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Executive Summary
When the President speaks, people listen. The Presidential Bully Pulpit is a unique and
indisputably powerful tool available to the President alone to persuade Americans and shape a
national agenda. President Barack Obama – a highly celebrated speaker noted for his oratory –
exerts this power with uncommon vigor. President Obama’s ability to command the rapt
attention of the national news media, and by extension the American people, has become his
most effective and favored rhetorical tool. With his Bully Pulpit, President Obama wields the
power to singlehandedly shape the national dialogue. In this case, President Obama’s Bully
Pulpit led to the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of conservative tax-exempt applicants.
On the evening of January 27, 2010, President Barack Obama stood in the chamber of the
House of Representatives to deliver his annual State of the Union Address. Speaking to the
assembled audience of Congressmen, Senators, Cabinet officials, and Supreme Court Justices –
and to the millions of Americans watching on television – President Obama delivered a stunning
rebuke of the Supreme Court. “With all due deference to separation of powers,” the President
intoned, “last week the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the
floodgates for special interests – including foreign corporations – to spend without limit in our
elections.”
1
The President continued: “I don’t think American elections should be bankrolled by
America’s most powerful interests, or worse by foreign entities. They should be decided by the
American people. And I’d urge Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill that helps to correct
some of these problems.”
2
The Supreme Court decision, of course, was its Citizens United v. Federal Election
Commission decision, in which the Court affirmed free speech by striking down certain arbitrary
limits on political spending.
3
The bill the President urged to be passed became known as the
DISCLOSE Act, sponsored by Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) and Representative Chris Van
Hollen (D-MD).
4
In the months after the President’s State of the Union Address, he kept up the
rhetorical assault as he railed against the decision in campaign-style speeches across the country.
In these speeches, the President called conservative groups “shadowy” entities with “innocuous”
and “benign-sounding” names that “are running millions of dollars of attack ads against
Democratic candidates.”
5
Calling them “phony” and “front groups,” the President urged a “fix”
to the Citizens United decision, which he believed allowed these nefarious groups to “pose” as
nonprofits.
6
1
The White House, Remarks by the President in the State of the Union Address (Jan. 27, 2010).
The President’s allies in Congress and elsewhere echoed this call, working
2
Id.
3
Citizens United v. Fed. Election Comm’n, 558 U.S. 310 (2010).
4
See H.R. 5175, 111th Cong. (2010); S. 3628, 111th Cong. (2010).
5
See, e.g., The White House, Remarks by the President on the DISCLOSE ACT (July 26, 2010); The White House,
Weekly Address: President Obama Calls on Congress to Enact Reforms to Stop a “Corporate Takeover of Our
Elections” (May 1, 2010); The White House, Remarks by the President at Finance Reception for Congressman
Sestak (Sept. 20, 2010); The White House, Remarks by the President at DNC Gen44 Event (Sept. 30, 2010).
6
See, e.g., The White House, Weekly Address: President Obama Castigates GOP Leadership for Blocking Fixes for
the Citizens United Decision (Sept. 18, 2010); The White House, Remarks by the President at a DNC Finance Event
in Chicago, Illinois (Aug. 5, 2010).; The White House, Remarks by the President at an Event for Senator Boxer in
Los Angeles, California (Oct. 22, 2010).