The Op-Ed That Changed a Presidency, and the Ones That Didn’t

An op-ed runs on a Tuesday, gets shared widely for a few hours, generates a small wave of replies and counter-arguments, and then disappears from the news cycle by Friday. That is the standard arc, and it describes ninety-nine percent of the opinion writing that gets published in major American outlets. Most op-eds do not change anything. They participate in a conversation, register a position, and pass.

A small number of op-eds have done more than that. They have shifted the political agenda of an administration, changed how a major news story was understood, or established a frame that subsequent coverage adopted. Looking at which op-eds did that and what they had in common is a useful exercise. The common features are specific. The features are not mysterious. They explain why most op-eds do not produce the same effect.

What an op-ed is actually trying to do

An op-ed has limited time with the reader and limited space on the page. The author has roughly 800 to 1,200 words to make an argument, defend it, and leave the reader with something to remember. The genre requires compression, and that compression is what distinguishes good op-eds from long-form journalism. An op-ed that reads like a research paper is a bad op-ed; one that reads like a clean, sharp argument is doing the job.

The audience for an op-ed is usually multilayered. The general public reads it as opinion journalism. Specific subgroups — political operatives, journalists, policy professionals — read it as a signal about where the conversation is going. The author of the piece is often more interested in the second audience than the first. The general readership produces the wave of shares; the smaller specialist readership produces the conversation that determines whether the piece has any lasting effect.

The best op-eds are written with both audiences in mind. They make an argument that lay readers can follow, while also placing markers that specialists will recognize as new or important. The combination is rare. Most op-eds aim at one audience and miss the other.

The op-eds that landed

A few specific op-eds in recent decades have produced effects that persisted beyond the news cycle of their publication.

The 2018 anonymous op-ed in the New York Times — "I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration" — changed how the administration’s internal dynamics were covered for the rest of the term. It was not particularly substantive on policy. It claimed that senior officials were working to constrain decisions the president was making. The claim was enormously consequential because it confirmed a frame that had been emerging in coverage. Subsequent reporting then operated inside that frame.

The 2003 New York Times op-ed by Joseph Wilson — "What I Didn’t Find in Africa" — directly contradicted a specific claim in the administration’s case for the Iraq War. The op-ed produced a sequence of events that included the outing of his wife as a CIA officer, the appointment of a special counsel, and a years-long political controversy. The piece itself was a focused factual challenge to a specific claim, and the focus is what made it work. A broader op-ed making a general anti-war argument would not have produced the same response.

The 1985 Wall Street Journal op-ed by Norman Podhoretz on the Reagan administration’s foreign policy was credited with shifting the administration’s posture on specific Cold War questions. The piece was published in a venue with direct readership inside the administration, made an argument the administration was already partly considering, and supplied language that subsequent administration statements adopted. The op-ed worked because it landed in the right venue at the right moment for an argument the readers were already half-prepared to make.

The pattern across these examples is that op-eds with measurable effects were specific, targeted, and matched to the moment. They were not general arguments. They were focused interventions designed to move a particular debate by a particular increment.

The op-eds that did not land

For every op-ed that produced a measurable effect, there are thousands that did not. The pattern in the non-landing op-eds is the opposite of the pattern in the successful ones. They are general where the successful ones are specific. They restate positions the reader already holds. They reach for emotional registers without earning them. They argue from premises that the target audience does not share.

A particular kind of op-ed that almost never lands is the "we must" piece — an argument that some action must be taken, framed as if the author has authority to declare it. The genre is common because it is satisfying to write and produces audible agreement from sympathetic readers, but it almost never changes the calculation of decision-makers, because decision-makers do not respond to declarations from outside their authority chain. They respond to evidence, arguments that change the cost-benefit framing of their decisions, and pressures that come through channels they care about. An op-ed that operates as a press release for the writer’s preferences produces a press release effect.

Another common failure mode is the celebrity op-ed — a piece signed by a famous name but written by staff, making an argument that is generic and uninformative. These run constantly and rarely produce anything. The byline gets the attention; the substance is too thin to land. Sophisticated readers learn to scan past them.

Why the format has gotten weaker

The reach and influence of op-eds has declined as the information environment has fragmented. A generation ago, an op-ed in a major outlet was read by most political professionals, was discussed in the next day’s coverage across multiple outlets, and had a coherent national audience. Today, an op-ed competes with thousands of other pieces, social media commentary, podcast segments, and direct messaging from politicians and movements. The same content reaches a smaller share of the relevant audience and produces a smaller share of the resulting conversation.

The economics of opinion journalism have also shifted. Major outlets publish many more op-eds than they did decades ago, which dilutes the attention any single piece receives. Some outlets have moved to digital-first publication, which means the piece is competing with the outlet’s news coverage for the same readers in the same scroll. The op-ed page used to be a distinct destination; it is now a section of a much larger content menu.

The result is that the threshold for landing is higher. An op-ed that would have produced a measurable effect two decades ago might now produce a brief Twitter discussion and disappear. The pieces that still land have to be sharper, more specific, and better-placed than they used to need to be.

When op-eds still matter

For all the diminished influence, op-eds still matter in a few specific ways. They serve as venues for marking positions, signaling shifts in elite opinion, and floating ideas before they become policy. They are read by political staff, journalists, donors, and the small set of decision-makers who can act on what they read. An op-ed that lands well in front of this audience can still produce real effects, even when its impact on the broader public is minimal.

The pieces that most reliably produce these effects are the ones written by people with credibility on the specific issue, published in venues the relevant audience reads, making arguments that connect to decisions actually being considered. Op-eds by former government officials about policies they once helped shape, by experts about issues in their domain of expertise, or by participants in events they are credentialed to discuss tend to land more often than general commentary by professional opinion writers.

A reader following political news can learn to spot the op-eds worth attention. They tend to be specific, sourced, and written by people whose authority over the topic is not just rhetorical. They make arguments that change the calculation of someone who could act on them. The opinion pages of major outlets contain a lot of background noise and a few signal pieces every week. Identifying which is which is the skill that turns op-ed reading from a habit into a useful practice.