UN-Huggers? Not Posted by Suzanne Nossel

Heather:  you raise some good points.  I am too tired right now to respond to more than two of them.

On the depth of support for the UN, you hone in on the telling interpretation of the polls that suggest most Bush supporters like treaties, and believe their President feels the same way.  You cite pollsters who opine that these voters screen out information at odds with their existing perceptions. 

This is entirely consistent with my argument that the support for treaties, institutions, and the UN is tissue-thin.  If the voters cared deeply about these issues, they wouldn't delude themselves about the President's hostility to them.  When Bush proposed a constitutional amendment against gay marriage, the Log Cabin Republicans could not longer live with the cognitive dissonance and withheld their support from the President.  But legions of other Republicans who don't consider themselves anti-gay but at the same time don't consider gay rights uppermost on the agenda, still back Bush.  People vote the issues that matter to them, and - as the pollsters point out - can be artful on rationalizing the rest.

Re: fear I totally agree.  We can't do fear, and we don't need to try.  To my deep consternation for purely personal reasons (we're renters), the pulsating boom in Manhattan real estate over the last 3 years is proof positive that Americans - including those closest to ground zero - are not afraid.  What we need is inspiration and a sense of progress in a positive direction.  But we may have to leave behind some of our myths first.

Comments

[Mark Lindeman]

I have to think about this some more, so, thanks for the provocation. I do (continue to) agree that obviously support for the U.N. and abstract multilateralism isn't a litmus test. Two things here strike me as not quite right:

(1) "If voters cared deeply...." I'm reluctant to say that the reason most Americans have essentially gone along with the Bush administration on torture is that they don't "care deeply" enough. It's tautologically true, but I think it misrepresents the process by which people screen out information on the issue. (The analogy to same-sex marriage doesn't work for me, because most Americans still oppose same-sex marriage.) It was politically necessary for Bush to take a tough public stand against torture, rightly assuming that Kerry would give him a pass on it. The U.N. issue is less emotional, but there again, it was politically necessary to work with the U.N. (as Heather pointed out) and to assemble a "coalition of the willing."

(2) "People vote the issues that matter to them...." Kerry tried to win by identifying the issues that mattered to people and taking more popular positions on them. Judging from the National Election Study results, Kerry won on the issues, i.e., people considered themselves closer to Kerry on the issues. I don't want to say that people _don't_ vote issues (and anyway, we're here to talk about issues), but watch out. (Part of Kerry's problem was that people tended to agree with him that Iraq was a sorry mess, but that was not an attractive basis on which to vote for him. I think that Americans really really do oppose torture, but that doesn't mean that it was a winning issue for Kerry.)

[praktike]

Ah, this post on polling literalism seems relevant:

http://yglesias.typepad.com/matthew/2005/04/polling_literal.html

[Brien O'Toole]

Glancing over the posts and comments, I mostly see: "What will the American people accept from a "progressive" foreign/military policy? How do we package our wares so the electorate buys?"

The harder but better question is: "How best does America defend itself and its interests in the immediate and longer term?" If the answer includes, "advancing economic wealth, social opportunity, political/religious liberty worldwide in an increasingly secure environment.," the specific propositions are worth talking about and would be "progressive." Isn't that the "progress" to be sought? And doesn't it underwrite our security by giving people in less materially and politically advanced countries a peaceful route to more affluent, dignified, secure futures? Can a specific policies be in fact "progressive" unless it does this whether it seems more deferential to the sensibilities of other countries, relies less on force, or more prominently considers the environment.

The framework for this approach would be built on priorities. First are those aimed at defeating enemies posing immediate threats. Some strategies and tactics might look more "progressive" than others, but the acid test really is what destroys/disables/deters the immediate threat. A progressive would also have a view about which of those three was the right goal.

Second, are policies that realistically advance polities. We have an agressive "free trade" lobby, less so for "Transparency" for governance and anti-corruption; for positive incentives for positive economic activity; and, I think, the non-subsidization of violence. Whether it's the Saudi's (fundamentalism) or the Europeans (the rejectionist Palestineans) or us, a progressive policy, without advocating pacifism, points out that violence has momentum of its own independent of the cause for which it's employed. That's not a sufficent argument for avoiding it, particularly today, but giving it due weight matters.

The hard part of getting to persuasive answers for these questions is that

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