… In a televised Oval Office meeting with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) in December, Trump famously said he would shoulder the blame for a government shutdown if the Democrats refused to fund a border wall. “I will be the one to shut it down. I’m not going to blame you for it.” Of course, the president did try to blame the Democrats, calling them captive to their radical base, soft on borders and crime and indifferent to the humanitarian crisis brewing on the border.
But as Trump learned, a president doesn’t determine who wins or loses a blame game. That’s for the public to decide. As political scientist E.E. Schattschneider argued decades ago, “the spectators are an integral part of the situation, for, as likely as not, the audience determines the outcome of the fight.” In other words, politicians win messaging wars by securing broad public support for their positions. CONT.
Sarah Binder (GWU), Monkey Cage