ACCORDING TO THE RECEIVED WISDOM early in the Clinton administration, most Americans wanted the new president to concentrate on domestic matters and substantially ignore foreign policy. In the spring of 1993, for example, Clinton pollster and strategist Stanley Greenberg remarked that “America is much more insular. . . . The primary job qualification for the president is whether he can restore America’s prosperity.”
The administration acted on such assumptions — which were in fact wrong on the essentials. Most Americans know that their country has large international interests and responsibilities and want it to pursue them actively. Besides, the world would not let this or any other modern U.S. president attend minimally to foreign affairs.
Clinton slowly began to acknowledge that he had vastly misunderstood the public’s intent. Last summer he ended 30 months of ambivalence and constant course shifting on Bosnia and commenced a policy at once activist and reasonably coherent — which brought us to the truce agreement and the commitment to deploy U. S. troops.
Now we’re hearing that Clinton’s present course is incredibly risky politically, that the public won’t give him much credit if the policy succeeds but will blame him abundantly if things go wrong. But the current view that the administration’s reformed Bosnia policy is politically dangerous again vastly misunderstands American opinion on presidents and foreign policy. Opinion research over the last 50 years clearly establishes three key propositions.
1. The American public consistently rewards strong, activist, coherent presidential leadership in foreign affairs, as long as the president can make a reasonable case for his policy, consistent with national values.
There’s lots of evidence for this, but easily the most impressive comes in the one instance Vietnam where the public finally turned decisively against U. S. intervention. Americans generally backed the Kennedy and Johnson administrations on Vietnam, accepting their argument that their policy was a sound application of a successful principle “containment” which had guided our foreign policy since 1947. Majority opinion broke with Johnson remarkably slowly and only when flaws in his handling of the war had become manifest.
“People are called ‘hawks,'” a Gallup poll asked, “if they want to step up ou r military effort in Vietnam. They are called “doves” if t hey want to reduce our military effort. . . . How would you describe yourself as a “hawk’ or as a “dove’?” As late as February 1968, just after the enemy had launched its Tet offensive, which included the highly publicized assault on the U.S. embassy in Saigon, 61 percent said they were hawks, 23 percent doves. It wasn’t until the full unfolding of Tet had convinced people the administration couldn’t deliver on its promise to turn back the North Vietnamese decisively, that public support ebbed.
2. Americans aren’t foolishly naive about foreign interventions they understand there will be costs and accept those commensurate with the objectives being sought.
How often we heard in the four months between Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait and the U.S. military’s attack that the public was hugely ambivalent about what should be done and would not accept paying much of a price for war. This was usually put delicately-that Americans would rise up “once the body bags start coming home.” U.S. forces were extraordinarily successful, but in the months before the war’s decisive conclusion the public gave strong and consistent backing to Bush’s determined, all-out response. Polls showed that much of the public expected that there would be a substantial loss of American lives but still backed the president’s commitment of troops on the grounds of compelling national interests. Revealing here are the findings of a November 1990 ABC/Washington Post survey: Just 36 percent expressed dissatisfaction with Bush’s handling of the Iraqi invasion and, strikingly, of these dissenters, half said the president was “moving too slowly against Iraq”!
3. [Ve should never underestimate the power of American nationalism which expresses itself in the persistent call for U.S. global leadership.
Happily, Americans never say we “want war” and always indicate a genuine reluctance to put the country’s armed forces at risk. Nonetheless, “Americans like to think their nation is No. 1 in the world,” then-New York Times columnist Tom Wicker wrote in 1991. “Whatever else they may think of their president, they expect him, as their representative, to be a formidable figure on the world stage.” Polls overwhelmingly support this.
Through most of his presidency, Mr. Clinton paid a high price politically for being the very antithesis of “a formidable figure” internationally. Now, Republicans should realize there’s nothing to gain from attacking him for finally offering leadership other than noting that he is incredibly late in offering it.
It’s still true, of course, that one swallow doesn’t make a springtime — that Bill Clinton can’t redeem a foreign policy marked by confusion and misdirection with one burst of coherence. When CBS News asked in its quickie poll just after the president’s speech November 27, “Who do you trust more to make the right decisions on foreign policy — Bill Clinton or Congress?” just 35 percent said the president, 49 percent Congress.
What’s more, Americans aren’t undiscriminating on matters of foreign intervention — we make distinctions from one instance to another. Vital U.S. interests were engaged in the Gulf war. For his firm response, President Bush received far stronger public backing than President Clinton is receiving or will receive in his Bosnia intervention — where U.S. interests are vastly less substantial.
The American public is not guided, however, solely by raisons d’etat. Most of us believe that our country has a high moral role to play in the world — which involves, where we can, reducing suffering and advancing freedom. We still think, as a people, that contributing to the good of humanity — a central part of our national idea historically — is in the national interest. In his humanitarian appeal on Bosnia, then, Clinton is speaking to something quite real.
The public will, appropriately, expect competence and coherence in the practical execution of the administration’s Bosnia policy. If it is not disappointed, President Clinton can only gain.
Everett Carll Lad is president of the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research.
