by Del Cap Fri Feb 18, 2022 1:36 pm
It has long been conventional wisdom in Washington political circles that American voters don’t care about foreign policy. So much so, in fact, that the last time I substituted for Ed Luce here at Swamp Notes, I predicted that a complete collapse of the Afghan government after a US pullout would probably not affect Joe Biden’s standing at home.
I’m sure that you, dear reader, were as surprised as I was to find out that I was dead wrong on that. In fact, the collapse in Biden’s job-approval rating can be pegged almost to the date that the Taliban over-ran Kabul. The last time the president’s approval rating was above 50 per cent was the week before the US-backed Afghan government disappeared; he has been below 50 per cent ever since — and is now struggling to stay above the 40 per cent threshold.
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Taken together, these events punctured the image of competence that helped Biden defeat the slightly more mercurial Donald Trump. But given the centrality of the Afghan collapse to this litany of woes, I thought it was worth revisiting the assumption that foreign affairs have a limited impact on domestic political standing — particularly now, with a land war in Europe in the offing.
This week, for the first time since Vladimir Putin began amassing troops on the Ukrainian border, there were signs the Russian president might blink. First, there was the Austin Powers-esque long table meeting with Sergei Lavrov, where Putin’s foreign minister seemed to suggest the US had made substantive diplomatic overtures that could preclude an invasion. That was followed by a Kremlin announcement that some Russian troops deployed to the border regions were heading back to barracks after a series of drills.
By week’s end, those hopes were dashed by intelligence showing Russian troops actually increasing at the Ukrainian border and White House warnings that an attack was again “imminent”. Still, Biden has won rare bipartisan support for his ability to rally the west; to go toe-to-toe with the Kremlin in the information war; and to strike the proper balance between carrots offered (diplomatic negotiations) and sticks threatened (sanctions). If Putin does step back from the brink, could Biden reverse his political slide at home?
I rang Jason McMann, the head of geopolitical risk analysis at Morning Consult, a Washington-based polling and research firm that recently released a detailed study of global opinion on the Ukraine conflict. Although the report showed Americans divided over Biden’s handling of the crisis (39 per cent approve, 40 per cent disapprove), they overwhelmingly support the policies he is pursuing. They back his troop deployments to eastern Europe, for instance, as well as his diplomatic engagement. Perhaps most hearteningly, they overwhelmingly support the right of Ukraine to join Nato.
I asked McMann whether he thought foreign policy was becoming more central to voter opinion about US political leaders, and he pointed to an interesting data point in his Ukraine study: normally, when Americans are asked about an overseas event, the percentage who volunteer “don’t know” or “have no opinion” hovers between 20 and 25 per cent. But when they were asked whether they were concerned about a Russian invasion of Ukraine, only 9 per cent said they had no opinion — a clear sign that the vast majority of Americans are paying attention.
“It goes to the fact that even a smallish country like Ukraine can now capture the attention of the American public,” McMann said.
Like almost everything else in modern American politics, McMann thinks the trigger for this change was Donald Trump. He said that Trump’s trade war with China appeared to be a tipping point, a moment where Americans began to view the geopolitical as domestic. Trump’s “America First” nationalism also played a part, McMann added, putting the naked promotion of American interests abroad at the centre of what constitutes Trumpism at home.
That thesis rang true to me, particularly when you consider Biden’s foreign policy team came into office touting the slightly mealy-mouthed principle of a “foreign policy for the middle class”. They were probably looking at the same polling data as McMann, and tried to meld what they wanted to do abroad with the new domestic awareness of its impact at home — particularly with regard to China.
Still, McMann is not convinced that a Putin blink over Ukraine will significantly shift Biden’s fortunes in the longer term, and certainly not enough to change Democratic prospects in November’s midterm elections. Like most political victories, Biden could get a short-term boost in the polls, he suggested, but nothing more.
[B]With China, however, McMann sees a foreign policy issue with more staying power.[b] “Until recently, you didn’t have major debates about China as a great power,” he said. “We now see it coming back time and again.” And if Biden didn’t get China right, he added, he would pay for it with American voters.
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https://www.ft.com/content/13789e0b-d10f-4640-bf42-b24f7e6af7d4
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