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Obama’s Foreign Policy Is Unpopular Because He Takes Unpopular Actions (II)

Ross Douthat continues the discussion on Obama’s foreign policy and public opinion. He notes that the two biggest drops in foreign policy approval came following the first Snowden leaks and the Syria debate last summer: But rather than trying to read the public’s response in ideological terms, maybe it’s more reasonable to look at what […]

Ross Douthat continues the discussion on Obama’s foreign policy and public opinion. He notes that the two biggest drops in foreign policy approval came following the first Snowden leaks and the Syria debate last summer:

But rather than trying to read the public’s response in ideological terms, maybe it’s more reasonable to look at what the two stories had in common: They both made the White House look incompetent.

That’s a fair point, but I don’t think it can be divorced from the public’s preferences. The backlash against NSA surveillance has been in response to overly intrusive government activity, and Obama has suffered from that backlash because he has presided over and continued these surveillance practices. The Snowden affair hurts the administration’s reputation for competence, but the reaction against the surveillance programs has been driven by the revelation that the government is in some respects far too capable for the public’s liking. Insofar as Obama is perceived as incompetent, that just adds to the existing dissatisfaction with the substance of the policy.

On Syria, the administration’s conduct in late August and early September made it an easy target for mockery, but it seems very unlikely that even a perfectly executed military campaign that somehow managed to dissuade Assad from ever using chemical weapons again would have met with the public’s approval. Most Americans flatly opposed any intervention in Syria for any reason, and it wouldn’t have mattered whether the intervention was managed well or not. I doubt that it helped Obama’s reputation to be seen as “uncertain, haphazard, and politically incompetent,” as he appeared to be during the Syria debate, but the far bigger political problem was that he was trying to repudiate one of the main arguments of his own re-election and to take the country into a new war after having based most of his foreign policy reputation on the avoidance and conclusion of foreign wars. Had Obama bypassed Congress or somehow managed to railroad enough members to authorize an attack on Syria, the overwhelming majority against intervention would have been even more dissatisfied. As we saw last year, public opposition to intervention in Syria was not mild or casual, and it wasn’t limited to the usual war opponents. It was remarkably widespread and intense, especially considering the supposedly “limited” nature of the military action being proposed, which I think reflected the serious anger that many Americans felt at the thought of having the U.S. dragged into yet another unnecessary foreign conflict.

The Ukraine crisis is another example of Obama’s responding to a foreign event in a way that most Americans don’t support. I don’t think the majority that doesn’t want the U.S. to be very involved in Ukraine would be pleased no matter how well Obama managed that involvement, because they see no reason for the involvement in the first place. The “tougher” that Obama acts in response to Russian behavior, the more likely it is that Obama will continue to lose support for his foreign policy for the simple reason that he will be acting against the wishes of most Americans.

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