OxBlog

Thursday, August 19, 2004

# Posted 6:24 PM by Patrick Belton  

PEW AND THE COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS have released a poll showing that coming into the elections, a rather strong plurality of respondents (41 percent) believe foreign policy issues are the most important facing the nation, compared with economic issues (26 percent) and other domestic issues (also 26 percent). Interestingly, it also shows the American public is solidly Wilsonian, with 72 percent believing the top priority for American foreign policy is to follow moral principles. Roughly two-thirds then say the top priority should be 'cautious' (66) or 'decisive' (62), with Republicans tending to say 'decisive' and Democrats 'cautious'. (ed: wait, these are adding to way more than 100 hey, who says you can't have more than one top priority? well, sure as heck not our nation's foreign policy establishment!).

UPDATE: Dan Drezner looks further down the rank-ordering of other interests and comes to a different conclusion, finding them to be more realist. Personally, I'd be intrigued to see the response set broken down further, by party affiliation, region, and demographic variables. I'm quite curious whether there's a blue-red divide at work here, or whether realism and Wilsonian cut across - or map on to - other cleavages.
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