This is the first of what will probably be three entries about how American foreign policy is shaped by our domestic politics. And so, readers, we start today with a question: who is America’s most powerful foreign policy actor?
Of course it’s an easy question. There are only two possible answers. The first, naturally, is President Barack Obama, invested with the constitutional authority (more or less) to set America’s foreign policy agenda, establish our relationships with foreign nations, and lead our military. The other possibility would be Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whose office has the mandate and the authority to maintain and strengthen those international relationships, act as America’s foreign policy point person, and report back to the President and the Congress on her work.
In fact, neither one of them fits the bill.
OK, you’re probably thinking, then he must mean a figure less in the limelight – a “power behind the throne.” Somebody who wields enormous influence within the White House or the State Department. Someone like…Vice President Joe Biden, maybe, who has been frequently deployed on high-profile trips abroad, and who was widely respected as a foreign policy expert while a senior member of the Senate, and who seems to have a seat at the table in this administration. Or what about incoming CIA head General David Petraeus, chief architect of the military endgame in Iraq and Afghanistan?
Nope! Guess again.
Perhaps a member of Congress, then. They have the power of the purse over the entire budget, including the Departments of Defense and State. Do I mean Senator Harry Reid (D-NV), majority leader, or Mitch McConnell (R-KY), minority leader? Or maybe Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH)? What about Senator John Kerry (D-MA), chair of the Senate Foreign Relations committee?
Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. And before you suggest any academics, or think tank eminences, or retired presidents or secretaries or generals or secretaries-general, it isn’t any of them, either. You won’t find America’s most powerful foreign policy actor in Washington, DC. Or New York City. Or Boston, or Chicago, or Los Angeles.
Give up?
The most powerful actor in American foreign policy (and here, please note that I said “actor,” not “expert”) is a middle-aged, married mother of 2. Let’s call her Jane Smith. She and her husband, Bob, have two kids, Katie (age 8 ) and Danny (age 5. Actually 5 and a half – he’d want me to say that).
Jane works from home as a part-time medical transcriptionist. After high school, she got a two-year associates degree in small business management from her local community college, where she was a “B” student. She likes that her job gives her the flexibility to work from home and basically set her own hours, and while she would be happier if the pay were a little higher and wishes she had benefits like health insurance, she’s just so grateful to have a job (a lot of their friends have lost their jobs recently, you see). The Smiths live a quiet life in Ohio, or Florida, or Wisconsin, or Michigan, or North Carolina, or Pennsylvania, in a pleasant corner of a rural-ish large town or small city, in a modest three-bedroom house on a 30-year mortgage, which – thank goodness – is fixed rate.
Bob, her husband, is the floor manager of a distribution warehouse for a regional construction supply company. He’s been there for 16 years, but with the recent upheaval in the real estate and housing markets, not many people are building new houses anymore, and his company has been downsizing steadily over the past year. Bob has health insurance, but his employer recently decided they can only afford to pay 50% of Bob’s premium (down from 100% last year), and 25% of Jane’s and the children’s premiums (down from 75% last year). This is going to cost the Smiths an extra $2700 a year, which is a huge chunk of their annual after-tax income of $51,000, but poor little Danny has severe chronic asthma and they have to have insurance for him. Jane is trying to pick up more work from her transcription company, but with so many people losing their jobs lately, they have more employees than they do work. If something doesn’t work out, the family may have to drop Jane from the insurance plan.
Jane has voted in every Presidential election since registering in 1992, the year she turned 18. She voted for Bill Clinton that year, but his personal turmoil sent her to Bob Dole in 1996. She thought about enrolling as a Republican in 2000 to vote for John McCain in the primary, but didn’t actually re-register (or vote in the primary). She ended up voting for Al Gore in 2000 and then George W. Bush in 2004, a vote which she now regrets. She liked Barack Obama’s energy and inspiring message in 2008, and voted for him, but now she’s unsure who she will support next year because the economy just keeps getting worse. She almost never votes in non-presidential elections, unless there is a local issue on the ballot, like the one last year that would prevent registered sex offenders from living within a 2500-foot exclusion zone around her town’s schools (which of course Jane strongly supported).
In a recent telephone poll, Jane, like 60-75% of her fellow Americans, said “jobs and the economy” was her number-one issue heading into the next presidential election. She also cited “the rising cost of health care” and “concern over government spending.” In this same survey, when asked to estimate what percentage of the federal budget was spent on foreign aid, Jane guessed 20% (slightly higher than the median response of 15%) and, when asked what amount would be appropriate to spend on foreign aid, Jane (who doesn’t want people in Africa to starve, you see, but there are problems here at home too and we should take care of those first) said 10% (which was also higher than the median response of 5% for that question). Jane favors extending all of the so-called “Bush tax cuts,” but also strongly favors raising taxes on those individuals who earn more than $250,000 a year (Jane does not realize that these are contradictory positions).
The person I have just described, of course, is both real and unreal. She doesn’t really exist, except that in a sense she does. This particular Jane Smith is a fictional character, and yet there are tens of thousands of similar Janes (and Bobs for that matter) across the country whose vote in the next election cycle will be of critical importance in determining who controls the White House and Congress, and what their budgetary priorities will be. I have just sketched a profile of the kind of perfect swing voter who will be heavily targeted by both parties in 2012.
So there you have it. Foreign policy experts, meet Jane Smith, the woman who next year will very likely decide the shape and substance of American foreign policy for the foreseeable future.
Next post: how does Congress determine priorities when it comes to homeland security, defense, and foreign operations?
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