BOB GARFIELD: From WNYC in New York, this is NPR's On the Media. Brooke Gladstone is out this week. I'm Bob Garfield. This week, the President gave his long-awaited speech on Afghanistan.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: I have determined that it is in our vital national interest to send an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan. After 18 months, our troops will begin to come home. These are the resources and –

[SOUND TRAILS OFF]

BOB GARFIELD: And so ends three months of closed-door deliberations, leaks, managed and unmanaged, sniping from Dick Cheney and rampant speculation from pundits and analysts. But what about the American public? Were we swayed by the speech? Eh, probably not. Research by political scientists has shown that presidential speeches seldom, if ever, influence popular opinion, at least in a long-term meaningful way. Most people don't even watch presidential speeches, and those who do don't necessarily grasp the underlying policy complexities. And anyway, in the polarized environment of 21st-century politics, audiences, informed and uniformed, are apt to believe what they wish to believe, no matter what the president says. But if speeches don't really matter, why are the media so obsessed with them? George Edwards III, a political scientist at Texas A&M, has a theory.

George Edwards III: It’s fodder for the media. It’s what they have in front of them. And so, naturally it becomes a focus for them to analyze, and over the next few days there will be polls taken to see whether or not opinion changed on the president.

BOB GARFIELD: Well, what about presidents like FDR, whom we remember as having these fireside chats that had the entire nation in his thrall?

GEORGE EDWARDS III: FDR was certainly a very able orator, but there’s a couple of interesting things that people don't know. Despite American political folklore, lots of people didn't listen to the fireside chats. That’s just a fact. Second, FDR had a terrible time moving the public. Think about the issue of getting the country ready for the biggest challenge of the 20th century, I suppose, World War II. And the president was very interested in this and worked on it constantly for years before our actual entry into the war. And he was frustrated at virtually every step of the way in getting the country armed. Indeed, as late as 1941, we almost disbanded the American Army, in effect, because we only passed a draft by one vote in the House of Representatives. I mean, that shows you the difficulty that the president had. And you can go to, you know, the great communicator, Ronald Reagan. We all know that he was very interested in stopping Communism in Central America and aiding the Contras. And if you look at his memoirs, he laments the fact that, as he said, he went time and time again to the American public and the American public didn't respond, they didn't pay attention. They didn't even know where Nicaragua was.

BOB GARFIELD: [LAUGHS] Nicaragua? Hell, Wisconsin!

GEORGE EDWARDS III: [LAUGHS]

BOB GARFIELD: [LAUGHING] I think he bit off a little more than he could chew.

GEORGE EDWARDS III: [LAUGHS] Well, it could well be.

BOB GARFIELD: In a perfect world for the President, he makes a speech and, you know, he improves in the polls in his approval ratings, and on top of that, he gets various Americans to notify their congressmen of their support for this or that position. Does that never happen?

GEORGE EDWARDS III: It basically does not happen. I can think of one instance. And that is in 1981, Ronald Reagan gave a speech on behalf of his tax cut. And there were lots of people who communicated with Congress on behalf of the president, and that helped move Congress. That became part of the American political folklore, and that’s what people tend to remember, and the fact that it hasn't happened since then [LAUGHS] is what they forget. And I might add that a policy which says, tell you what I'm going to do, I'm going to give you money, you know, [LAUGHS] if you support my policy – is not necessarily the hardest case to make. And most of the cases the presidents have to make are much more difficult than that. [LAUGHING]

BOB GARFIELD: [LAUGHS] Okay, all right, point taken. But I have to ask, if it’s so clear that these speeches have little or no effect, tell me again why presidents bother making them to begin with?

GEORGE EDWARDS III: Well, I think that presidents have a couple of incentives to make speeches, even if they are not very persuasive, and the first is usually to just maintain his own supporters. And that’s very important. And maybe the first rule of politics is solidify the core. Another reason is that when you have a very important decision, there’s an expectation that you take your case to the public. And if you’re not doing that, it looks bad.

BOB GARFIELD: I think we like to cling to this sort of Frank Capra notion of a political world in which ideas as annunciated through sparkling oratory really make a difference, but if they don't, what does?

GEORGE EDWARDS III: I think what does is what really ought to, and that is events, history, the real world. People respond to that. They may not have a handle on something as complex as the economy, but they know something about it. They have some sense of unemployment. They knew generally what was going on in Iraq for year after year when we weren't doing very well. That speaks very eloquently to people, and that has a big impact, the same thing that FDR faced in trying to get the public ready for World War II. There were very dramatic events abroad. And that’s what they respond to, and that’s what they ought to respond to.

BOB GARFIELD: Professor Edwards, thank you very much.

GEORGE EDWARDS III: My pleasure.

BOB GARFIELD: George Edwards III is a Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Texas A&M.