The Foreign Policy Disconnect: What Americans Want from Our Leaders but Don't Get

Extract

The Foreign Policy Disconnect: What Americans Want from Our Leaders but Don't Get. By Benjamin I. Page with Marshall M. Bouton. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006. 336p. $50.00 cloth, $20.00 paper.

In the November 2006 midterm elections, voters swept Republicans out of power in what was widely interpreted as a rebuke of the Bush administration's Iraq policies. In subsequent polls, nearly two-thirds of the public opposed President George W. Bush's postelection proposal for a “surge” in the U.S. troop presence in Iraq. Undeterred, the president declared on January 14, 2007, “I've made my decision and we're going forward,” and his press secretary, Tony Snow, said on January 9, “The president will not shape policy according to public opinion.” How can a U.S. president sustain a deeply unpopular foreign policy, seemingly uninfluenced by electoral setbacks or popular disapproval? Should the president be more responsive to public preferences? In an important and ambitious new book, Benjamin Page and Marshall Bouton bring to bear an impressive array of survey data in order to answer these and other questions central to the study of public opinion and U.S. foreign policy.