As next week’s third and final presidential debate on foreign policy approaches, a national survey by the Pew Research Center finds increasing public pessimism about developments in the Middle East and more support for tough policies to deal with Iran’s nuclear program and economic issues with China. However, there is […] Read more »
More Americans Trust Government’s Handling of Problems
Americans’ trust in Washington, D.C., to handle international problems is up sharply compared with this time last year, and is now the highest in Gallup trends since the start of the Iraq war in 2003. [cont.] Lydia Saad, Gallup Read more »
Why Presidents Love Foreign Affairs
I’d like to apologize to American voters. I’m one of the 5 percent. The 5 percent, that is, who vote in presidential elections based on the foreign policy views of the candidates. It might seem to the other 95 percent of you that we pull the strings. … While I […] Read more »
U.S. Public, Experts Differ on China Policies
With China a key foreign policy issue in the 2012 presidential contest, and both Barack Obama and Mitt Romney promising to “get tough” with the Asian power, the American public expresses both positive and negative views about China and U.S. policy towards it. [cont.] Pew Read more »
Middle East Turmoil Closely Followed; Romney’s Comments Viewed Negatively
About four-in-ten Americans (43%) have followed news about the attacks on U.S. embassies in the Middle East and the killing of an American ambassador very closely, making it by far the most closely followed foreign news story of the year. Those who have followed this story have much more positive […] Read more »
Romney and the Rally Effect
I said yesterday that Republicans don’t appear to read political scientists on the subject of the effect of the economy on elections. But I’ve always suspected that sometime in the 1990s Republicans did read Richard Brody’s classic article about the “rally effect” — in which he found that “rally around […] Read more »