john mccain’s foreign policy war
by Jeremy P. Jacobs
Published: February 27, 2008
As usual, Sen. John McCain has decided to go it alone.
No, I am not talking about the recent New York Times (that beacon of journalistic integrity, but that’s for another column) article alleging he had an affair with a lobbyist.
What I am talking about is McCain’s two-front war: the war in Iraq, which, as it applies to the presidential race, is his war and the battle against public opinion, which no longer supports U.S. involvement in Iraq.
Tuesday morning, the New York Times reported that McCain said if he couldn’t convince the American people the current strategy in Iraq was working, meaning stabilizing the country and reducing American casualties, he would lose the election.
McCain then tried to hedge, asking to retract that statement, but Michael Luo, the Times reporter, didn’t let him off the hook.
As has been widely (and repeatedly) reported, the cards appear stacked against McCain this year. Democrats have the benefit of an unpopular war, a foundering economy and a Republican president whose job approval rating is in the tank.
But, as McCain’s primary success has shown, he likes it that way. Whereas Sen. Barack Obama’s political organization is based on his ability to organize change from the grassroots on up, McCain is cast as a politician that relies on his own courage and honor to overcome adversity. Voters, his case goes, can count on him never to back down.
There is a name for this mentality in the foreign policy world. Walter Russell Mead, a Senior Fellow for U.S. Foreign at the Council on Foreign Relations, described Jacksonian foreign policy in his book Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World.
“The Jacksonian school represents a deeply embedded, widely spread populist and popular culture of honor, independence, courage and military pride among the American people,” Mead wrote.
Mead cites McCain as a Jacksonian, along with General George Patton Jr. and even George Washington. American voters have been attracted to Jacksonian military figures (rightly or wrongly) because of their embodiment of American patriotism; 10 former generals have been elected president and others, including JFK and Bush 41, benefited from heroic military pasts. (Sen. John Kerry tried to tread on this as well but we all know how that turned out.)
Jacksonians rallied steadfast 40-year support for the Cold War based on an emphasis on honor; it was the United States’ obligation to overcome the spread of evil communism, the story went.
Following 9/11, Bush 43 succeeded in drumming up the same type of support for his “war on terror” for the same reason. The United States was facing a global threat, he said, so the United States will unite and respond in kind.
The problem for McCain (and Bush, but, well, that doesn’t really matter anymore) is the public support for this mindset has, dare I say, vanished. The go-it-alone foreign policy is now overwhelmingly unpopular; people want a president that is willing to engage in diplomacy and multilateral talks to deal with adversarial foreign governments - key elements to both Obama and Sen. Hillary Clinton’s campaigns.
This is the “Jeffersonian” school of thought, according to Mead. The Jeffersonian school see “the preservation of American Democracy in a dangerous world as the most pressing and vital interest of the American people,” Mead wrote. “It has consistently looked for the least costly and dangerous method for defending American independence while counseling against attempts to impose American values on other countries.”
Now I doubt Obama and Clinton would agree with the latter part of that definition (voters don’t like foreign policy on the cheap), but the first half certainly seems to apply to the electorate’s general mood right now. We tried imposing American values in Iraq, the argument goes. Where did that get us?
But just when things look bad for McCain, there is a silver lining. The same day the New York Times ran the above article, it also released a poll that found that voters do, in fact, prefer McCain on foreign policy issues, albeit narrowly. McCain beats both Democrats on the question “How confident are you in the candidates ability to make the right decisions about the war in Iraq?” 58 percent for McCain, 57 for Obama and 50 for Clinton.
Most telling, when asked, “How likely is it that the candidate would be an effective commander in chief of the nation’s military?” McCain wins big time - 80 percent to 69 percent for Obama and 54 percent for Clinton. Respondents also said McCain is best qualified to “deal wisely with an international crisis.”
McCain has got to be happy about those poll numbers. Voters aren’t ready to cede America’s dominant position in the world and foreign policy that reflects that stature. McCain is the embodiment of that sentiment. Maybe, just maybe, voters still have a little Jackson left in them.
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