Do Americans know who their diplomats are? Or what they do?

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… An interest in understanding Americans’ views on American diplomacy and diplomats – how they are selected and trained, what it is that they do – formed the basis of a new report, undertaken with the support of the Una Chapman Cox Foundation and conducted by the nonprofit RAND Corporation. The report details the results of two surveys in which a nationally representative sample of more than 2,000 American adults answered questionnaires in two successive years, 2020 and 2021. In between the surveys, we ran several focus group sessions that probed some of the survey questions more deeply.

What we found was that although public opinion toward American diplomats was generally favorable, regardless of personal political ideology, Americans have a limited understanding of how diplomats are selected, and how diplomacy interacts with other elements of America’s national security establishment. CONTINUED

Michael Pollard & Charles Ries (RAND), The Hill

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How Elites Misread Public Opinion

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… As the political scientists Joshua Kertzer and Jonathan Renshon detail in a new paper in the Annual Review of Political Science, the rise of populist movements has coincided with a rise in the use of “elite experiments” — or randomized studies using elite subjects — in academia as a way to study the decision-making processes of political leaders.

Ultimately, Kertzer and Renshon told me in our conversation, the findings of these studies challenge some of our basic assumptions about how democracies should function: For one, elites, even when they try to act on public opinion, often have no idea what the public actually wants. At the same time, these studies suggest that studying the defects in elite decision-making may be the first step to correcting them — since at least in some cases, elites are still responsive to public opinion. CONTINUED

Ian Ward, Politico Magazine

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Biden’s Economic Woes

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This has been a transitory year, from the pandemic to inflation, and now possibly to recession. The Fed just raised interest rates by 0.75% in hopes of stemming inflation. Will it work? Or will it kick start an economic dip? We will see. But negative economic indicators are all around us.

Can policy makers and politicians meet public opinion where it stands today? This will be a difficult challenge as the context is shifting. Incumbency is under threat as we look into the near future.

Today, we are going to examine the effect of our current context on President Joe Biden. CONTINUED

Clifford Young, Sarah Feldman & Johnny Sawyer, Ipsos

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Untangling Americans’ Complex Views of Morality

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Gallup’s annual Values and Beliefs survey provides a fascinating glimpse into the American public’s views of issues that can be classified under the broad rubric of morality. The survey, conducted each May since 2001, probes Americans’ views about a series of specific issues and behaviors — ranging from cloning humans to polygamy — as well as broad questions about their views of moral values more generally.

One of the important trends measured by the survey over the past two decades is Americans’ increasingly accepting attitudes toward a variety of behaviors relating to fertility and sexual relations — behaviors which were heretofore more likely to be considered taboo or morally frowned upon. CONTINUED

Frank Newport, Gallup

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Gavin Newsom’s Case for a More Aggressive Democratic Party

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On May 4, two days after Politico rocked Washington by revealing the draft of a Supreme Court decision to overturn the constitutional right to abortion, California Governor Gavin Newsom delivered remarks at a Los Angeles Planned Parenthood office—and triggered a small earthquake of his own.

Newsom pledged that, however the Court ruled, California would ensure legal access to abortion. But it was something else he said that really stood out: Republican-controlled states are moving not only to restrict or outlaw abortion if the Court allows it, he said, but also to ban books, restrict how teachers can talk about race, make voting more difficult, and target LGBTQ rights through measures like Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill. In a sudden geyser of frustration, Newsom asked why Democrats at every level were not doing more to combat, or even call attention to, this sweeping offensive.

“Where the hell is my party? Where’s the Democratic Party? You guys paying attention to what’s going on?” he asked. “Why aren’t we standing up more firmly, more resolutely? Why aren’t we calling this out? This is a concerted, coordinated effort. And, yes, they’re winning. They are. They have been. Let’s acknowledge that. We need to stand up. Where’s the counteroffensive?”

In an interview at his office in Sacramento on Tuesday, Newsom told me he was surprised at how “resonant” a response he received from Democrats around the country to viral video clips of that moment. But several Democratic strategists I talked with this week said the governor should not have been shocked. The reaction, they said, reflects the anxiety mounting within the Democratic coalition over the ever bolder effort by red states, with crucial support from the GOP-appointed majority on the Supreme Court and Republican U.S. senators wielding the filibuster, to rescind or restrict seemingly long-settled rights. CONTINUED

Ronald Brownstein, The Atlantic

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Biden approval rating at 39% amid economic fears; 47% ‘strongly disapprove’

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President Joe Biden said Thursday Americans were “really, really down.” He’s right about that.

A new USA TODAY/Suffolk Poll shows the country in a funk and one that sets a problematic political landscape for Democrats in the November elections that are approaching fast.

Only 39% of Americans approve of the job Biden is doing as president. A stunning 47% “strongly” disapprove; just 16% “strongly” approve. Academic studies have shown that presidential approval is one of the most reliable predictors of what happens in midterm elections, and a rating this low would traditionally signal significant losses for the president’s party. CONTINUED

Susan Page, USA Today

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