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Go Home The Hard Sell

POLITICS OCTOBER 22, 2009

The Hard Sell

BY PATRICK J. EGAN AND JOSHUA A. TUCKER

President Obama faces an enormous political challenge in figuring out how to respond to General Stanley McChrystal's request for more soldiers in Afghanistan. One the one hand, resisting troop requests from the military during a time of war is difficult for any chief executive--particularly for Democratic presidents. On the other hand, Americans are showing little stomach to once again commit more troops to a distant, war-torn region: No recent survey has found majority support for the idea.

No matter what choice Obama makes, he should not be deluded into thinking that his rhetorical gifts can move public opinion on this issue. According to research by Professor George Edwards of Texas A&M University, recent presidents, no matter how golden-tongued, have had virtually no power to change public opinion on foreign policy. Bill Clinton, for example, kicked off a high-profile call to send U.S. peacekeepers to Bosnia with a nationally televised address in November 1995. In response, public approval for the idea hardly moved at all, hovering around 40 percent for the next two years. Likewise, despite repeated pleas to the public, Ronald Reagan never moved support for aiding the Nicaraguan contras beyond the mid-30s.

Additionally, Democratic presidents like Obama face a particular handicap when making major foreign policy moves: For decades, the public has distrusted the Democrats on issues related to national security. That remained true throughout George W. Bush's disastrous handling of the Iraq War. And even in early 2008, when the Republican Party was near its nadir in terms of popularity, survey data from the Pew Research Center indicated that Democrats' best issues remained on the domestic front--health care and education--while foreign policy, terrorism, and even Iraq were all at the bottom of the list. 

While it is true that the Democrats' reputation on foreign policy has experienced a recent uptick--in Pew's August survey, Democrats enjoyed a 13-point lead on foreign policy and a nine-point advantage on Afghanistan--Obama shouldn't allow that fact to lull him into thinking his party has conquered the American public's skepticism. "Issue ownership," as defined by political scientist John Petrocik to mean a party's core reputation for competence on a specific issue, takes a long time to build. It can only be established with a substantial history of attention to problems in a specific policy domain, and a track record of resolving those problems consistently over time. (The Republican edge on foreign policy goes back at least as far as to the fall of the Berlin Wall.) 

Furthermore, research by one of us (Egan) indicates that the public, which tends to know few details about the country's problems and even less about how to solve them, grants the parties some leeway to make policy on issues they "own." By contrast, voters can quickly turn against a party if its leaders advocate unsuccessful policies in an area where they don't have a long-term advantage. In other words, a Bill Clinton can make missteps on a Democratic issue like health care and still get reelected, and a George W. Bush can recover from a massive failure in Iraq. But Barack Obama likely has little margin for error in Afghanistan.

So what can Obama do to navigate this political minefield? While he can't do much to change the public's opinion of the war in Afghanistan itself--some people will inevitably be disappointed, whether he decides to send a lot more troops or not--Obama will have the first chance to frame his decision in the eyes of the public. It is crucial that he make the most of this one-time opportunity to reassure people about his own ability to manage U.S. foreign policy, and lay the groundwork for continued long-term improvements in the public's perception of Democrats on defense-related issues.

To do this, Obama should follow the same format that President Bush used to announce his "surge" in Iraq: an address to the nation from the White House, without the back-and-forth of a press conference. His speech should focus on one theme and one theme only--U.S. national security. If he decides not to give McChrystal all the requested troops, he should explain why moving 80,000 troops into Afghanistan would actually harm U.S. national security by weakening our defenses elsewhere. If he decides to talk about the electoral fraud purportedly perpetrated by Hamid Karzai's supporters, then he has to explain why it hurts U.S. national security to be propping up an illegitimate government.

Doing that could keep him out of the trap that Bill Clinton fell into when he allowed Republicans to frame the mission in Bosnia as a fuzzy-headed nation-building exercise. Current survey data show that Americans are much more enthusiastic about our military presence in Afghanistan--to the tune of 30 percentage points--if it is framed as an attempt to weaken terrorists' ability to attack the United States, rather than an attempt to build a stable democracy. Obama should repeat the first of these rationales over and over again. He should never mention the second one in a speech to the American people.

Once he has decided the new policy, it is also crucial that the military leadership appears to be on his side. Whether or not it was appropriate for General McChrystal to publicly voice his opinions in recent weeks, nothing will undercut Obama faster than a perception that the generals disagree with his policy. Obama must ensure that everyone involved in the “war councils,” both military and civilian, publicly supports whatever choice he ultimately makes.

And if, as appears likely, Obama decides to grant McChrystal an intermediate number of troops--especially if it is 20,000 or more--then he should consider framing (as is currently being done by some media outlets) it as a replication of the now successful "surge" strategy in Iraq. Obama can stress that he's proposing a surge not only in form but also in substance—that is, a temporary escalation that will be followed by gradual transfer of responsibilities to Afghan security forces and then a draw-down. A counterintuitive move for sure, but one that would defray criticism from the right, since Obama could say his escalation is at least as audacious as President Bush's (whose request also numbered 20,000 troops). At the same time, it could help him blunt dissatisfaction on the left by invoking a credible vision of how he will end the war: Polls show that Americans think Obama has done a good job in Iraq, where he’s been drawing down troops following the successful surge there. It would also give Obama an opportunity to do one of the things he does best: graciously acknowledge the other side of the aisle--and in particular, his 2008 nemesis John McCain--for advocating the idea in the first place.

If Obama takes all of these precautions, he just might contain the political fallout from a painful foreign policy choice. Let's hope he does. After all, Afghanistan may turn out to be the most challenging foreign policy decision of Obama’s presidency, but it is unlikely to be last one on which he needs public support.

Patrick J. Egan is an assistant professor of politics and public policy at New York University, where he studies public opinion, public policy, and their relationship in American politics. Joshua A. Tucker is an associate professor of politics at New York University, a National Security Fellow at the Truman National Security Project, and a co-author of the political science and policy blog The Monkey Cage.

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Yes, indeed, we can always trust opinion polls to display the extraordinary depth of American citizens in grasping the fundamental motivations behind American foreign policy. Or for that matter anything else that happens in the world. Oh, indeed. Sad to say however we can't even rely on the media itself to display any sophistication here, can we? Let me guess, we're in Afghanistan right now to bring democracy and freedom to the people there? And just behind it, our national security is in dire straits unless we triumph there!! Colin Powell: What is the greatest threat facing us now? People will say it's terrorism. But are there any terrorists in the world who can change the American way of life or our political system? No. Can they knock down a building? Yes. Can they kill somebody? Yes. But can they change us? No. Only we can change ourselves. So what is the great threat we are facing? george: Further, America is said to be a bastion of freedom and democracy itself---thus everything we do abroad is in pursuit of those ideals. Anyone here care to debate that with me? To wit: ....research by one of us (Egan) indicates that the public, which tends to know few details about the country's problems and even less about how to solve them, grants the parties some leeway to make policy on issues they "own." george: Let me get this straight: Those who are polled know little or nothing about why we go to war other than what lying government officials tell them. In any event, they know even less about what should be done if it's not going well. So, given their appalling ignornce, they are duped into supporting wars that savage the lives of millions and now want out out of this one because it isn't going well. Can you fucking believe this? It makes Alice in Wonderland look like a mathematics text. So what difference does it really make how Obama "frames" the war now? Only another 9/11 attack will do the trick if the body bags keep piling up. Ah, but reframing we will go! Obama is working diligently behind the scenes to coax Karzai into "sharing" democracy there with others. The whole farce is straight out of the Wizard of Oz. Can you imagine the reaction if Karzai refuses to go along?!! To play his part...to read his lines...to act on cue. National security. That hardly ever fails to further the follies does it? Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon killed over 55,000 American soldiers and over a million Vietnamese milking that lie way back when. But they didn't have a 9/11 to fall back on. Can Obama wring a few more years out of it without another attack. I know: Let's poll "the people" and find out. Especially after the war is "framed" correctly by the intellectuals and The Editors at all the news outlets across the nation. We just have to get together on how to dupe the yokels [yet again!] whose loved ones will actually be doing the killing and the dying over there. Does Cindy Sheehan have any more sons? How about the Tillmans? Maybe Barack can talk Kevin into going back. Egan and Tucker. They sound like they are prepping Obama for a spelling bee above. It is so flagrantly cynical you can't help but wonder why they aren't in the Situation Room themselves planning the next phase of whack-a-mole in Kandahar. Intellectuals go to war. Or: How the professors would run the world if all it took were words. In what other way are these two gentlemen qualified to make arguments like these? What in the world do either of them know about Afghanistan or war? Bring back the fucking draft. With very, very few deferments for the weekend warriors humping their keyboards from recliner to recliner. george walton j

- iambiguous

October 22, 2009 at 3:15am

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I assume Eagan and Tucker didn't write, or probably even approve, the title. Why would Obama want to "buck" McChrystal? Who but idiots would see the Afghanistan question in those terms? Bottom line, Obama has to demonstrate competence and at least a bit of success to avoid reinforcing the Dem's much-deserved reputation for ineptitude in national security dating from Truman's Korean fiasco, if not Pearl Harbor. Polls, and the left wing of the party, have nothing to do with it.

- Robert Powell

October 22, 2009 at 5:52am

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Glad to see the title changed...

- Robert Powell

October 22, 2009 at 9:07am

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It is striking that the idea of doing what it takes to succeed in the Afghan war is not relevant to these authors. I suggest that if Obama does what is necessary militarily the rest will work itself out politically.

- nhrds@earthlink.net

October 22, 2009 at 1:39pm

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Bob - while I may agree with you on many points, I often can respect your arguments. However this seems particularly churlish: the Dem's much-deserved reputation for ineptitude in national security dating from Truman's Korean fiasco, if not Pearl Harbor Ignoring the stretch in comparing today's two parties to those that bore the same name in the 40's and 50's, these statements seem to cast doubt equally either side's abilities. If Pearl Harbor was FDR's "fault", why does 9/11 not reflect poorly on Republicans? And was Truman's fiasco caused by his not firing his Republican supreme commander, who arguably ballsed the whole thing up, fast enough? I mean seriously, what are the Republican claims to FP superiority? Invading some club med countries? Smashing a tinpot dictator in the 90s (and I find it hard to see that a democratic president would not have acted in a similar fashion)? Beruit? The nuclearisation of NK and Iran? The execution of either of the two current shooting wars?

- Nari224

October 22, 2009 at 2:06pm

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Erk. That should obviously say "..disagree with you on many points..."

- Nari224

October 22, 2009 at 2:06pm

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Bottom line, Obama has to demonstrate competence and at least a bit of success to avoid reinforcing the Dem's much-deserved reputation for ineptitude in national security dating from Truman's Korean fiasco, if not Pearl Harbor. Polls, and the left wing of the party, have nothing to do with it.
This plainly counterfactual line of thinking mystifies me, and yet it is a nearly ubiquitous part of American political thought. How do millions of people come to believe such obvious bullshit? Start with the "WTF?" aspect of blaming FDR for Pearl Harbor, which invariably comes from right-wingers who (A) take personal offense at any suggestion that George W. Bush ought likewise to be held to account for the Pearl Harbor-like enemy sneak attack on his watch and (B) are members of both a party and a political movement that were actively against even arming against Japan and Germany in the 1930s. If conservatives had been in power instead of FDR, there would have been no Pearl Harbor, because America would already have surrendered the Pacific to Japanese domination. Korea is another WTF? moment. It makes sense to condemn Truman for incompetence in Korea if and only if one would have preferred either letting the North Korean psychocommunists conquer South Korea, or if one would have preferred fighting an atomic World War III with China. Because those were the only practical alternatives on offer, and also the actual, overt recommendations of competing wings of the conservative establishment at the time. Both are madness, whereas Truman's policy actually achieved American interests. Vietnam is a draw between the parties, really more a combination of LBJ's incompetence and Nixon's villainy, but as much as Nixon has more American blood and the ultimate failure on his hands, Johnson started the thing, so I'm willing to give the weight of the blame to the Democratic administration. Since Nixon, we've had only two Democratic president and four Republicans. While Carter was by and large a flop in all areas -- except for the fact that he initiated the deregulations that Republicans falsely credit to Reagan, and also initiated the military buildup that Reagan continued and accelerated -- Clinton was one of the most effective users of military force since possibly McKinley or even Polk. Ford was an utter disaster on defense, overseeing the closest we've come to the literal collapse of the American armed forces. Reagan was a mixed bag; he managed to almost get defeated in battle by the police force of Grenada while surrendering to, running away from, appeasing, or getting into bed with basically every terrorist on the planet. Plus his arms buildup was based not as later apologist pretend "spending the Soviets into bankruptcy," but rather on the erroneous notion that the United States was so far behind that we had to spend ourselves to the brink of insolvency just to prevent the mighty Soviets from winning the Cold War. We won the Cold War anyway, but only four years after Reagan managed to turn down what amounted to an offer of surrender from the Soviets. So Reagan gets some credit for not failing nearly as badly as his policies easily could have. That brings us to the two Bushes, and while I give the first Bush great credit for his handling of the Panama crisis -- Noriega actually declared war on the United States! -- and his handling of the Kuwait invasion, hindsight has pretty thoroughly discredited the way the first Bush brought the first Gulf War to a close. And the less said about George W. Bush's performance as commander-in-chief, the better for George W. Bush, his Republican enablers, and the larger conservative movement generally. (Bush's failure as commander-in-chief came as no surprise to anyone who paid attention in the 2000 campaign, since Bush ran on a platform of less defense spending than his Democratic rival.) So on national security since Vietnam, we have one failed Democrat, one hugely successful Democrat, one reasonably successful Republican, one near-failure Republican, and two failed Republicans, one of whom amassed almost beyond dispute the poorest record of performance in foreign affairs in American history. (His only serious competition being Pierce and Carter, both of whom had the good grace to serve only one term, and neither of whom fought, much less nearly lost, an actual war.) On defense, Democrats are batting .500, while Republicans are batting about .285, or at best .375, depending on how forgivingly one grades Reagan. I don't mean to call out Powell individually; I quote him as expressing a common belief, and I'm sure any number of the conventional-wisdom tropes I casually hold are equally false. But the whole Republicans-strong-on-defense, Democrats-weak-on-defense simply does not hold up to any examination of historical reality and the actual performance of presidents in office. And while I'm painting with the broad brush of foreign-policy and military results, the finer points of defense policy and spending also break in Democrats' favor. After all, eight years of Reagan's ballooning defense spending gave us a military that had real problems invading Panama, whereas eight years of Clinton gave us a military capable of taking control of Iraq, with minimal allied support, in a matter of days, after spending a year at war in Afghanistan. Down in the meat of the defense budget, recent Democrats have been much better for the nation's military readiness than Republicans, and that's true even counting Carter. All of this is why I tend to look more favorably at Democrats for president, since although the Democratic Party is often somewhat to my left, I regard national security a an issue of primary importance for the presidency, and at this point Republicans are going to have to find a way to nominate William T. Sherman or George Washington before I trust them again on national defense.

- rhubarbs

October 22, 2009 at 2:54pm

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Well, it certainly is broad-brush. You say Clinton was an extremely effective user of military force. Care to elaborate? I recall him dithering over whether to use force in the Balkans long enough to get thousands of Bosnians massacred. Am I wrong? As for Truman, I think it's fair to ding him for being unprepared for the invasion, but he did well after that. i think you're being unfair to Ford. Not only was he unelected, but in 1974 we elected the most anti-defense Congress in my lifetime, who cut off our allies in S. Vietnam. Not sure we can ascribe that to Ford. The Helsinki Accords worked out far better than we expected. As a larger point, I usually start counting Dems weak on defense (not all dems, mind you) after the 1972 McGovernite takeover of the party. Before that, defense and foreign policy were more non-partisan. Since then, the national Dem party has been spotty in its defense policies. I served from Nixon to Clinton. I can tell you that during the Cold War, the uniformed military had a great suspiciion of the Dem party generally. And loved Reagan. In all, while I quarrel with some of your judgments, I'd also say that you overlook Congress' role in defense and foreign policy, which can be considerable.

- butchie b

October 22, 2009 at 4:19pm

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We're talking perception as political reality here, and I think it's pretty much undeniable that the Dems are popularly associated with national defense ineptitude. Instead of taking the usual Democrat position that it's because the people are too stupid to understand how wonderful they really are, Dems would be well advised to consider the factual basis of this perception. FDR has over the years become a sort of secular saint, but there was a lot of questioning of him at the time about how we could have been caught so flat-footed at Pearl Harbor. I don't have any problem applying the same standard to Bush re:9/11, but then in fairness you'd have to deal with some of the truly catastrophic strategic mistakes FDR made in the prosecution of the war, and the wholly inappropriate faith he had in Stalin. Truman's administration deserves lasting blame for an enormous screw-up in Korea. They specifically identified Korea as a place of "no strategic importance"and acted on that by garrisoning it with provocative weakness. Acheson specifically excluded Korea from our Asian anti-communist perimeter in a speech six months before the Norks moved south. The resulting catastrophe killed a couple of million people, including nearly 50,000 GI's, in order for us to achieve a tie with the North which remains the world's largest concentration camp, working on nuclear ICBM's. JFK and LBJ played right into the stereotype in Vietnam, with a public full of people with recent memories of Korea. As butchie points out, the Nixon/Kissinger crimes were fully shared, and eventually exacerbated by, the Democrat Congress. Then McGovern and Jimmy Carter-'nuff said; and Clinton's performance of making "gays in the military" a high-profile issue at a time genocide was occuring a day's drive from massive US troop concentrations that could have, and belatedly did, bring the killing to a nearly immediate end. Obama needs a win here, and if things unravel in Iraq or continue to do so in Afghanistan, Dems should forget about having any public credibility on defense for a generation at least.

- Robert Powell

October 23, 2009 at 4:42am

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"I don't have any problem applying the same standard to Bush re:9/11, but then in fairness you'd have to deal with some of the truly catastrophic strategic mistakes FDR made in the prosecution of the war, and the wholly inappropriate faith he had in Stalin." The difference: FDR made mistakes under a strategic vision that won WW2. Bush's entire strategic analysis of the situation in Iraq, and its relative importance after 9/11, was deeply flawed. It ignored geo-political consequences (rise of Iran), ignored the cultural and political dynamics within Iran, targeted the wrong enemy. Therefore, Bush failed: the military fiasco grew out of the ridiculous strategic and situation analyses. The military was told to do it on the cheap - no political preparation, no delay, no legitimate government in exile, not enough troops. After all, we were 'liberators'.

- CAMtwo

October 23, 2009 at 5:00pm

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I'm no Bush apologist--I wrote at the time that the mission was under-resourced, that the lack of planning for a transitional government and associated security forces was a huge problem, and etc. Plenty of mistakes, for sure. But at the end of the day, Bush didn't "fail" any more than FDR. I reject the popular view that Saddam was "the wrong enemy", and that the invasion resulted in "the rise of Iran". After all, we had been in a virtual state of war with Iraq since 1991, and the position of that state as the keystone of the Persian Gulf had, as it still does, enormous strategic implications. And Iran hasn't "risen" at all, being in many respects on shakier ground than at any time since 1988. Having the world's first example of a Shi'ite-dominated democratically elected government next door plays a big role in that. Timothy Garton Ash reported after some time there that many young Iranians jokingly refer to Bush as "the Thirteeth Imam" for his role in fostering this development. At the end of the day, historical analogies are always full of holes. But I think it's worth pointing out that we lost nearly five times the number of fatal casualties in about three days of the Battle of the Bulge as in over six years of fighting in Iraq. Similar numbers apply to Okinawa, and there were huge strategically superfluous losses in places like Sicily and Italy, among many others. A little perspective is in order here.

- Robert Powell

October 24, 2009 at 4:37am

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