The rise of party polarization, the increasing negativity of the national news media to the president (Clayman et al., 2006, 2007; Cohen, 2008), and the fragmentation of the news media in the post-broadcast age, among other factors, have led presidents to revise their leadership and support-building strategies. Presidents of the past two to three decades no longer rely so heavily on a leadership strategy that tries to mobilize broad-based national support (i.e., going national). Instead, presidents increasingly turn to narrower constituencies for support (Cohen, 2008), such as localities.

For a going local strategy to be successful in building support for the president, the local news media must cover the president in sufficient quantity, and presidential leadership efforts must affect local news coverage of the president. The previous two chapters provided evidence for both of these points using two sets of data, one from a random sample of days and local newspapers in 2000 and the second from a time series of local newspaper coverage from 1990 through 2007.

Yet, it is not enough for presidents to be covered in local newspapers and for presidential actions to affect the amount of local coverage. Local newspapers must cover the topics that presidents want covered; that is, the local news agenda must, to some degree, follow the president's agenda. Moreover, presidents want their news coverage to be positive and supportive. Presidents, among others, believe that negative and critical news coverage will undermine their leadership efforts (Brody, 1991).