“Following The Will Of The People, Sometimes”: For Some Politicians, Public Opinion Only Seems To Matter On Syria
When the Founding Fathers sought to form a country for the people and by the people, one of the central components was to establish a representative government – to create a legislative body that reflected the will and values of the masses.
In today’s technologically advanced, media-frenzied world, tweets, “likes”, emails, texts and sound bites have become the voice of the people. Politicians are left to sift through massive amounts of data points to determine the will and desire of their constituents.
In addition, public opinion polls are conducted on an almost constant basis that seek to demonstrate and frame the public debate in ways that elected officials can fine-tune and adjust their strategy and approach to better anticipate the public’s demand.
So it’s always curious to see whether a politician chooses to reflect the poll’s findings or whether they act counter to its conclusions.
Of late, public polls have suggested that the American people are war fatigued and that they increasingly fear that military action in Syria would engage the United States in another messy, prolonged conflict in the Middle East. Further, there is a serious concern that involvement in Syria would increase the terrorist threat to Americans. According to a new survey by the Pew Research Center and USA Today, 63 percent of Americans oppose U.S. air strikes in Syria, a 15-point shift against the involvement in just the last week.
As a result, this overwhelming opposition to the strikes – echoed in town hall meetings, negative phone calls and emails to congressional offices – has shaped the points of view for a majority of House members who pledged their opposition and sought defeat of a proposed resolution for force in Syria.
Kristina Miller, author of Constituency Representation in Congress noted that, “it’s commonplace for politicians to cite opinion among their constituents. When there’s a vote that’s particularly difficult or consequential, it provides them some cover – ‘I was doing what my people wanted me to do.'”
But, when presented with polling that shows overwhelming support for expanded background checks for gun purchases (86 percent support), apparently public opinion becomes less compelling and even dismissed, as House Republicans refuse to debate or take action on any bill addressing this issue.
Similarly, 64 percent of Americans support the immigration reform act passed by the U.S. Senate, but stalled in the House. “The public supports the immigration bill 2-1 and shows unusual agreement given the divisions in the country on many other issues,” said Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. “It seems the only group divided on this issue is Congress.” But, efforts for comprehensive immigration reform legislation have been stymied by the GOP in the House and left for another day.
According to the latest United Technologies/National Journal Congressional Connection poll, Republican primary voters pose the greatest threat to a GOP incumbent, with 35 percent of those polled saying they would be less inclined to support their re-election if they support a military strike in Syria.
One has to wonder if, when a politician puts their finger in the wind, is he or she really looking to find the pulse of the people, or just convenient political cover? Do our elected officials really care about the will of the people, or are they most interested in casting “safe” votes (or avoiding them altogether), so as to not threaten reelection?
By: Penny Lee, U. S. News and World Report, September 12, 2013
“The Syria Babble We Don’t Need”: Reducing Complicated Issues To Campaign Style Contests
Our country is about to make the most excruciating kind of decision, the most dire: whether to commence a military campaign whose real costs and ultimate consequences are unknowable.
But let’s by all means discuss the implications for Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, Iowa, New Hampshire and 2016. Yea or nay on the bombing: which is the safer roll of the dice for a Republican presidential contender? Reflexively, sadly, we journalists prattle and write about that. We miss the horse race of 2012, not to mention the readership and ratings it brought. The next election can’t come soon enough.
So we pivot to Hillary Clinton. We’re always pivoting to Hillary Clinton. Should she be weighing in on Syria more decisively and expansively? Or does the fact that she authorized the war in Iraq compel restraint and a gentler tone this time around? What’s too gentle, and what’s just right? So goes one strand of commentary, and to follow it is to behold a perverse conflation of foreign policy and the Goldilocks fable.
The media has a wearying tendency — a corrosive tic — to put everything that happens in Washington through the same cynical political grinder, subjecting it to the same cynical checklist of who’s up, who’s down, who’s threading a needle, who’s tangled up in knots, what it all means for control of Congress after the midterms, what it all means for control of the White House two years later.
And we’re doing a bit too much of this with Syria, when we owe this crossroads something more than standard operating procedure, something better than knee-jerk ruminations on the imminent vote in Congress as a test for Nancy Pelosi, as a referendum on John Boehner, as a conundrum for Mitch McConnell, as a defining moment for Barack Obama.
You know whom it’s an even more defining moment for? The Syrians whose country is unraveling beyond all hope; the Israelis, Lebanese and Jordanians next door; the American servicemen and servicewomen whose futures could be forever altered or even snuffed out by the course that the lawmakers and the president chart.
The stakes are huge. Bomb Syria and there’s no telling how many innocent civilians will be killed; if it will be the first chapter in an epic longer and bloodier than we bargained for; what price America will pay, not just on the battlefield but in terms of reprisals elsewhere; and whether we’ll be pouring accelerant on a country and a region already ablaze.
Don’t bomb Syria and there’s no guessing the lesson that the tyrants of the world will glean from our decision not to punish Bashar al-Assad for slaughtering his people on whatever scale he wishes and in whatever manner he sees fit. Will they conclude that a diminished America is retreating from the role it once played? Will they interpret that, dangerously, as a green light? And what will our inaction say about us? About our morality, and about our mettle?
These are the agonizing considerations before our elected leaders and before the rest of us, and in light of them we journalists ought to resist turning the Syria debate into the sort of reality television show that we turn so much of American political life into, a soap opera often dominated by the mouthiest characters rather than the most thoughtful ones.
Last week, in many places, I read what Sarah Palin was saying about Syria, because of course her geopolitical chops are so thoroughly established. A few months back, I read about Donald Trump’s thoughts on possible military intervention, because any debate over strategy in the Middle East naturally calls for his counsel.
They’re both irrelevant, but they’re eyeball bait: ready, reliable clicks. I wonder how long I’ll have to wait before a post on some Web site clues me into Beyoncé’s Syria position. Late Friday, Politico informed the world of Madonna’s. (She’s anti-intervention.)
This type of coverage hasn’t been the dominant one. But plenty of it is creeping in.
Here’s a smattering of headlines, subheads, sentences and phrases from various news organizations last week: “Votes on Syria could have huge ramifications on 2016 contenders”; “Vote puts Republicans mulling 2016 run on the spot”; “Democrats and Republicans are choosing their words carefully, lest they take a hit three years from now”; “the difficult line G.O.P. presidential contenders like Rubio must balance in trying to project a sense of American military might without turning off conservatives skeptical about following Obama’s lead”; “the risk for Paul is if Obama’s prescription for Syria turns out to be a success”; “Mitch McConnell’s muddle”; “Hillary Clinton’s Syria dilemma.”
Some of this rightly illuminates the political dynamics that will influence the final decisions about a military strike that individual members of Congress and the president reach. It’s essential in that regard.
But some merely reflects the penchant that we scribes and pundits have for reducing complicated issues to campaign-style contests and personality-based narratives, especially if those personalities have the stature and thus the marketability of celebrities.
Celebrities get clicks, while the nitty-gritty is a tougher sell. I’ll not soon forget a BuzzFeed post from last February with this headline: “The sequester is terrible for traffic.” It didn’t mean Corollas and Escalades. It meant the number of readers bothering with Web stories on a subject they deemed as dry as they apparently did the federal budget and automatic cuts to spending.
The traffic lament shared the screen with a link to an utterly different style of political feature asking readers to indicate which “presidential hotties” they’d get down and dirty with. The headline on that post? “Sexy U.S. presidents: would you hit it or quit it?” Sex, I guess, brings on rush hour. Maybe presidents do, too. They’re celebrities, even the dead ones.
It’s easy for the media and our consumers to focus on recognizable figures, how they’re faring and what they’re saying (or, better yet, shouting). I even spotted recent reports on what Chris Christie wasn’t saying. They noted that he hasn’t articulated a position on Syria, though that’s unremarkable and appropriate. He isn’t receiving the intelligence that members of Congress are, and he doesn’t get a vote.
He’s not the story, and neither is Paul or Rubio or the rest of them. What matters here are the complicated ethics and unpredictable ripple effects of the profound choice about to be made.
And if we want the men and women making it to be guided by principle, not politics, it surely doesn’t help for journalists to lavish attention on electoral calculations and thereby send our own signal: that we don’t expect, and voters shouldn’t count on, anything nobler. On a question of war and peace, we need nobler. We need the highest ground we can find.
By: Frank Bruni, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, September 7, 2013
“Heads I Win, Tails You Lose”: On Syria, Republicans Once Again Are Playing “A Rigged Sports Game”
“I am going to support the president’s call for action,” House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said on Tuesday, in reference to U.S. policy in Syria. “I believe my colleagues should support this call for action.”
In the 48 hours that followed, most of Boehner’s colleagues from his own party — which is to say, the members he ostensibly leads — announced their intention to ignore the Speaker’s suggestion.
By some measures, this might raise doubts about Boehner’s leadership abilities. The Speaker’s office doesn’t see it that way.
Speaker John Boehner’s (R-OH) office reiterated Friday that it’s President Obama’s responsibility to sway the public on the need to strike Syria and warned that lawmakers will represent their constituents.
“The speaker has consistently said the president has an obligation to make his case for intervention directly to the American people,” said Boehner spokesman Brendan Buck. “Members of Congress represent the views of their constituents, and only a president can convince the public that military action is required.”
Let’s put aside, for now, the notion that members of Congress represent the views of their constituents — an assertion that doesn’t seem to apply to how Republicans approach immigration, gun violence, taxes, job creation, entitlements, civil rights, health care, or education.
Instead, let’s try to fully appreciate the rules as they’ve been laid out for the political establishment, because it seems as if the last few days have been devoted to the political establishment and the chattering class planting some goalposts pretty deep.
If congressional Republicans ignore President Obama, it’s evidence of Obama failing. If congressional Republicans ignore their own party’s leaders, it’s still evidence of Obama failing.
If the president bypasses Congress to pursue his national security strategy, he’s dictatorial. If he seeks congressional authorization for his national security strategy, he’s weak and undermining the stature of his office.
If lawmakers reject a resolution authorizing force in Syria, Obama will struggle to get anything through Congress for the rest of his term. If lawmakers approve a resolution authorizing force in Syria, Obama will struggle to get anything through Congress for the rest of his term.
If the president uses the military to intervene in Syria, Obama will have undermined the credibility of the United States on the global stage. If the president honors a congressional vote against using the military to intervene in Syria, Obama will have undermined the credibility of the United States on the global stage.
I’m starting to think this game is rigged in a heads-I-win; tails-you-lose sort of way.
For what it’s worth, while the ultimate outcome on Capitol Hill is in doubt, I’m not at all convinced this is a make-or-break moment for Obama’s presidency, and he might as well resign if the votes for his Syria policy don’t materialize. Greg Sargent had a compelling piece on the larger context this morning:
If Congress says No, and Obama announces that he will abide by the vote — arguing that the people have spoken, that democracy and the rule of law will prevail, and that our country will be stronger for it — then it’s very possible that the Dem base will rally behind him…. If Obama heeds Congress, the liberal base — and liberal lawmakers — would likely have Obama’s back. Independents, who have tilted strongly against an attack, might be supportive, too.
And so, several questions for the political science egghead types and anyone else who cares to answer. Do voters really perceive situations like these in the same terms pundits and Congressional lawmakers do, i.e., in terms of what they tell us about presidential strength or weakness? Do voters really expect presidents to bend Congress to their will, or do they see Congress as its own animal and don’t hold presidents accountable for its behavior?
I imagine for many political observers, it’s easy to think of political “wins” and “losses” in a sports context — victories are inherently good and defeats are inherently bad. And if the president goes to Congress seeking authorization for a military strike in Syria, and lawmakers reject the appeal, it would be, by definition, a loss for the president.
But it might simultaneously be a win for democracy that leaves the public with the outcome the American mainstream wants. Voters may well react to news organizations obsessing over “Crushing Presidential Defeat on Capitol Hill,” but I’m not convinced the public would reflexively see it that way.
If Congress balks and the White House honors the vote, most Americans would be pleased, not outraged, right?
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, September 6, 2013
“Rand Paul’s Unique Understanding Of Syria”: Strong Opinions About Another Subject He Doesn’t Really Understand
It wasn’t surprising to see Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) on “Meet the Press” yesterday criticizing the idea of military intervention in Syria. It was, however, interesting to hear his rationale for what U.S. foreign policy should look like in this case.
“I think the failure of the Obama administration has been we haven’t engaged the Russians enough or the Chinese enough on this, and I think they were engaged. I think there’s a possibility Assad could already be gone. The Russians have every reason to want to keep their influence in Syria, and I think the only way they do is if there’s a change in government where Assad has gone but some of the same people remain stable.
“That would also be good for the Christians. I think the Islamic rebels winning is a bad idea for the Christians and all of a sudden we’ll have another Islamic state where Christians are persecuted.
“So I think really the best outcome for all the major powers would be a peaceful transition government, and Russia could influence that if they told Assad no more weapons.”
Paul seemed oddly preoccupied with Christians in Syria — a group he mentioned five times during the brief interview — to the point at which it seemed the senator may be confusing Syria with Egypt, where Coptic Christians have seen their churches burned.
But it was his rhetoric about Russia that was especially out of place.
About 13 years ago, then-Gov. George W. Bush and then-Vice President Al Gore met for the first of three debates, and Jim Lehrer asked about Slobodan Milosevic, who was threatening at the time to ignore his election results and leave office. Bush said it would be “a wonderful time for the Russians to step into the Balkans” and help lead diplomatic efforts.
Gore said that didn’t make any sense — Russia had largely sided with Milosevic and wasn’t prepared to accept the election results. Bush said, “Well obviously we wouldn’t use the Russians if they didn’t agree with our answer, Mr. Vice President.”
“They don’t,” Gore replied, making clear that only one candidate on the stage knew what he was talking about.
I thought about that 2000 debate watching Paul suggest the Obama administration should “engage” Russia to help create a “change in government” in Syria. Indeed, in Paul’s vision, Obama would convince Russia to deny military aid to the Assad government.
How would this happen, exactly? Does Rand Paul realize that Russia and the U.S. are on opposite sides of this, and “engaging” Russians to help oust Assad doesn’t really make any sense? Did the senator not fully prepare for questions about Syria before the interview?
Or is this just another issue in which the Kentucky Republican has strong opinions about a subject he doesn’t really understand?
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, September 2, 2013
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