Why Care What the Public Thinks About Foreign Affairs?

The media are fascinated by polls of the general public ranging from America’s views of presidential candidates to evaluations of U.S. policy in Syria and Yemen.

 

I want to suggest that the public’s choices among candidates are appropriate topics for media discourse; foreign policy warrants a very different verdict.

It is hard to underestimate the general public’s ignorance of foreign affairs.  And this absence of knowledge is not a new development.

 

Fifty years ago, in the midst of the Cold War, over 50% either did not know or thought that the USSR was a member of NATO (an organization established after World War II to oppose the communist empire)!

[Public ignorance is not confined to areas beyond our borders.  Recently 60% of poll respondents were unable to name all three branches of the Federal government and 70% did not know the names of their senators.]

It’s easy for those of us who follow politics and national affairs to feel smug.  But such an attitude of superiority is usually unwarranted.

Why should the office worker in New Jersey or the farmer in Nebraska bother with the details of U.S. policy in Syria?  Most Americans have a need to keep abreast only of events that directly impact them, whether it’s the state of schools in the neighborhood or the price of wheat on the local commodities exchange.  Unless people have a special interest in the subject, foreign affairs will rarely pique their interest absent some disaster affecting Americans (9/11, for instance).

 

Fair enough.  But recognizing this reality should cause one to question the value of the opinions of people who essentially know nothing about the subject.

So be sure to keep this truth in mind the next time you read a poll expressing the public’s opinion of this or that overseas problem.