Sharp, new focus for U.S. election
Brian Knowlton/IHT IHT
Thursday, August 19, 2004
WASHINGTON For the first time in decades, foreign affairs and national
security issues are
emerging in the final months of the U.S. presidential campaign as greater
concerns among
American voters than economic matters, according to a survey released on
Wednesday.
Not since 1972, during the Vietnam War, have security and foreign affairs
concerns
dominated at this point in a campaign, the Pew Research Center said in the
report.
The survey suggests that public views on Iraq, and the administration's
success or failure
in overcoming violent opposition there in coming months, could decisively
influence the
election between President George W. Bush and Senator John Kerry, said the
Pew director,
Andrew Kohut. The study also found that Americans' views on Iraq and other
foreign policy
issues had diverged to a historically unusual level - the foreign policy
opinions of
Republicans and Democrats had been much closer in the past- reaffirming
the notion that
the candidates would have to continue scrapping through to Election Day
for votes among
small numbers of undecided voters.
For instance, Republican support for the doctrine espoused by Bush that
pre-emptive war is
justifiable against potential enemies has grown, to 88 percent from 79
percent last year,
while Democratic support for it has fallen, to 44 percent from 58 percent.
Nearly the same number of Americans said they favored a "cautious" foreign
policy as a
"decisive" one.
"The debate about whether it is better to be loved or feared is shaping up
as a major
issue," said Lee Feinstein, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign
Relations, which
collaborated on the Pew study.
Four in 10 Americans now cite international and defense issues as the most
important
problems confronting the country, the survey found. Only one in four
mentioned economic
concerns.
The Pew Center, relying partly on data from past Gallup polls, said that
security and
foreign affairs issues dominated from World War II until 1972.
But in 1976, a year after the fall of Saigon, economic issues took over.
That trend peaked
in 1992, when the candidate Bill Clinton instructed campaign aides that
"It's the economy,
stupid." That year, voters surveyed by Gallup cited economic concerns 18
times as often as
foreign and security matters.
The focus on foreign and security issues is, if anything, growing as the
campaign
progresses, the Pew report said.
The poll was conducted by phone from July 8 to 18 among 2,009 Americans.
Smaller up
samplings followed in early August. The margin of error was 2.5 percentage
points.
The lessons of the survey offer each camp some encouragement, said Walter
Mead of the
Council on Foreign Relations.
"Both pro- and anti-Bush voters agree that foreign policy is very
important," he said. But
while Americans give Bush higher marks on the war on terror, "Kerry has a
lead when you
ask which is better on foreign policy," Mead said.
Pew and other polls show that Kerry has an advantage on the economy. But
on the question
of who would do a better job of handling Iraq, the two men are tied, the
poll found.
"Supporters of both candidates can find both encouragement and grounds for
concern in the
study," Mead said. If the troubles in Iraq have fueled a rising
preoccupation with foreign
affairs, recent economic improvement could be a reason for the relative
decline in
Americans' concerns on that front. Kerry has repeatedly criticized Bush
for the loss of
millions of American jobs since 2000, and said that as president he would
provide
incentives for businesses to keep jobs at home; the president has pointed
to the creation,
in recent months, of hundreds of thousands of jobs and said his tax cuts
will create more.
Other poll findings also held mixed blessings for the Bush and Kerry
campaigns: Nearly 6
respondents in 10 faulted the administration as being too quick to use
force in Iraq, and
just over half said they disapproved of the way Bush was handling matters
there. Just over
4 in 10 approved of his course on Iraq. Those surveyed were deeply
concerned with the loss
of international respect for the United States. Two-thirds said the
country was less
respected now, and among opponents of the Iraq war, the level approached 9
in 10. More
Americans than in any previous Pew survey, 45 percent, said the United
States plays a more
important role as world leader than it did a decade earlier. Yet, a
declining number - 38
percent, down from 45 percent in October 2001 - supported the idea that
the United States
should be the single dominant world power.
At the same time, the threat of terror continues to mark public attitudes
on the use of
force and the extent of national protection measures, as shown by support
for pre-emption.
While 3 in 10 Americans said that the U.S. government had gone too far in
restricting
civil liberties as part of moves meant to fight terrorism, 5 in 10
expressed concern that
it had not done enough to protect the country.
Bush has frequently asserted that the antiterrorism laws of the Patriot
Act are
justifiably tough, despite criticisms that they allow intrusions on
privacy.
"There are a lot of places in the poll where you can see that the shock of
Sept. 11 is
just a central concern for the American public," Mead said.
One of these apparently was the belief among a substantial minority of
respondents, 43
percent, that torture can sometimes be justified by circumstances, a
number that might
seem surprising after the public shock over abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison
in Iraq.
Carroll Doherty of the Pew Center said the public saw no contradiction in
wanting both
stronger relations with allies and tougher measures against terror. "They
want both," he
said.
The survey found strong partisan disagreements on several foreign policy
issues.
Half of Democrats and nearly as many independents said that the Sept. 11,
2001, attacks
might have been motivated partly by U.S. wrongdoings in dealing with other
countries. But
three in four Republicans rejected that view, up even from the 65 percent
who said so in
late September 2001.
International Herald Tribune
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