Out of Left Field: George W. Bush, Steroids, and the 2004 State of the Union Address [Going Public Case Study #1]
The Box Score
In his 2004 State of the Union (SOTU) address, George W. Bush called upon professional sports to “get rid of steroids now.”
Opponents criticized Bush for using the SOTU to talk about performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) when America faced far more significant problems at home and abroad.
Bush’s discussion of steroids was an example of going public to pressure sports leagues into doing something about PEDs.
Bush’s attempt to go public largely failed. His comments had little effect on media coverage, public opinion, congressional action, or professional leagues’ policies.
This case shows the limits of presidential power in general and going public in particular (Lesson #3 in “Five Lessons on the Modern Presidency”).
[Note: This is the first of three case studies of presidents “going public” on sports—we’ll also examine Bill Clinton’s attempt to resolve the 1995-95 MLB strike and Jimmy Carter’s boycott of the 1980 Moscow Games. The overall lesson from these case studies is that presidents are rarely successful in going public on sports, with Carter being the exception.]
The Complete Game
George W. Bush’s 2004 State of the Union Address (SOTU) dealt with some weighty issues: terrorism, a two-front war against a growing insurgency, the capture of Saddam Hussein, the reauthorization of the Patriot Act, a sluggish economy, health care, education, and Social Security. To this list, Bush added… steroids in professional sports.
About an hour into his address—and before the president spoke about the Defense of Marriage Act, America’s homelessness problem, or his faith-based initiative program—Bush stated:
“To help children make right choices, they need good examples. Athletics play such an important role in our society, but unfortunately, some in professional sports are not setting much of an example. The use of performance-enhancing drugs like steroids in baseball, football, and other sports is dangerous, and it sends the wrong message, that there are shortcuts to accomplishment and that performance is more important than character. So tonight I call on team owners, union representatives, coaches, and players to take the lead, to send the right signal, to get tough, and to get rid of steroids now.” –George W. Bush, Address Before a Joint Session of Congress on the State of the Union, January 20, 2004.
Source: Eric Draper - georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2004/01/images/20040120-7_d012004-515h.html, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=88143821
Bush’s discussion of performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) in the 2004 SOTU was curious. Why would a president choose the SOTU—usually the most important speech he gives all year—as an occasion to talk about sports? What does Bush’s framing of the steroid issue tell us about the president, his worldview, and the role of sport in American culture? And, finally, what did Bush accomplish? Did the president encourage media coverage of the steroid scandal? Convince the public that steroids are harmful? Spur Congress into action? Force professional sports leagues to get rid of steroids?
In many ways, Bush’s discussion of PED is a cautionary tale for presidents; it is a story about the limits of the White House and the danger of injecting oneself too far into the world of sports. Like most examples of presidents “going public,” this case also illustrates both the power and weakness of the modern presidency. If power is the ability to command an audience and talk about whatever you want, including steroids, then Bush seemed powerful. But if power is changing minds or achieving a political goal, then Bush looked weak. There is little evidence that Bush’s SOTU comments affected media coverage, public opinion, congressional action, or professional leagues’ PED policies. At best, Bush’s statement added to the cacophony of voices calling for reform in sports; at worst, the president opened himself up to criticism without getting much in return.
Going Public in the State of the Union
Article II, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution requires that: “He [the President of the United States] shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.” George Washington established the long-running precedent that “from time to time” meant “each year,” and a shorter-lived precedent that to “give to the Congress” meant “a speech.”
Thomas Jefferson thought the practice of an oral address too monarchical, so he and every president up to Woodrow Wilson submitted a written document to Congress instead. The Jeffersonian precedent exemplifies the philosophy of most traditional presidents: respect the separation of powers, acknowledge Congress as the first branch, and avoid charges of demagoguery by speaking directly to the American public only on the rarest occasions. Times have changed.
In the modern era, no speech is as important as the SOTU. The SOTU gives the president a captive audience in Congress, the Supreme Court (or at least most of them), and, until recently, a semi-captive audience in the American public. Although cable television, the VCR/DVD, and the internet have all eroded SOTU viewership, around 43 million Americans still tune in to watch the speech live each year, with millions more hearing about it through media highlights. The SOTU affords presidents an hour or so of uninterrupted time—punctuated only by applause or the occasional rude outburst from members of Congress—to defend past policies and lay out a vision for the future.
The modern presidency—which begins with Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, or Franklin Roosevelt, depending on scholarly interpretation—is a story about the search for power. Americans expect a lot from their presidents, but the White House remains grounded in essentially the same constitutional structure that existed at the founding. In “Five Lessons on the Modern Presidency,” we learned that, compared to Congress, presidents do not have a lot of formal power. But they do have a bully pulpit.
All presidents use the SOTU to go public on important political issues. I discuss going public in greater depth in “Five Lessons of the Modern Presidency,” but here is a brief reminder of how the strategy works:
The American public expects a lot of presidents.
Despite these high public expectations, presidents usually need Congress to accomplish their goals.
Because of the separation of powers, presidents lack direct power over members of Congress.
But if presidents can change public opinion, and if members of Congress are responsive to their constituents (i.e., act as delegates), then presidents can indirectly affect Congress.
Bush’s discussion of steroids in the 2004 SOTU is one example of going public. In some ways, it was typical. Like other presidents on other issues, Bush went public because he lacked the power to do something about PEDs on his own. And like most other presidents, he failed in his efforts. In other ways, it was strange. The 2004 SOTU seemed an inappropriate venue to address PEDs in sports, and it wasn’t entirely clear who Bush was pressuring. We’ll turn to Bush’s strategy in a moment, but first, let’s refresh our memories of the Golden Era of Juiced Baseball.
Golden Era of Juiced Baseball
No American professional sports league has been as tainted by steroids as Major League Baseball (MLB). The “steroids era” lasted from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s and produced incredible results. In 2000, MLB players combined to hit a record 5,693 home runs, a 72 percent increase over a decade earlier. Roger Maris’ single-season home run record of 61, which had stood for 37 years, was broken six times in four seasons (1998-2001) by Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, and Barry Bonds.
Then came the revelations. In 1998, McGwire, who was in the midst of an epic race with Sosa to break Maris’ record, was interviewed with a bottle of androstenedione, a steroid precursor, clearly visible in his locker. In 2003 spring training, Orioles pitcher Steve Bechler died from heat exhaustion brought on by his use of ephedra, an over-the-counter PED. Then there were the tell-all accounts from ballplayers admitting to their steroid use and alleging league-wide abuse. In his 2005 autobiography, Juiced, former slugger and unrepentant steroid user Jose Canseco estimated that 85 percent of major leaguers used steroids and then outed some of the biggest names in the sport, including McGwire.
Three significant investigations shed light on the steroid era. The first and most important involved the Bay Area Laboratory Cooperative (BALCO). (For an excellent book on BALCO, read Fainaru-Wada & Williams’s Game of Shadows). In 2003, IRS agents raided BALCO offices and found evidence that the lab provided undetectable designer steroids to several baseball stars, including Bonds, Gary Sheffield, and the Giambi brothers.
Second, Congress held 21 hearings from 2002 to 2008 that publicized steroid abuse in professional and Olympic sports. These hearings produced some memorable moments, including McGuire’s infamous evasion—“I’m not here to talk about the past,”—when asked whether he took steroids; slugger Rafael Palmeiro’s angry, finger-waving denial of steroid use less than six months before testing positive for PEDs; and pitcher Roger Clemens’ heated exchanges with members of Congress over his alleged PED use.
A third investigation culminated in the Mitchell Report. In 2006, MLB Commissioner Bud Selig asked former U.S. Senator George Mitchell to evaluate the league’s PED policy and investigate steroid use by ballplayers. The Report chastised MLB for its weak policy and implicated 89 players in the ever-widening scandal.
By the late 1990s and early 2000s, it was clear that baseball had a steroid problem. However, crafting a meaningful PED policy was not easy (MLB banned steroids in 1991 but never bothered to test its players). Any testing policy had to be negotiated by players and owners as part of their collective bargaining agreement, and neither side initially had much interest in testing. The owners loved the pharma-fueled home run derbies of the late 1990s and early 2000s because they brought fans back to the stadium after the 1994-95 strike. Many players expressed legitimate concerns that drug testing violated their privacy rights; others had a more practical concern about getting caught.
Source: http://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/2014/2/10/5390172/major-league-attendance-trends-1950-2013
By the early 2000s, baseball was under increasing pressure to do something about steroids, yet the ongoing collective bargaining impasse produced only weak policies. On August 30, 2002, an agreement was reached just days before the players were to strike over the owners’ proposed luxury tax and drug testing. Under the terms of the so-called “survey testing” system, random tests would determine the extent of steroid use in the league; if five percent of players or more tested positive for PEDs, baseball would enter the punitive phase of the agreement. The drug tests were supposedly anonymous—the names of users, however, were soon leaked to the press—and no player faced punishment for a positive test. In 2003, MLB reported that between 5 and 7 percent of players tested positive for PEDs, triggering the punitive phase of the agreement.
The punitive phase of MLB’s drug policy for the 2004-05 seasons was not very penal: players received rehab for their first positive test but faced no suspension. Moreover, there was only one test per season. That meant that players could complete a cycle or two in the off-season, stop in time to ensure a clean in-season test, and start another cycle immediately after that. It was a policy seemingly designed to catch only the colossally stupid and then let them off with little more than a slap on the wrist.
Such was the context for Bush’s 2004 SOTU: a mountain of evidence that many of baseball’s biggest stars were doping, a tarnished record book, an ongoing stalemate between owners and players, and, finally, the implementation of a hopelessly inadequate policy. Few were satisfied, and calls for meaningful reform came from the fans, media, owners, ballplayers, the U.S. Congress, the U.S. Attorney General, and the President of the United States.
Unable to withstand the pressure any longer, the owners and the players’ union finally adopted a robust steroid policy on November 15, 2005. The new policy, which went into effect during the 2006 season, included a 50-game suspension for a first positive test, 100 games for a second, and a lifetime ban for a third. Players were required to take two random drug tests, one in-season, and one off-season. MLB’s drug policy is far from perfect, but it is regarded as one of the tougher in American professional sports.
For our purposes, the critical question of the steroids era is this: what role did Bush play in forcing MLB to get serious about steroid abuse? We will turn to that question later, but first, let’s speculate about why the president decided to talk about steroids.
Why Steroids?
Why would Bush discuss steroids in his 2004 SOTU? Commenting on PEDs seems ill-suited for such an important speech and ill-timed given America’s problems. Indeed, Bush’s 98 words on steroids were so unexpected that they became known around Capitol Hill as “the crazy two sentences.”
Consider two possible explanations: (1) Bush used steroids to divert the public’s attention away from more severe problems and was pandering for votes in the upcoming 2004 Presidential Election, or (2) Bush genuinely felt steroids were a serious issue. Of course, the two possibilities are not mutually exclusive: Bush might have thought steroids were a problem and one that might benefit him politically. But let’s look at these possibilities independently and evaluate the evidence.
A Juiced’up Diversionary Tactic. Some commenters have suggested that Bush had ulterior motives in talking about steroids in the SOTU. One possibility is steroids were a way to divert the public’s attention from the failure in Iraq and the sluggish economy. Champion and Norris argue that steroids were a “red herring” along the lines of the Gulf of Tonkin incident and Reagan’s invasion of Grenada in 1983. Osei contends that Bush's goal was “to use the steroid scandal as a distraction from the country’s arguably more serious problems.” And Alexander suggests that “…Bush tried to use the steroid scandal to divert attention from the war in much the same way that the McGwire-Sosa home-run chase provided a diversion from President Clinton’s sex scandal.”
A related possibility is that Bush used steroids to pander for votes. Washington Post reporters Steve Fainaru and Mike Allen interviewed an anonymous GOP advisor who revealed the administration was looking for a “cluster of issues” that might broaden Bush’s electoral base. “Steroids meets that test,” said the adviser. “This is the kind of thing that gets folks in swing states nodding their heads—that New York and D.C. and California scoff at, but that middle America understands and responds to.” (The advisor was wrong to think that steroids were the type of issue that could bring in votes, but he was prescient in one respect. Over a decade later, Trump found a sports issue—the NFL kneeling protests—that did mobilize voters, especially “middle American” voters.)
In separate articles, political scientists Matthew Baum and Samuel Popkin reached similar conclusions, arguing that Bush’s inclusion of steroids in the SOTU was a calculated electoral move. According to both Baum and Popkin, Bush was planning to speak on space exploration in his 2004 SOTU, but after two “trial balloon” speeches before the address, the administration found that the steroids resonated with the audience in a way that space did not. Unfortunately, there isn’t much evidence to substantiate any of these claims.
Genuine Concern. Three reasons suggest we might take Bush’s SOTU comments at face value. First, the president was passionate about baseball. Bush pitched for the Yale freshmen team, was a co-owner and managing partner of the Texas Rangers, and remained a rabid baseball fan during his presidency. It is not out of the realm of possibility that Bush, like many other fans, might be genuinely concerned that steroids were destroying the game. (It is ironic, however, that during Bush’s tenure with the Rangers, he signed drug cheats Jose Canseco, Ivan Rodriguez, Juan Gonzalez, and Rafael Palmeiro). And rather than using steroids as a political ploy, by one account, Bush ignored the advice of his aides by talking about them in the speech. Michael Gerson, the Bush administration’s chief speechwriter, said, “I was very skeptical (along with others) about including the steroids section. I thought it would cause some confused head shaking—and it did. But President Bush insisted—it was only included because he wanted it included.”
Second, Bush was right: professional athletes' steroid use sets a bad example. Steroid abuse poses serious health risks, including shrunken testicles, breast development in males, hypertension, liver abnormalities, rage, and depression leading to suicide. A survey by the National Institute on Drug Abuse showed that steroid use among high school boys more than doubled after McGuire and Sosa’s epic 1998 home run race. Although steroid abuse might be well down the list of pressing national problems, it was, nevertheless, a problem.
Finally, it is not unusual for presidents to talk about sports, even in the SOTU. Since 1933, presidents have mentioned sports in twice as many speeches (4,200) as the Supreme Court (2,094). And the steroid scandal was the top sports story of the 2000s. It would have been unusual if Bush didn’t talk about steroids at some point during his presidency. There is also precedent for presidents talking about sports in the SOTU: Carter discussed the Olympic Boycott in 1980; Clinton made sports analogies on three occasions and once recognized a pre-steroid scandal Sammy Sosa as a Dominican hero; Obama pointed to the U.S. Olympic team as a symbol of LGBTQ+ equality a week before the 2014 Sochi Games and referenced the Super Bowl and Little League baseball in two other addresses. Nevertheless, in no other SOTU did sports receive as much attention, or raise as many eyebrows, as it did in 2004.
The Final Score: Diversion/Pandering or Sincerity? Did Bush talk about steroids in the 2004 SOTU to divert the public’s attention or did he feel they were a genuine problem? There’s not enough evidence to say either way, but, either way, talking about PEDs in the SOTU was a mistake.
If Bush’s comments were an attempt to divert or pander, it was a spectacularly stupid strategy. The steroid scandal was big news, but it was never a big political issue (a point taken up in a later section). It certainly was not the type of wedge issue that might draw the public’s attention away from Iraq and the economy the way that, say, gay marriage, immigration, and stem cell research might. And the idea that talking about steroids would bring in votes in November is absurd.
If Bush’s comments reflected a genuine concern, he showed poor political judgment in voicing that concern in the SOTU. A president can address only so many topics in a SOTU. Why would the president spend precious political capital on sports when there were so many more pressing issues on the agenda? Again, there is nothing wrong with a president talking about sports. However, to do so in the most critical speech of the year and at a time when more Americans were dying in Iraq was, at the very least, politically tone-deaf.
Although the president’s SOTU steroid comments prompted a rare moment of bipartisan applause in an otherwise partisan address, critics soon flew into a ‘roid rage. Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry noted that Bush devoted “ninety-nine words on steroids and not one word about manufacturing jobs. Ninety-nine words on steroids and not one word about weapons of mass destruction.” In her Golden Globe acceptance speech a few days after the SOTU, Meryl Streep chided the president for believing that gay marriage and steroids were the two most important issues facing America. And ESPN columnist Jason Whitlock thought the real message of Bush’s speech was that “in an election year, government officials are willing to do just about anything to get re-elected, including ignoring real issues to take on simple-minded, popular causes just to score points with voters.” In short, Bush politicized steroids by mentioning them in his 2004 SOTU, and his critics were quick to make political hay out of what they characterized as out-of-place comments from an out-of-touch president.
Steroids are Bush League! How Bush Talked about PEDs.
A full appreciation of going public necessitates looking at the message and the audience.
The Message. Persuading the American public means finding the right frame. Political scientist Robert Entman defines framing as “selecting, highlighting, and associating elements of reality to tell a coherent story.” If people are ambivalent about a political issue—say, they want government-funded health care and want to keep their doctor—an effective communicator can bring an audience to their way of thinking by raising some considerations while ignoring others. Frames that resonate with the American public tend to invoke deep-seated cultural values, are simple and easy to understand, are repeated often, and face little opposition.
Before analyzing Bush’s framing, let’s recall what he said:
“To help children make right choices, they need good examples. Athletics play such an important role in our society, but unfortunately, some in professional sports are not setting much of an example. The use of performance-enhancing drugs like steroids in baseball, football, and other sports is dangerous, and it sends the wrong message, that there are shortcuts to accomplishment and that performance is more important than character. So tonight I call on team owners, union representatives, coaches, and players to take the lead, to send the right signal, to get tough, and to get rid of steroids now.”
Two aspects of Bush’s framing deserve attention. First, the language is familiar. The president noted that athletes are role models, especially for children. In “The Sports Talk Presidency,” I show that almost all modern presidents have held athletes up as examples for the nation (in a total of 422 speeches), and many specifically point out that athletes are role models for children (in 49 speeches). Bush then stated that “athletics play such an important role in our society.” Bush was not the first president to recognize the importance of sport in American culture; a similar theme appears in 328 speeches from virtually every president since Truman. Bush was also not the only president to talk about PEDs; four of the past five presidents have mentioned steroids in public speeches. Finally, Bush was not the only president to believe that steroids sent the wrong message to the nation’s youth. In 2009, Barack Obama commented on slugger Alex Rodriguez’s admission of steroid use in words strikingly similar to Bush’s SOTU:
Bush in 2004: “To help children make right choices, they need good examples. Athletics play such an important role in our society, but unfortunately, some in professional sports are not setting much of an example… [steroid abuse] sends the wrong message, that there are shortcuts to accomplishment and that performance is more important than character.”
Obama in 2009: “…the thing I’m probably most concerned about is the message that it sends to our kids… hopefully, [the children] are watching and saying, you know what, there are no shortcuts; that when you try to take shortcuts, you may end up tarnishing your entire career, and that your integrity is not worth it. That’s the message I hope is communicated.”
Americans have heard these clichés a thousand times before—e.g., we must think of the children, athletes are role models, there are no shortcuts to success—but this framing may have worked because it was so familiar. Bush tapped into entrenched American values by focusing on the welfare of children and the principles of hard work and fair play. Although he did not offer any novel insights on PEDs, the fact that the President of the United States talked about steroids in a speech as meaningful as the SOTU may have injected some new life into these hackneyed themes.
A second notable aspect of Bush’s framing of steroids is that it speaks to the president’s tendency to see the world in the moral dualities of “right vs. wrong,” “good vs. evil,” and “with us or against us.” It is instructive that Bush framed steroids not as a public health concern—indeed, the president never even mentioned the adverse health effects of steroid abuse in his address—but as a moral evil. For Bush, steroid abuse represented the antithesis of American values of hard work and character: “it [steroid abuse] sends the wrong message, that there are shortcuts to accomplishment and that performance is more important than character.” Ridding sports of steroids is consistent with what David Brooks called “the grand Bushian rhetoric about ridding the world of evil.”
The power of the morality frame is that it taps into the pervasive mythology surrounding American sports. Many Americans see baseball (and sports in general) as the ultimate meritocracy where skill alone—not race, creed, or social position—determines success. Steroids tilt this mythically level playing field in un-American ways.
The Audience. When a president goes public, his ultimate audience is not the American people. Instead, the audience is some decision-making body the president needs but has little control over. This is usually Congress, but it can be other organizations, like professional sports leagues.
One of the more interesting aspects of Bush’s steroid comments is his audience. Bush ended his speech with this line:
“… So tonight I call on team owners, union representatives, coaches, and players to take the lead, to send the right signal, to get tough, and to get rid of steroids now.”
Bush is clearly speaking to the sporting world, not the government. He did not introduce any new policy proposal, call for new government funding, or mention the half-dozen bills on steroids pending before Congress. Instead, the audience was the professional sports leagues, and they were to solve the problem on their own.
The “it’s-not-the-government’s-job” frame is particularly striking because Bush offered detailed policy proposals on the topics he addressed immediately before and after his steroids comments. He called for $23 million in new funding to drug test school children and proposed doubling federal funding for sexual abstinence programs. John Walters, the director of National Drug Control Policy for the White House, described the president’s view that emerged from months of discussion: “the president has had a personal involvement with major league baseball, and he’s particularly concerned that it’s [steroids] bad for players, it’s bad for the sport, it’s bad for young people and he’s calling for them to fix it. It’s not a government responsibility” (emphasis added).
Bush repeated his “it’s-not-the-government’s-job” frame in subsequent comments on the matter. Over the next few years, the president conspicuously avoided a political stance on many questions, including whether Congress should subpoena MLB players to testify about steroid use, whether he would grant Olympic sprinter Marion Jones’ request for clemency for her role in the BALCO scandal, and whether players implicated in the Mitchell Report should face criminal prosecution. In each case, Bush repeated that (a) he was a concerned sports fan, (b) that PED use by professional athletes set a bad example for children, (c) cheating was un-American, and (d) that the professional sports leagues needed to enact stricter policies on their own. Bush’s answer to a reporter’s question on the Mitchell Report in 2007 is one example:
“A couple of reactions to the Mitchell report, as you know, I’m a baseball fan. I love the sport; I love the game. Like many fans, I’ve been troubled by the steroid allegations. I think it’s best that all of us not jump to any conclusions on individual player’s name, but we can jump to this conclusion: that steroids have sullied the game, and players and the owners must take the Mitchell report seriously. I’m confident they will. And my hope is that this report is a part of putting the steroid era of baseball behind us. You know, I—in the State of the Union a couple of years ago, I addressed the issue of steroids, and the reason I did so is because I understand the impact that professional athletes can have on our Nation’s youth. And I just urge our—those in the public spotlight, particularly athletes, to understand that when they violate their bodies, they’re sending a terrible signal to America’s young.” -- George W. Bush: “Remarks Following a Cabinet Meeting and an Exchange With Reporters,” December 14, 2007.
Although Bush would later sign into law several bills regulating PEDs—most notably the Anabolic Steroid Control Act of 2004—his public comments consistently framed steroids as a national concern, but not a matter for the federal government.
Bush’s audience and framing present an interesting paradox. On the one hand, steroids in sports were important enough of a political issue that Bush felt he had to address it in the SOTU. On the other hand, he then tried to depoliticize the problem by putting the onus on sports leagues.
A Swing and a Miss: The Effect of Bush’s Steroid Comments
Some experts believed Bush’s SOTU was a game-changer. The unfortunately-named Dick Pound, the head of the World Anti-Doping Agency, said the SOTU was “as close to a home run as you can get on this issue. It’s never been said before by someone in his position.” Istvan Gyulai, General Secretary of the International Association of Athletics Federation, commented that “the entire sport welcomes this.” Frank Uryasz, president of the National Center for Drug-Free Sport, said, “We shouldn’t underplay the importance of the president of the United States speaking out on this issue. I think it sends a strong message to sports that government is watching this.” As White House communications direction Dan Bartlett put it, steroids were “a bully-pulpit issue—using the power of the presidency to bring attention to an issue that was not the most pressing in the consciousness of a lot of Americans.” At the time, it seemed important that the most powerful man in the world used his most important speech to address steroids in sports.
But did Bush’s SOTU steroids comments matter? It is common for people to assume presidential rhetoric matters without bothering to find out whether it really does. The following sections look for tangible evidence that Bush’s steroid comments mattered in one or more of the following ways:
1. Setting the media agenda.
2. Setting the congressional agenda.
3. Shaping public opinion.
4. Forcing MLB to enact a tougher steroid policy.
As we will see, it is hard to find tangible evidence that Bush’s comments had much of an impact.
Media Coverage. One possible effect of Bush’s SOTU speech is that it prompted the media to cover steroids in sports. I looked at steroids coverage in both the New York Times and by network television news (ABC, CBS, and NBC) throughout Bush’s presidency to examine this possibility.
Figures 1 and 2 show that coverage of steroids did increase immediately after Bush’s SOTU. However, there was ample news coverage of steroid abuse before and after the SOTU—and the vast majority of the subsequent stories had little to do with the president’s speech. In fact, media coverage appears driven more by the actions of the other branches of government than by the president. For example, the IRS investigation into BALCO and the subsequent Justice Department indictments of key BALCO figures garnered far more media attention than Bush’s steroid comments. Media coverage also spiked during congressional hearings in March 2005 and February 2008, as star ballplayers testifying before Congress produced several made-for-TV moments. And the media went into a frenzy each time a star athlete was busted for steroids, which seemed like a weekly occurrence back in the 2000s. In short, it seems the media needed no prompting from Bush to cover the ever-widening steroid scandal.
Congressional Action. Another possible consequence of Bush’s SOTU is that it set the congressional agenda. Figure 3 shows that the number of bills and hearings on steroids increased dramatically after the 2004 SOTU. The 109th Congress (2005-2007) was particularly active, introducing 17 bills and holding ten hearings on PEDs. This increased activity could be evidence that Bush unintentionally spurred Congress into action (recall that the president did not ask for, nor appear to want, a legislative remedy). However, it is important to note that Congress worked on the steroid issue long before the SOTU. From Bush’s inauguration to his 2004 SOTU, Congress held three hearings and introduced 12 bills on PEDs. In fact, eight bills on steroids were currently pending before Congress as Bush delivered his address. The SOTU may have intensified Congress’s focus on steroids, but Bush did not put PEDs on the congressional agenda.
Like the question of media coverage, it is difficult to assess how many of the post-SOTU congressional bills/hearings can be traced back to Bush, how many to BALCO, and how many to Bonds and the Bash Brothers. One way to measure the president's influence is to examine how often participants in congressional hearings mentioned Bush or his SOTU address. In the 19 congressional hearings on steroids held from 2004 to 2009, Bush’s SOTU was referenced 20 times. Although 20 references are substantial, it pales in comparison to the number of times participants mentioned BALCO (68 mentions), Mark McGwire (106), or the Olympic Games (352). Again, it appears that Congress was reacting to events in the sporting world—especially doping in the Olympics and the ongoing BALCO investigation—and not the SOTU.
Public Opinion. It is also difficult to find evidence of what effect, if any, Bush’s comments had on the American public. A vast majority of Americans shared Bush’s opinion that steroids sent the wrong message. An ABC/ESPN Poll in March 2005 found that 82 percent of all Americans thought PED use by professional athletes set a bad example for the nation’s youth. But this snapshot of opinion does not tell us whether the president shaped public opinion, whether this public sentiment existed before Bush’s SOTU, or whether the public was responding to events in the sporting world. Unfortunately, I could not find any similarly-worded pre-SOTU/post-SOTU survey questions on steroids from which we might infer a bully pulpit effect, nor could I find any poll that asked directly about Bush’s steroid comments in his SOTU. The best we can do is look at four pieces of indirect evidence to see if the president’s rhetoric shaped public opinion or focused their attention on the steroid scandal.
First, several IPSOS-Public Affairs polls taken between 2005 and 2007 asked baseball fans how much they cared about players using steroids. Because the first question in this series came after the 2004 SOTU, we cannot directly assess the effect of Bush’s address. With this caveat in mind, baseball fans cared “a lot” more about steroids in baseball in 2007 (71 percent) than they did back in 2005 (55 percent). If Bush had been the main force driving public opinion on steroids, then it is reasonable to expect the peak of public concern would have occurred closer to his SOTU address, not further away.
The second source of evidence comes from a series of questions asking respondents what they felt was the biggest problem facing baseball. Figure 4 shows that more people felt that steroids were baseball’s main problem after Bush’s SOTU (27 percent in April 2005) than before (16 percent in June 2003). This 11 percent increase in public concern could be evidence that Bush shaped mass opinion, but alternative explanations are equally plausible. Again, other events (e.g., BALCO) were happening during this time. The results could also be a methodological artifact, a product of two different survey organizations asking slightly different questions of different populations. Finally, it is interesting to note that while public concern about steroid use in MLB jumped 11 percent from 2003 to 2005, Americans continued to believe that the size of player salaries, not steroids, was the biggest problem facing baseball. If the president truly wanted to hit a home run with the American public, he should have railed against the $22 million-a-year the Yankees were paying Alex Rodriguez rather than the steroids A-Rod was taking.
A third way to examine Bush’s effect on the American public is to see where steroids fell on the list of issues Americans found important. As we have seen, some observers have claimed that Bush’s steroids speech was an attempt to divert or pander. If this was indeed the Bush administration’s strategy, it failed miserably. In an open-ended Gallup Poll taken before the 2004 election, not a single person mentioned steroids as the nation's most important problem. A fixed-choice NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll taken in March 2005 asked Americans which of eight news stories they followed with the greatest interest. Steroid use by ballplayers was at the bottom of that list (5 percent).
A final source of evidence is to look for a partisan divide on steroids. All things being equal, we might expect Bush’s steroid comments to resonate with more Republicans since individuals tend to be more receptive to arguments coming from politicians of their party. This, however, was not the case. Democrats were the most concerned about steroids (67 percent cared “a lot”), followed by Independents (57 percent), and then Republicans (49 percent). Again, this snapshot view of public opinion tells only a partial story; it is possible that Republicans went from caring nothing about steroids before the SOTU to caring quite a bit about them after. Although we cannot rule out this possibility, the more likely explanation is that Bush’s SOTU did not have much effect on public opinion in general or Republican opinion in particular.
MLB’s Steroid Policy. The final, and most important, question is whether Bush’s SOTU prompted MLB to enact a serious PED policy in the fall of 2005. Certainly, there are a lot of potential explanations for the change in policy that has nothing to do with the federal government: disgruntled fans, pressure from the media, clean players fed up with competing against dirty players, concerns about PEDs sullying the game, etc. But to the extent the federal government mattered at all, it was Congress that was the heavy hitter.
Congress, not the president, issued the sternest threats to MLB. At the March 2004 Senate Commerce Committee hearings, John McCain (R-AZ) stated, “Your failure to commit to addressing this issue straight on and immediately will motivate this committee to search for legislative remedies.” In a statement to the House Committee on Government Reform in 2005, Hall of Fame pitcher Senator Jim Bunning (R-KY) laid out Congress’ power over MLB: “If baseball fails to fix this scandal, then there are a lot of things we can do to get their attention, by amending the labor laws, repealing the outdated antitrust exemption that baseball alone enjoys and shining the spotlight of public scrutiny.” And Congressman Joe Barton (R-TX) stated at a 2005 subcommittee hearing that “in a perfect world I’d rather this just be done in collective bargaining or voluntary acceptance by the players in respective sports. But obviously we don’t live in a perfect world. And in this case we need federal intervention. I think we’ve gone too long.” These statements were far more threatening to MLB than anything Bush said in his SOTU.
And it was Congress, not the president, which had the power to affect MLB’s internal operations by imposing a national drug testing policy or revoking baseball’s antitrust immunity. Congress followed through on its threats by introducing 32 bills and resolutions on steroids from 2002 to 2005. Although many of these bills simply classified different substances as PEDs, others were more ambitious. For instance, Congressman John Sweeney’s (R-NY) Professional Sports Integrity Act of 2005—and its companion bill in the Senate, John McCain’s (R-AZ) Clean Sports Act of 2005—proposed to test all professional athletes four times a year, punish first-time offenders with a two-year suspension, and enact a permanent ban upon a second positive test. While few of these bills made it out of committee, the possibility that they might become law motivated MLB to act before it was too late. In short, congressional action likely spoke much louder than the president’s words.
Finally, MLB’s commissioner Bud Selig appealed to Congress, not the White House, to break the collective bargaining impasse. In an open letter to the Fans of Major League Baseball written in May 2005, Commissioner Bud Selig welcomed congressional legislation if the players’ union did not agree to terms:
“I believe that expeditious, effective changes in our agreement, whose elements are consistent with the goals I have outlined above, is a course of action far preferable to federal legislation on this issue. However, in the event that we are unable to achieve agreement with the MLBPA on this matter and I am left with no reasonable alternative to address this critical issue, I will support federal legislation, as it has been introduced by Congressman Stearns. I am convinced that he and his committee chairman, Congressman Joe Barton, share my goal of eliminating illegal performance-enhancing drugs from Major League Baseball.”
In sum, many pressures forced MLB to change its policy, and it is difficult to isolate the effect of any one factor. However, it seems safe to say that to the extent the federal government mattered, it was Congress, not the president, that forced MLB to institute a stricter steroid policy. Baseball persisted in its half-measured steroid policy for almost two years after Bush’s SOTU. In the interim, Congress was actively holding hearings and introducing legislation designed to force baseball into meaningful reforms. Had Congress agreed with Bush’s view that steroids were not a government responsibility, reform in baseball may have come much later, if at all.
The political science lesson here is that the president is usually less powerful than you might think. Instead of speaking softly and carrying a big stick, Bush spoke loudly and carried a Whiffle ball bat.
