its about Supreme Court nominations and public

appeals presidents only go public when the

opposition is mobilized against their candidate
which makes it harder to win from the outset
thats why theres more negative results.
Bond and Fleisher 11. [Jon, Professor @ Texas A&M, Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign, Richard, Professor of Political Science, Fordham University, Editors Introduction
Presidential Studies Quarterly Volume 41 Issue 3 September -- p. 437-441]
In "Going Public When Opinion Is Contested: Evidence from Presidents' Campaigns for Supreme Court
Nominees, 1930-2009," Charles Cameron and Jee-Kwang Park add new insight to the analysis of going
public. Two innovations advance our understanding. First, the analysis of Supreme Court nominations
permits examination of presidential and congressional behavior back to 1930, a longer period of time than
usual. Second, the analysis incorporates the observation that presidents' efforts to influence the public do
not occur in a vacuum. Instead, going public is often an "opinion contest" in which the president often
competes against opponents who also go public.

The confirmation process for S upreme

C ourt nominees was traditionally low key, and we do not see presidents'
going public in support of their before the mid-1960s. The authors find that
presidents go public when groups mobilize against the nominee. As a result,
going public is associated with more negative votes in the Senate , because
presidents go public over Supreme Court nominees only when battling active
opposition to a controversial nomination. This study shows the limits of the standard
"political capital" model and helps explain why we often fail to find the expected
positive effects.