I was a little surprised by this from Brian Katulis on The Liberal Patriot:
Two main wildcards exist for those who are open to an argument for building back U.S. politics of national security from the center.
First are the open questions of who will emerge as the leading voices in Congress on national security in both parties. The GOP remains in disarray after the surprising setback it suffered in these midterms. Inside of the Democratic Party, there are loud voices who like to pretend the positions they espouse on foreign policy have more public support than they actually do. Yet the American public supports a more balanced foreign policy agenda than these fringe voices seem to recognize.
It sounds like a nice bit of patter until you think about it a bit. So the American public supports a middle of the road foreign policy.
So what?
The American public supported isolationism in the late 1930s, and that got them a metaphorical smoking hole where the US Pacific Fleet was docked on December 7th, 1941, and our closest ally, Great Britain, teetering on the edge of oblivion.
While it’s important to understand the aggregate American public position on foreign policy, it’s not in order to conform to it, but to understand the deficiencies of the public’s understanding in order to correct them. For me, we elect the President to represent the nation to other nations, and that includes becoming and/or hiring experts on what can be done, in combination with what we think is best for us as a nation.
And not relying on the provincial attitudes of the common citizen, who knows little of other nations, even in the Era of the Internet.
