric can be a powerful tool when goals have shifted due to changes in administration policies, political circumstances, and real-world conditions. While directives conveyed through speechmaking may not be specific, they can place an emphasis on particular strategies and set expectations.

This study specifically examines how presidential rhetoric has influenced the ways in which field agents interpret drug policies and enforce laws about drug traffickers and users. Presidential administrations have made the war on drugs a priority since the 1960s, although the amount of attention devoted to this issue has varied over time. Whitford and Yates dedicate three chapters to addressing the relationship between presidential rhetoric and the behavior of agents with particular roles in the war on drugs in light of their theoretical assumptions. The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is a large, dispersed bureaucracy that has agents who directly enforce drug laws in each state and territory. The authors demonstrate empirically that presidents' public messages can change the behavior of DEA field agents. The arrest rate for drug offenders, for example, increases when drug policy is at the forefront of the presidential agenda, and declines when it is not.

The analysis of US attorneys is especially valuable, as political scientists and public policy analysts have paid scant attention to these agents despite their role as the primary prosecutorial arm of the federal government. As the authors note, US attorneys operate in an environment of “splendid isolation,” despite the fact that there are many interests competing for their attention. The study suggests that presidential rhetoric can provide signals to US attorneys that may influence the types of cases that they prosecute. Their decisions to prosecute drug-related cases are not shaped by presidential rhetoric alone, however; they take into account local opinion, national press coverage, staffing, and partisan factors.

Finally, the authors address the issue of whether presidential leadership influences the way that states and localities implement drug policy. While presidents have no direct authority to dictate state-level drug policy, state officials are surprisingly responsive to their rhetorical leadership.

The authors provide a strong theoretical rationale and convincing empirical evidence to support their argument. However, their treatment of the role of the media in the process by which presidential speechmaking is used to construct policy frameworks that are conveyed to bureaucratic agents could have been more fully developed. Media coverage of drug-related stories at the local level, especially in areas where drugs are a major public problem, may either reinforce or trump presidential rhetoric, depending upon the circumstances. Yet in the empirical analysis of the influence of presidential rhetoric on specific agents, the measure used to take media coverage of drug policy into account is the annual percentage of stories in the New York Times related to drug policy. This is a rough measure at best, and is especially problematic given that the analysis deals heavily with state- and local-level agents. Collecting this type of local newspaper content data on a large scale is difficult. However, the media's contribution to the process deserves further consideration.

Whitford and Yates have done meticulous research for this book, which includes uniting the literature on presidential leadership, public policy, and bureaucratic politics. They have drawn upon a variety of data sources for their empirical analyses, including statistics from government agencies, such as the DEA and the Center for Disease Control, as well as from Frank Baumgartner and Bryan Jones's Policy Agenda Project. The methodological appendices provide information about the data sources, variable construction, and statistical analyses that is useful for researchers seeking to replicate or expand upon this work.

This study will be of particular interest to scholars and practitioners focused on presidential politics, public policy, and political communication. The detailed discussion of the origins and development of presidential policies related to the war on drugs, from Franklin Roosevelt to the present, is a valuable resource for political historians. This work is best suited for use in advanced undergraduate and graduate classrooms, given the sophistication of the argument and the complexity of some of the statistical analyses.