Conferência
Os Estados Unidos e a Ordem Internacional
30 | Setembro a 01 | Outubro | 2004
Auditório da FLAD, Lisboa
Foreign Policy in the Presidential Election of 2004: Advantage Bush?
Jeremy D. Mayer
George Mason University
Will foreign policy determine the outcome of the presidential election of 2004? Drawn
narrowly to include only the traditional questions of war and diplomacy, foreign policy is
often peripheral to the campaign discourse in American elections, particularly since
1992. Several factors suggest, however, that 2004 will be an election in which foreign
policy plays a fundamental role in the outcome. Because of the terrorist attacks of
September 2001, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the continuing threat of further
terror attacks against American and allied interests, foreign policy questions are selected
by many voters as the most important. In particular, the war in Iraq seems to be
activating unlikely participants in the election, as well as splitting off some key partisan
constituencies from their traditional loyalties. In addition, the other major influences on
American presidential elections are not leaning strongly for or against either candidate,
as will be shown. Into that unusual vacuum, foreign policy emerges as the deciding
factor, regardless of whether the election of 2004 is exceedingly close or surprisingly lopsided.
Not only will foreign policy be unusually decisive in the election, in an unprecedented
fashion in the modern era, but the impact of the election’s outcome upon America’s
foreign policy will be vast. The foreign policy of George W. Bush represents a stark shift
away from the traditions of American foreign policy. His reelection would likely direct
American foreign policy in a new direction for decades. His defeat would signal instead
at least a partial repudiation of his new doctrines. In terms of foreign policy
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consequences before the American electorate, there may have been no graver choices
presented to the public since 1964 or perhaps even 1900.1
Foreign Policy and American Elections
The broad consensus within American political science for many decades was that the
public knew very little about foreign policy, shifted frequently in what shallow
international opinions they had, and seldom voted on the basis of such concerns. This
was known as the Almond-Lippman consensus, and was cited as proof that the public
did not, and indeed, should not, play a role in foreign policy creation. As a part of the
elitist view of American politics, this consensus was perceived by many as justifying the
insulation of foreign policy from public opinion, because, as Almond argued, public
opinion on foreign policy was “plastic” (Almond 1950). Holsti (2004, 28) summarizes
the Almond-Lippmann consensus thusly:
1. Public opinion on foreign policy is highly volatile, and is an unstable
foundation upon which to base national foreign policies.
2. Public attitudes on foreign policy are so lacking in coherence and structure
that they are almost “non-opinions.”
3. Fortunately, public opinion has little influence on actual foreign policy.2
In elections, it was assumed that most of the public voted on the basis of economic,
domestic issues because international affairs were simply too distant and complex to
base a vote decision upon (Miller 1967).
The Almond-Lippman consensus fit very well with the dominant Michigan model of
voting behavior, which saw issues primarily as secondary effects on vote choice. Issue
positions affected partisan identity and candidate evaluation, and had less impact
directly on vote choice in most elections. There are ways in which foreign policy can of
course matter even given the Almond-Lippman consensus and the Michigan model
assumptions. Some of the longterm models of partisan identity suggest that “easy”
issues in foreign policy (the terminology of easy versus hard comes from Carmines and
Stimson 1989) can have a broad effect on partisan identity. Moreover, Mannheim’s
theory of imprinting has been applied to the political socialization of foreign policy
events. The “greatest generation” of World War II seemed to have a lifelong affinity for
the Democratic Party, in part because of the imprinting of FDR’s victory in World War II
(Mayer 2002).
Yet despite these situations, it remained an article of faith among some political
scientists that rarely if ever would a specific issue of foreign policy directly affect a
presidential election in a significant and demonstrable fashion. There is of course a high
barrier to hurdle in definitively showing the influence of any issue on an American
election. Unlike many parliamentary systems, in which parties take comparatively clear
stances on many issues, the American two-party system with weak partisan discipline
These years are selected because they were ones in which vital issues of national integrity and foreign policy
were before the electorate. Obviously, the presidential elections of 1916, 1920, 1940, 1944, 1952, and 1968
featured vital issues of foreign policy. However, for various reasons, the choices presented to the electorate
in those years were far less clear than the ones posed in 2004. By contrast, the elections of 1964 (Goldwater
versus Johnson) and 1900 (McKinley vs. Bryan) were about foundational questions in American foreign
policy. Even in 1964, domestic policy questions may have been at least as puissant as Goldwater’s radical
stance towards the Cold War in affecting voting decisions. Thus, 1900 may have been the last time that an
American electorate was actually presented with a direct choice to make about America’s role in the world.
2 This is a briefer paraphrasing of Holsti’s summary.
1
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and scant ideological consistency seldom rewards parties that take clear positions on
most issues. There are very few powerful and opposing interest groups that force the
parties to speak with clashing clarity on foreign policy questions, as there are on certain
domestic issues (for example, minimum wage debates pitching union forces against
corporate interests). Even when a particular candidate takes a strong stance, the
question is often confused by a mixed message from other prominent members of his
party, or a failure by the opponent to adopt a clearly opposing view. Candidates in both
Congressional and Presidential elections often maintain vague positions on many issues,
positions that are often similar to those of their opposition. Candidates compete to get
the central voter in a “race to the middle” on many political questions, as occurred on
Vietnam in 1968. Given this, it is often difficult to meet the three sequential parts of the
simple test to demonstrate the existence of issue voting:
- The candidates have different positions on a particular issue.
- The voters (or an important fraction of them) accurately perceive this
difference.
- The voters (or an important fraction of them) vote on the basis of this issue.
It can even be difficult for voters to cast an intelligible foreign policy vote at times when
international concerns are paramount. The election of 1920 could have been directly
about whether America should join the League of Nations or choose isolationism, but
both parties took rather complex positions about the idea. In 1948, the election could
have revolved around isolationism versus American leadership of the free world, but the
Republicans failed to nominate an isolationist to truly debate these questions with
Truman. In 1968, a year in which the vast majority of voters were more concerned with
the war in Vietnam than with domestic concerns, the parties failed to offer a clear choice
on the war. Although anti-war candidates had run well in the Democratic primaries,
both major political parties nominated candidates with long records of support for US
military action in Indochina (Humphrey and Nixon). Thus, even when voters were more
concerned with foreign policy than in any other election in modern history (See Chart 1),
the two party system resulted in an inability to coherently vote on the most important
foreign policy question.
The Almond-Lippmann consensus did allow for another indirect fashion for foreign
policy to affect elections: enhancing presidential image. Aaron Wildavsky’s influential
“Two Presidencies” hypothesis held that presidents faced many fewer competing power
centers in crafting foreign policy, which allowed them to appear stronger and more
capable in foreign policy. (Wildavsky 1991). Even though the idea that presidents were
more in control in foreign policy than in domestic was challenged as a time-bound
artifact of the Cold War, subsequent scholars continued to see foreign policy formulation
and even foreign travel as a way to boost the presidential image. This use of
international affairs as a backdrop to enhance public approval of the president was as
close as many in the elitist school brought public opinion and foreign policy.
A revisionist school emerged gradually in the early 1970s, countering all of the above
assumptions. Many trees were subsequently killed printing studies showing that the
public did in fact have cognizable and stable views on foreign policy, and that these views
either did or should affect foreign policy (Monroe 1979; Bartels 1991; Russett 1990;
Oldendick and Bardes 1982; Holsti 1992, 2004; Wittkopf 1990; Alterman 1998; Page and
Shapiro 1983, 1992; Mueller 1973; Nie, Verba, Petrocik 1976; Mayer and Kirby 2004).
Some of the components of the Almond-Lippmann consensus did remain unchallenged;
even the strongest revisionist did not argue that the public was well informed about
foreign policy. Studies consistently showed that the American public was remarkably
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ignorant of basic facts about international affairs, and compared unfavorably with most
European publics in elementary tests of knowledge. The solution for many revisionist
scholars is that members of the public are “cognitive misers” who harness their limited
information using cognitive shortcuts to make decisions that are bluntly rational and
coherent (Holsti 2004, p. 55). Much of the volatility in public opinion could be shown to
be rational responses to rapid shifts in the international situation, or even to be
predictable responses to American casualties in wars (Mueller 1973). Others argued that
public opinion on foreign policy was at least as stable as that of domestic policy (Page
and Shapiro 1992).
In particular, voters were seen as likely to punish incumbent presidents for foreign policy
failings. This electoral retribution hypothesis applies only to high profile foreign policy
events such as the Iran hostage crisis during the presidency of Jimmy Carter or the
Korean and Vietnam wars during the presidencies of Truman and Johnson respectively.
In the latter two cases, both presidents chose not to run for reelection in part out of fear
of electoral retribution for a military stalemate in a foreign war. A systematic study of
nine presidential elections from 1952-1984 found that five elections were significantly
affected by foreign policy issues: 1952, 1964, 1972, 1980, and 1984 (Aldrich, Sullivan and
Borgida 1989). In those years, sizable percentages of the public demonstrated concern
with issues of foreign policy, and seemed to change their vote preferences on the basis of
those preferences almost as often as upon domestic issues.
Since 1988, however, foreign policy issues have played remarkably little role in
presidential elections. Prior to the end of the cold war, that long struggle forced
candidates for the presidency to address questions such “Who lost China?” (1952),
“Should America come home from Vietnam?” (1972), “Should America build more
nuclear weapons or should it ‘freeze’ production?” (1984). With the fall of the Berlin
Wall, the public’s attention to foreign policy questions compared to domestic issues
reached a historic low; the public selected domestic issues over foreign policy issues by a
ratio of 18-1 in 1992. As shown on chart 1, the imbalance between domestic and foreign
concerns had never been greater. Moreover, it was difficult in the elections of 1992,
1996, or 2000 to discern a large difference between the nominees on the major foreign
policy issues of the day. Consequently, even those 6-20% of the voters who were most
concerned with foreign affairs during those three elections faced a difficult task in
actually voting on the basis of foreign policy issues. Only a very attentive voter would
have discerned an important contrast between Clinton/Gore (1992, 96, 00) and
Bush/Dole/Bush. All six campaigns supported international free trade agreements,
American leadership of NATO and our existing alliance structure, multilateral
interventions of some limited kinds, and strikingly similar policies towards the former
Soviet Union. In 2000, the two campaigns adopted almost precisely the same policy on
terrorism: silence.
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Chart 1: Most Important Problem Facing the Nation, 1948-2004.
.
Source: Chart appears in Pew, 2004.
The debate over the impact of foreign policy on presidential elections, then, is between
those who think foreign policy is seldom influential and those who think that in the right
circumstances it can be determinative. This paper contributes to this long-running
debate by arguing that the conditions could not be riper in 2004 for foreign policy to
matter. If the American voting public does not render some sort of judgment based on
foreign policy in 2004, then it will suggest a strong reaffirmation of the AlmondLippmann consensus during the war on terror. It will also create a new, substantive
policy consensus, equivalent to the cold war consensus that dominated among American
elites (1948-1968) and the mass public for even longer (1948-1989). If, by contrast,
2004 ends up being an election determined by foreign policy concerns, then this will
suggest a new battleground for American electoral politics, and perhaps a new
orientation to our foreign policy. Of course, a Kerry or Bush election which is grounded
in foreign policy voting by the mass electorate does not guarantee that the victor will put
into place the foreign policy views of his supporters. However, it seems likely that the
election will have significant effects on the nature of American foreign policy, as will be
addressed at the end of the paper.
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The Iraq War and the Election of 2004
If foreign policy is to play a dominant role in the presidential election of 2004, the major
issue through which it is likely to be expressed is the war in Iraq launched by President
Bush in March of 2003. As we have seen, even strong proponents of the importance of
foreign policy in American politics concede that most presidential elections in the
modern era are determined by domestic issues. They simply argue that at the right
moments, a particular issue of foreign policy can emerge and swing the election. Will
Iraq be such an issue in 2004? For many months, it seemed unlikely, because to the
casual observer, the differences between Bush and Kerry seemed obscure. While Bush
took great pains to be clear about his own position on Iraq, the focus of the Republican
campaign against Kerry was to suggest either that Kerry was entirely inconsistent on
Iraq, or that he fundamentally agreed with the president.
Kerry did not articulate his relatively complex views on Iraq with any great facility.
Kerry won the nomination in the Democratic primaries against his primary rival,
Howard Dean, by in part convincing Democratic voters that the country would not vote
for a strident anti-war candidate. Kerry clearly ran to Dean’s right for most of the
campaign on Iraq. As a sitting senator, Kerry had been forced to vote on the “use of
force” resolution in the fall of 2002, and had voted with the president. Yet a year later,
when Kerry was well behind Dean in most of the pre-primary polls, and the war was
becoming unpopular with primary voters, Kerry voted against funding the war and Iraqi
reconstruction, a position widely seen as attempting to woo anti-war Democrats. The
careful hedging of Kerry’s position on Iraq throughout 2003 contrasted sharply with
Dean’s consistent anti-war clarity. A telling moment came when Saddam Hussein was
captured in the midst of the Democratic campaign for the nomination. Dean
dismissively said that it had not made any Americans safer. Sensing a strategic opening,
Kerry pounced, warning his fellow Democrats that no one would be elected president
who didn’t celebrate the fall of a terrible dictator. The message to Democrats was
obvious; Dean was another in a long line of unelectable Democrats, whose weakness on
national security and foreign policy would spell disaster in November. Survey after
survey showed that Kerry’s strongest selling point to primary voters was that he was
“electable” and Dean was not. Ultimately, this was crucial to Kerry’s victory over
Howard Dean, who truly was running as an anti-war candidate.
Thus, a party that was, throughout 2003 and 2004, becoming increasingly opposed to
the war in Iraq ended up nominating a man who had voted to authorize the use of force,
as opposed to Dean, a man who had opposed it all along. When the Democratic
convention met in August to nominate Kerry, polls showed that a strong majority of
Democrats in attendance opposed the war, while their nominee and his running mate
had voted to authorize the use of force in Iraq. Kerry’s acceptance speech split the
difference, essentially arguing that Iraq had been deceptively sold, but now must be
wisely fought. He implied that Iraq had been a war of choice, rather than necessity, but
he did not call for a rapid withdrawal. He advocated for greater involvement of
America’s allies, and for increasing the size of the military by 40,000 troops. In many
ways, what Kerry seemed to be promising on Iraq was that he would be a better Bush,
leading an international coalition to victory in Iraq in ways that Bush could not.
To make matters worse, Kerry was still defending both his vote for the use of force as
well as his vote against funding the troops. Republicans gleefully suggested that these
were contradictory positions, and their television ads labeling Kerry a “flip-flopper”
seemed to affect many voters’ opinions of Kerry. His negatives rose sharply. In fact,
Kerry’s positions were hardly in contradiction. The vote to use force was explained by
Bush at the time as something other than a vote for war. Rather, Bush asked for the
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authority in order to enhance his bargaining position with Iraq and with the U.N.
Similarly, Kerry had voted for funding the war in 2003, so long as the $87 billion in
funding came from repealing a few of the tax cuts aimed at the upper 2% of Americans.
In a sound-bite campaign, however, these subtleties were a tough sell.
Doubts about Kerry’s overall strength on national security were also fed by a surprise
attack on what Democrats had assumed was one of his strong points: his status as a
veteran. Immediately following the convention, the Kerry campaign underwent a
withering attack from an independent group that ran ads questioning Kerry’s service in
Vietnam and his postwar activities. Perhaps because Kerry had spent more time at his
convention on his Vietnam record than on his specific policies for Iraq, the attacks
seemed to have an effect. At the very least, they helped submerge Kerry’s message on
Iraq and domestic issues in the media. By the time the Republican convention ended,
polls suggested that Bush had acquired a small but significant lead over Kerry. Kerry, a
decorated combat veteran who chose Vietnam service, found himself compared
invidiously to Bush, a war supporter who used family connections to avoid service in
Vietnam. For more than a month, charges and counter charges about a war finished
thirty years before filled the airwaves, far more than the discussion of what should be
done about the war America was currently fighting.
Chart 2: Bush vs. Kerry, April to September
Source: Gallup Poll
Recently Kerry has spoken more forcefully about the war. Analysts have noted a new
bite to his rhetoric, and a return of the focus to Bush’s specific choices on Iraq. Kerry has
labeled the war in Iraq a “diversion” from the war against Al Qaeda, and also begun
attacking Bush for his close connections to the Saudi royal family. But the Kerry
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message is still burdened with a great deal of complexity, much as Humphrey’s Vietnam
message was far from simply anti-war in 1968. Unlike 1968, anti-war voters do have a
choice in 2004: Ralph Nader. Nader has aggressively and simply opposed the war in
Iraq. Surveys so far suggest that Nader will do worse in 2004 than he did in 2000, but if
Kerry remains unclear about Iraq, a Nader surge is not impossible (a surge would mean a
doubling of his national support, from 1-2% to 2-4%, a disastrous event for Kerry given
the tightness of the campaign).
Even with Kerry’s newfound clarity, it might seem that the war in Iraq fails the very first
test of “issue voting”; how could voters be basing their choices on the war if Kerry fails to
offer a clear alternative on the war? Certainly, this seems to be the Republican strategy
on Iraq. Yet evidence suggests that the voters perceive a difference. Chart 2 shows the
results of a national survey of likely voters in the summer of 2004. I isolated the 676
respondents who were most likely to support Bush (Republicans, conservatives, and/or
those who had voted for him in 2000) and looked to see how many intended to support
Bush. Just over 260 respondents had not yet decided to vote for Bush. When I
examined to see what was the single issue moving them away from their expected vote, it
was their feelings about whether the war in Iraq had been worth the cost in lives and
money. If a Republican, Bush supporter, and/or conservative believed that the cost in
blood and money was too high, they were overwhelmingly not supporting Bush.
Poll conducted by Greenberg, data analysis by the author.
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A similar pattern appears among those we would expect to be Kerry supporters.
Democrats, liberals, and/or those who voted for Gore in 2000 were examined separately.
Those who believe the war in Iraq was worth the loss of life and the budgetary cost were
also highly likely to support Bush, despite their various cross-pressures to support Kerry.
While the pattern here is not as strong as it was for expected Bush voters, the pattern
remains clear; the war in Iraq is cutting across partisan and ideological lines, and
shaping the contours of the 2004 presidential election.
Of course, this may simply be an example of electoral retribution, or retrospective voting.
Kerry may not have articulated a clear and comprehensive critique of Bush’s policy, and
has certainly not offered a coherent competing vision of what his Iraq policy would be,
but that is seldom required in American elections. The classic example of a vague
advocacy of change in policy without specifics occurred in the 1952 election. In the midst
of a much bloodier war, Eisenhower, a national hero for his military leadership in World
War II, made a promise that he would “go to Korea.” The message was almost devoid of
detail, simply selling to Americans a perception of strength and competence in foreign
affairs, which contrasted sharply with what seemed to be an unnecessarily prolonged
quagmire. Kerry lacks Eisenhower’s military stature, his overwhelming popularity, and
the simple clarity of his message. However, he may be positioning himself to benefit
from the electorate’s blunt veto of an increasingly dubious conflict.
What do Americans think about the war in Iraq? Public opinion on war in Iraq has
undergone quite a rollercoaster since pollsters first began to ask about a renewed Persian
Gulf war in the summer of 2002. Uncertainty and unease predominated at first,
followed by mounting conviction that conflict was both inevitable and just. By the time
Bush launched his war in March of 2003, most polls showed a solid majority (60-70%)
supported the invasion of Iraq. The rapid progress of American forces as well as the
extraordinarily low number of combat deaths, only enhanced the approval of the conflict,
and not coincidentally, the president who had led America into battle. Starting in the
summer of 2003, however, support for the war slowly began to ebb. In the late spring
and early summer of 2004, some surveys suggested that a slim majority believed the war
had been a mistake. The mounting casualties as American troops battled insurgents and
terrorists in a difficult and hazy conflict seemed to be crucial to the shift.
Yet in the late summer of 2004, support for the war stopped dropping, stabilized, and
began to creep upward. The handover of power to a “sovereign” Iraqi government did
two good things for war supporters. First, it took the American face off of the
occupation; in fact, the media ceased to use the word, a victory for Bush and his policies.
Second, even as American casualties rose again in August and September, the media did
not make as much of each death. When casualties had spiked during the American
suzerainty of Baghdad, televised reports had reliable visuals of Coalition Provisional
Authority Administrator Paul Bremer or his spokesperson commenting on the event.
The deaths reverberated through at least two news cycles. The recent deaths, however,
do not seem as prominent in the media. Support for the war also tracks roughly with
Bush’s approval ratings, suggesting that voters are linking Bush’s fate directly to their
evaluation of the war. As shown on Chart 2, Kerry reached his high point in support
shortly after the handover of authority to the appointed Iraqi government, and declined
throughout following the Republican convention and the attack by Republican Vietnam
Veterans.
The media was vital to Bush’s success at reducing the public’s interest in the declining
security situation in Iraq.
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No one can now doubt the effectiveness of the President’s political operation.
Here’s one measure: between May and September, the number of Iraq
stories that made page 1 of the Times and the Washington Post dropped by
more than a third. During the same period, the percentage of Americans
who support the President’s handling of the war increased. It’s the mark of a
truly brilliant reelection campaign that these trends at home are occurring
against a background of ever-increasing violence and despair in
Iraq.(Packer 2004).
Despite such deft maneuvering by the president, the Kerry camp has reason to remain
hopeful. The linkage between Bush’s support and support for the war strongly suggests
that even if voters are not presented with a clear choice by Kerry, they will exact electoral
retribution upon Bush if approval of the war dips sufficiently in the last weeks of the
campaign. Bush approval over the last two years tracks much more directly with
approval of his handling of the war than it does with assessments of his handling of the
economy (Voeten and Brewer 2004). Consequently, if support for the war in Iraq holds
steady at just over 50% through election day, Bush should win. Combined with the
above evidence that Iraq war is already causing defections among expected supporters of
both candidates, this is powerful evidence for the war’s influence on the election. But
there are yet three further reasons for believing that the Iraq war will have a decisive
impact on the election: the vacuum, the terror, and the unlikely voters.
The Domestic Vacuum of 2004
To the extent that specific issues matter in presidential campaigns, the focus has
typically been on domestic questions, particularly economic ones. Indeed, the most
sophisticated predictive models of elections are structured almost entirely around two
types of numbers: measures of presidential approval and indices of the economy’s
health. The “pocketbook” issues of unemployment, interest rates, inflation, and
economic growth are seen as decisive in most presidential elections, through
retrospective evaluations of the in-party’s performance. Such models rarely if ever take
into account social issues such as abortion, and do not pretend to have a way of
incorporating war or foreign policy (Aday 2004). The dominance of economic factors is
even greater when one considers that most modelers believe that the strongest influence
on presidential approval is economic performance. Thus, both directly and indirectly,
the condition of the economy is believed to dominate presidential elections.
Although the economy is expected in these models to be dominant, the current state of
the economy will prevent it from being decisive. America went into a shallow recession
in March of 2001, and economic growth remained sluggish for months. In 2003 and
2004, months of strong growth alternated with periods of lesser growth, with
employment numbers stubbornly resistant to progress. The stock market meandered for
most of Bush’s term, with strong highs followed by slow bleeds back to the starting point.
Interest rates remained at historic lows for much of his term, but have crept upwards in
the last year, although they are still significantly lower than modern norms. There
simply isn’t any reason for expecting that voters will either be so pleased with the
economy that they will reward Bush, or so unhappy that they will punish him by voting
for Kerry. In certain pockets of the country, the economic condition may be sufficiently
good or bad enough to expect localized “sociotropic” economic voting, but this should
balance out nationally (unless, as may be the case, those suffering from bad times are
more likely to be affected than those enjoying good times). While the Democrats
accurately contend that Bush is the first president since Herbert Hoover (1929-1932) to
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preside over an aggregate decline in private sector jobs, the unemployment rate in
America is only marginally greater than it was when Bill Clinton sailed to reelection in
1996.
The only other domestic issues that have rivaled the economy for even one election are
also unlikely to appear. The civil rights movement of the 1960s was vital to several
presidential elections during this period, but racial issues have receded sharply since
1972, and remain influential primarily because the lingering echoes continue to ensure
strong black support for the Democrats (Mayer 2002a).3 The unprecedented scandal of
Watergate dominated the presidential and congressional elections in 74-76, but that was
obviously a time-bound artifact. Abortion seems to have affected voting among the hard
core pro-life partisans from 1980 to the present, but they are a small portion of the
electorate and there is little reason to think that 2004 will produce larger abortion
effects. Abortion also seemed to have moved some pro-choice voters in 1992 to support
Clinton (Abramowitz 1995). Some Republican partisans believed that gay marriage
would be a powerful issue for Bush, but while it may boost turnout among some social
conservatives, it hardly seems poised to outweigh the war in Iraq. The culture war issues
of modern American politics (gay marriage, stem cell research, women’s rights, abortion,
secularism) have probably not shifted the partisan divide much since 2000. Finally,
unlike 1992, Kerry is not pushing hard for a national health care system, although he is
calling for improvements that Bush attempts to make sound radical.
In short, there is a vacuum of domestic issues, particularly economic ones, that normally
influence presidential elections. This should be bad news for Kerry and the Democrats.
The only presidential elections that Democrats have won since 1964 have been years in
which domestic issues were paramount. Looking back to Chart 1, one obvious
implication is that since Vietnam, Democrats have only won in years when domestic
issues outweighed foreign policy concerns by greater than 8-1. When foreign policy is
the paramount concern of at least 20% of the electorate, Democrats have an unbroken
string of failures since 64 (68, 72, 80, 84, 88, 00). This is emblematic of the continuing
weakness of the Democratic party among the mass electorate on questions of national
security and foreign policy. Gallup and other pollsters confirm that Bush is beating
Kerry on the question of securing America’s safety. The “terror” question is the other
reason foreign policy will determine the outcome of the 2004 presidential election.
Terrorism: The Bush Advantage
When Americans were asked during the 2000 presidential campaign to rank the relative
importance of issues, only 4% said that terrorism was of any concern at all. This despite
a decade of attacks from Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations, culminating in the
bombings of American embassies in Africa and the killing of 17 sailors on the U.S. Cole in
the midst of the presidential campaign. The attacks of 9-11 changed the politics of
terrorism overnight. President Bush experienced record levels of support following 9-11,
and approval of his presidency was sustained for longer than any president in the history
of American polling. In part, this reflected the traditional rally around the flag effect
long observed by presidential scholars. When America lives and interests are
threatened, the first impulse of many citizens is to give support to the president, even in
instances in which the president’s own policies may be responsible for the crisis (Mayer
2002). Bush’s successful leadership of the war against the Taliban was accepted by
The war in Iraq may be the largest racial issue in American politics in 2004. Black Americans were strongly against the
war before it, and remain the social group most opposed to it. Indeed, white Ameicans are still in favor of the war, by
about 10%. It is only because of the overwhelming opposition among blacks that the national numbers are roughly even.
3
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Americans as a measured and just response to the attacks by Al Qaeda. The war in
Afghanistan was accompanied by domestic actions: the creation of the largest new
federal bureaucracy since 1946 (the Department of Homeland Security), the passage of
the Patriot Act which gave the government new investigative powers, and a massive
round up of potential terror suspects.
In a sense, terrorism helps explain why for the first time since 1972, foreign policy
concerns are equal to domestic issues in the public’s concerns. Terrorism is both a
domestic and a foreign issue in the post 9-11 environment. Bush and his surrogates have
begun to make a powerful claim of success in the war on terror: the prevention of
another 9-11. The Republicans hesitated to make this point too early, because if an
attack by Al Qaeda intervened between such a claim and the election, they could suffer
electorally. However, the Bush campaign is almost certain to unleash this powerful
rhetoric in the last weeks of the campaign, possibly at the presidential debates. The logic
is persuasive: on 9-11, Americans knew little about their attackers but at least they knew
that large numbers of enemies were dedicated to killing Americans on our home soil.
The prevention of any subsequent attack may be seen as a seminal achievement in the
war on terror by many Americans.
The successful prevention of such an attack may explain why terrorism is working in
Bush’s favor as the election nears. When asked which candidate they trust more to win
the war on terror, voters pick Bush by margins of 10-20%. Kerry’s response has been to
try and assert that he will be as tough on terror but also wiser. Kerry has also tried to
separate the war on Iraq from the broader war on terror, while Bush has been even more
insistent that the war in Iraq is the main front in the battle against terrorism.4
If terrorism, broadly understood, is considered by a majority of the voters as a foreign
policy question that incorporates Iraq, it is likely that Bush will win reelection on the
basis of his successful stewardship of America’s anti-terror policies. One way to interpret
the recent polling data is that Americans have growing doubts about the wisdom of
invading Iraq and the post-victory occupation policies, but are more supportive of Bush’s
overall terror policies. Thus, if they are considered to be part of the same broad issue
area, Bush will likely “win” the issue through balancing his failure with his successes. A
sizable percentage of the electorate still believes that Bush led America competently in
the months following the attacks of 2001, and are prepared to reward him with their
support. Bush’s rhetoric and policies in the first months after 9-11 were almost
universally popular, as he spoke to the desire for justice and revenge (Mayer, Rozell and
Wilcox 2002; Mayer and Rozell 2004).
Bush’s successful linkage of Iraq to the war on terror seems to have brought him one key
public opinion victory: ending the gender gap, at least temporarily. Since the 1980s, a
strong gender gap has appeared in most presidential elections, in which men favor
Republicans, and women favor Democrats, by almost 10% in both cases. This effect
appears reliably, almost regardless of whether the election is tight or a landslide. For
example, in 2000, Bush won among men by about 10%, while Gore won among women
by almost 11%. Yet the most recent polls show Kerry only a few points ahead among
women, while Bush retains a strong lead among men. Bush’s success among women has
been called the “security moms” effect, since the favoritism for Bush is most pronounced
among married women, and in particular married women with children. Why has the
gender gap disappeared in wartime, when the issues which have historically produced
the largest gender gap have been war and violence? (Wilcox, Hewitt and Allsop 1996).
One example of how far Bush’s desire to blend the war on terror with the war in Iraq was his administration’s insistence
that combat medals for service in Iraq and Afghanistan bear the same name, as if it were all one conflict. Eventually,
facing mounting criticism from within the Pentagon, the medals were issued separately.
4
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As opposed to previous conflicts, in the war on terror women perceive the current threat
as directed at their families. When a threat is direct and personal, the gender gap has
disappeared in other contexts, such as the death penalty (Miethe and Meier 1996, p. 36.)
If terrorism is on the minds of Americans when they cast their ballots on November 2,
the data suggests that Bush will be reelected.
The Year of the Unlikely Voters? Foreign Policy and Turnout
As we have seen above, there is persuasive evidence in public opinion polling for the
proposition that foreign policy will play a determinative role in the presidential election
of 2004. Left out of the polling data is even further evidence that war and terror may be
decisive. The election of 2004 may revolve around foreign policy in ways imperceptible
to pollsters.
Most of the polling data on elections studied by journalists and academics is “screened”.
Screens vary widely, but their intent is the same: to omit from consideration residents
who are not likely to vote. It is vital for pollsters to do this, since in most presidential
elections, only 50% of eligible voters turnout. Measuring the voting intentions of nonvoters would obviously be a waste of time. Screens begin with the simplest question: are
you registered to vote? In America, registration is comparatively onerous, and must be
changed every time a citizen moves, particularly across state lines. If a respondent
indicates any uncertainty about their registration status, they are omitted from analysis.
Depending on the poll, further screens can include knowledge of where they will vote,
past participation in elections, level of interest in the campaign, and even their own
assessment of their likelihood of voting this year.
Since the summer, most polls of “likely” voters have shown Bush with a stronger lead
than polls of “registered” voters. In other words, Kerry did better among the less reliable
voters, while in polls that were more carefully screened, Bush did better. This follows a
familiar pattern in American politics: Republicans are “better” voters, probably because
of reasons of income and education.
Will foreign policy concerns, particularly the war in Iraq, bring out some unlikely voters?
Recent history suggests not. Voter turnout was not particularly high the last time
America went to the polls in the midst of a war, in the presidential elections of 1968 and
1972. Voter turnout in the statewide elections that took place in the immediate
aftermath of 9-11 did not spike dramatically upward, even in New York City and New
Jersey, two localities that had suffered significant casualties. Nationwide, voter turnout
in the midterm elections of 2002 was also fairly typical, even though balloting occurred
in the immediate aftermath of a Congressional vote authorizing force in Iraq and during
the late stages of the conflict in Afghanistan. However, a crucial factor was missing in
those elections which may well be present this November: elite leadership and cuegiving. As the leading authorities on public opinion in America aver, foreign policy in
particular requires elite leadership if any polarization and activation in the mass
electorate is to occur (Zaller 1992, 1994; Page and Shapiro 1992, p 181-2). The level of
casualties may also greatly affect turnout, although it did not seem to in the Vietnam era.
If unlikely voters, or traditional non-voters, do show up at the polls, what would they
look like? Non-voters tend to be poorer, less educated, Asian and Hispanic, and much
younger than the general population. In America, voting is a habit developed in middle
age for many Americans (or, older generations simply remain better voters—the evidence
is mixed as to whether lower turnout is primarily a generational effect or a period effect).
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Will young people turn out in 2004 in response to a war which has so far killed more
than 1000 largely young people?
A national survey of young people as early as March showed voters between the ages of
18 and 30 had triple the level of interest in the 2004 election as the same age group
avowed in a similar poll in 2000 (Patterson 2004). This suggests a weakness in many of
the screened polls, since young people in particular will be screened out, as many of
them are unregistered at the time of the polling, and an estimated 63% of them did not
vote in 2000. Moreover, a sizable percentage of young Americans solely or primarily use
cell phones, and thus are unreachable by phone polls, still the dominant method of
registering public opinion. Thus, if a sizable number of young voters turn out, most polls
will not see the tidal wave of youth voting coming. Such an event did not happen in 1972,
when Democrat George McGovern’s last desperate hope for victory over Nixon was a
surge in turnout by newly enfranchised young voters who would vote against Vietnam.
Nor has youth voting been decisive in any subsequent presidential election. Some
studies suggest that young voters are trending strongly towards Kerry, although this is
not uniformly true across surveys.
One other group of unlikely voters may be activated by the war: veterans and military
families. An estimated 26.5 million Americans have served at one time in the military,
almost one out of every seven citizens. For the past several decades, members of the
military, their families, and veterans generally have tended to support Republicans,
although this was less true of the World War II generation than of subsequent military
veterans. Many polls suggest that Bush retains this lead, beating Kerry by 33 points in
one survey in September (Rasmussen Reports 2004). However, an earlier poll had Kerry
with a 7 point lead among veterans (Pickler 2004). Kerry has made a sustained outreach
to veterans a cornerstone of his campaign, attempting to build on his record of military
service, particularly in contrast to Bush’s avoidance of service during Vietnam. In
speeches throughout the summer, Kerry attempted to tap into rising ire among some in
the military about “stop-loss orders” which Kerry has labeled a “back door draft.”
Because of the unexpectedly tough fighting in Iraq, the military has had to prevent
servicemen and women from leaving the military as planned at the end of their term of
duty. This is legal under the enlistment contract, but highly unusual and usually
unexpected. Anecdotally, there is some anger about this among members of the military.
If veterans and military families turn out in higher numbers, and do not demonstrate
their usual Republican tendencies, this could also help Kerry.
It should be noted that in fact the war in Iraq is killing a much higher percentage of older
soldiers than any previous American conflict. Because so many of the troops are
reserves, and reserves are often men between the ages of 30-50, the distribution of death
among generations has been radically different from Vietnam. More men over the age of
50 have died in the Iraq conflict than in the entire Korean War, a conflict that killed
many thousands of Americans. Another factor boosting the age of casualties in Iraq is
the professionalization of our military. This is the first sustained American war since
Vietnam. After Vietnam, the military became all-volunteer, with many soldiers seeking to
make the military a career for at least ten or twenty years. The pattern in Vietnam was of
young men (ages 18-21) doing two or four year tours and getting out. The distribution of
ages may also have ramifications for November, as many more of the 135,000 men and
women stationed in Iraq are heads of families than was true in Vietnam. The time spent
in the combat zone has also been significantly increased, with a typical tour in Iraq
lasting over a year (Shanker and Schmitt 2004). The strains on families may affect the
evaluations of President Bush by those affected, spurring them to a greater voter turnout.
Página 14 de 19
In addition to enhanced interest in politics, which seems evident across the board, not
just among the young, there are two final reasons to expect a generally higher turnout.
First, laws to make registration and voting have passed in the last three years. A number
of states are experimenting with advance and mail ballot voting. Secondly, the lingering
effects of the tight race in 2000 may spur greater turnout.
Although a higher turnout would seem to favor Kerry, this is a highly speculative, since
hard data about the preferences of non-voting young people, military families, or the
general electorate is mostly absent or mixed. Moreover, the pattern of low turnout in
American elections is so strongly fixed that it may override these short term
considerations. The last great surge in voter turnout, however, was a response to a short
term factor, the present of independent candidate Ross Perot. In 1992, Perot’s quixotic
campaign was seen as responsible for a four point boost in turnout to 55% of eligible
voters (Mayer and Wilcox 2000). It seems likely that 2004 will challenge and perhaps
exceed that recent high in turnout, rendering the election less predictable than most. If
higher turnout emerges, it will be yet another example of the influence of foreign policy
on this election.
The Impact of the Election on Foreign Policy: Reversing the Question
So far, this paper has discussed how foreign policy has and will affect the presidential
campaign of 2004. In closing, a brief discussion of how the election will affect foreign
policy seems in order. If foreign policy ends up being decisive, a democratic theorist
would find this only appropriate, since the gravity of the foreign policy questions at stake
in this election can scarcely be overestimated. At issue in this election is far more than
simply a medium sized war in Iraq, or even the global war on terror. What is actually at
stake is the fundamental question of America’s role in the world. As noted above, such
questions are rarely put directly to the populace in American elections. Yet this year, the
questions are emerging, at least in the radically different tone and attitude of the two
campaigns towards foreign policy. The Kerry campaign laments how far America has
fallen in the world’s esteem since 9-11. Kerry blames Bush for mismanaging America’s
alliances, and launching a war that alienated much of the world.
He’s pushed away our allies at a time when we need them the most…He
hasn’t pursued a strategy to win the hearts and minds of people around
the world and win the war of ideas against the radical ideology of
Osama bin Laden (Associated Press 2004).
Kerry has even claimed that foreign leaders support his candidacy, a claim that was
immediately attacked by the Bush White House. Bush, for his part, has portrayed
himself as leading a large “coalition of the willing” in the global conflict with terror. He
has embraced Tony Blair of Britain and a number of other leaders who have joined the
Iraq war. For those outside the coalition, the Bush administration has been very willing
to expose fault lines between America’s historic friends. In the months leading up to the
war in Iraq, his administration was direct and blunt in its negative characterizations of
traditional allies such as France and Germany. Many in the Republican Party launched
boycott campaigns against France, and one Republican Congresswoman proposed a bill
to have America’s war dead removed from the treasonous soil of France and Belgium.
The campaign against perceived defectors from freedom’s cause reached ludicrous lows
when “French fries” and “French toast” (neither of which is actually French) had their
names changed in Congressional eateries and on the president’s plane. This symbolic
gesture had only been previously adopted against the food products of actual war time
enemies (when, for example, German sauerkraut was called “liberty cabbage.”)
Página 15 de 19
Campaign aides to the president ridiculed Kerry for seeming “French,” apparently a dark
aspersion. While xenophobia had been present in previous elections in American
history, it had been quite a while since such allegations had entered so directly into a
presidential campaign.5
Beneath such trivialities lay deeply significant differences about the proper use of
America’s predominant military power in the post 9-11 world. Bush, under the influence
of neo-conservatives like Paul Wolfowitz, adopted a new national security strategy of
absolute American dominance for the foreseeable future. In the administration’s first
National Security Strategy released in September of 2002 three ideas were promulgated:
the necessity of unilateral preemptive military action, the refusal to tolerate any potential
challenger to America’s military strength, and the commitment to aggressively spreading
democracy around the world. The document went far beyond “mere tinkering with the
past and…put forth something bolder, a more fundamental change (Mann 2004, p. 330).
The document had its roots early in the first Bush administration, when Wolfowitz and
other neocons had argued for a new defensive posture following the Cold War in which
America’s allies would be kept forever in a militarily weak position to stave off any
possible threat to America’s preeminence. However, that earlier document was rejected
as too radical for the public and our allies to countenance, and it was quietly forgotten
(Mann 2004, p. 210-12). But the ideas behind it lived on, and in the post 9-11
atmosphere it was revived and strengthened. In effect, the Bush plan mingles a
Wilsonian vision of America leading the world into democracy with a global Monroe
Doctrine, in which America must remain the dominant military power in all regions of
the world. America’s military power must be so far beyond any challenger that other
nations will be dissuaded from even starting to compete with the United States. “Thus
the United States would be the world’s lone superpower not just today or ten years from
now but permanently” (Mann p. 212).
The Bush administration has appeared entirely unconcerned as America’s standing in
the world reached record lows. In poll after poll, America’s new posture has proven
remarkably unpopular overseas. The theme of American dominance that characterizes
the new national security strategy has not remained abstract words on paper: they have
been reflected in numerous actions of the Bush administration, from abrogation of
international treaties to the cavalier attitude towards the Geneva Convention in Iraq,
Afghanistan, and Cuba. The decision to invade Iraq without UN sanction was an
illustration of the core foreign policy beliefs of the administration. In the immediate
aftermath of the attacks of 9-11, several allies, including the French, offered to assist our
war against the Taliban, but were rejected as more logistical trouble than they were
worth on the ground.6 Multilateralism in Bushworld is not superfluous, but it is hardly
essential.
Should Bush win, it is this policy that will be reaffirmed. Should Kerry win, a more
multilateral mood will return to American foreign policy. True, Kerry will be less of a
multilateralist than he would have been had there never been a 9-11. There are many
policies desired by America’s allies, such as strong action on carbon dioxide levels, that
Kerry will be unable or unwilling to change. In addition, on most specific issues of
foreign policy, there is little daylight between Bush and Kerry rhetorically, and likely to
be even less difference in the substance of policies in the event of a Kerry victory. For
It’s possible that not since the 1800 election of Jefferson had French been used so widely as an insult.
This may have been a decision by uniformed officers in the Pentagon, rather than a snub of our allies directed by the
White House. Politically, however, U.S. troops fighting in Afghanistan alongside our allies would have bound us to our
allies in the crucible of conflict. Later, of course, we did ask and receive assistance from our allies in providing security in
Afghanistan.
5
6
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example, on the Middle East peace process, Kerry and Bush are almost in lockstep,
despite the fact that no American president has ever been closer to an Israeli prime
minister than Bush is to Sharon (Mayer 2004). The most that could be expected of a
Kerry administration would be slightly more willingness to engage the issue directly.
Similarly, on such major issues of foreign policy such as China, Russia, free trade,
immigration, global human rights, AIDS, debt relief, and European integration, there
should be no major changes if Kerry were to win.
Conclusion: An Election on Foreign Policy That Is Bush’s To Lose
Three conclusions seem appropriate. First, foreign policy will be decisive in 2004.
Because of the public’s interest in questions of foreign policy, the emerging distinct lines
on foreign policy between the two candidates, and the vacuum of domestic issues, 2004
may well be remembered as the election in which foreign policy determined the winner.
Second, the consequences of the election for American foreign policy will be among the
most significant in the history of modern presidential elections. Americans will not only
vote on foreign policy, but their votes will actually affect the foreign policy, which is not
by any means a guarantee in our system.7
Finally, to the extent that the election of 2004 revolves around foreign policy concerns,
George Walker Bush currently has the advantage. Polls consistently show that voters are
in strong agreement with Kerry on many of the most important domestic issues. But the
lead Bush has over Kerry on terror policies has remained almost unshakeable throughout
the campaign. The country likes Bush as commander in chief and leading advocate of
America’s security. Bush’s highest poll numbers during his four years as president have
occurred during the victories over the Taliban and Saddam. It remains possible that in
the debate on September 30, which will address foreign policy, Kerry will chip away at
Bush’s lead on these issues. And Kerry must remain hopeful that the war pulls out
unlikely voters who will support his war position.
The war in Iraq may also intrude yet again into the campaign. In the summer of 2004,
the intelligence agencies of the United States crafted a new national intelligence estimate
focused on the situation in Iraq. The document remained secret until September, when
leaked accounts of it suggested that America’s intelligence experts had almost uniformly
bleak views about the current situation and likely future of Iraq. Yet even in September,
Bush was still assuring the public that Iraq was moving towards a democratic future, and
that terrorist attacks were simply signs of progress, desperate and futile acts by those
who could see the Bush policies were working. Although American casualties passed
1,000 in early September, and although both casualties and attacks by terrorists against
Iraqi and American targets reached all time highs, the media’s focus on these events
remained less than what it was when the situation was arguably better. Of course, Bush’s
chances of reelection could be crippled by a severe worsening of the war in Iraq. By the
same token, a suddenly more peaceful Iraq combined with a reduction of the threat of
terrorism, could also boost Kerry’s chances, if it allowed a return to a focus on domestic
issues where his party is strongest. If Kerry does win in November, it will be the first
time in a generation that a Democrat has won when foreign policy was high on the
nation’s agenda.
If, instead, Iraq “stabilizes” at its existing level of chaos and instability, Bush may well
win reelection even as America remains sharply divided over the wisdom of his largest
7 For example, Bill Clinton won a few votes in 1992 by criticizing Bush the elder harshly on his Haiti and China policies,
and then went ahead and adopted them.
Página 17 de 19
foreign policy adventure. Will Americans understand the radically different foreign
policy they will be reaffirming in reelecting Bush? If not, perhaps the blame should fall
on the Democratic Party and its nominee for failing to give the voters as clear a choice as
they might have deserved. Yet even that may not be fair; such clarity in the electoral
politics of foreign policy is rarer than a week without American casualties in Iraq. The
fault, if fault it be, may reside more directly with the structure of America’s political
system, which gives dominance over foreign policy to a president elected in a weak party
system.
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