Americans are more isolationist, poll finds
By Meg Bortin International Herald Tribune
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 2005


Shaken by the Iraq war and the rise of anti-American sentiment around the world, Americans are turning inward, according to a Pew survey of U.S. opinion leaders and the general public.

The survey, conducted this autumn and released Thursday, found a revival of isolationist feelings among the public similar to the sentiment that followed the Vietnam War in the 1970s and the end of the Cold War in the 1990s.

At the same time, the survey showed, Americans are feeling less unilateralist than in the past, in what appeared to indicate a desire for a more modest foreign policy.

Forty-two percent of Americans think the United States should ''mind its own business internationally and let other countries get along the best they can on their own,'' according to the survey, which was conducted by the Pew Research Center in association with the Council on Foreign Relations.

That is an increase of 40 percent since a poll taken in December 2002, before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq; at that time only 30 percent of Americans said the country should mind its own business internationally.

The result appeared to represent a rejection by the public of President George W. Bush's goal of promoting democracy in other nations, a major focus of his administration's foreign policy.

"We're seeing a backlash against a bumbled foreign policy," said Stephen Van Evera, political science professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He said Americans were concerned over failures to make progress on North Korea and Iran, and in the fight against Al Qaeda, but he added, "The American people in particular are looking at Iraq and seeing nothing's working."

In its analysis of the poll, Pew said that the war in Iraq ''has had a profound impact on the way opinion leaders, as well as the public, view America's global role, looming international threats and the Bush administration's stewardship of the nation's foreign policy.''

The survey also found the following:

Nearly three-quarters of Americans say the United States should play a shared leadership role, and only 25 percent want the country to be the most active of leading nations.

Two-thirds of Americans say there is less international respect for the United States than in the past. When asked why, strong majorities - 71 percent of the public, 88 percent of opinion leaders - cite the war in Iraq.

Foreign affairs and security experts most often name India as a country likely to become a more important U.S. ally, while opinion leaders generally say France will decline in importance as a partner of the United States.

In the survey, Pew questioned 2,006 American adults from the general public and 520 influential Americans in the fields of news media, foreign affairs, security, state and local government, universities and research organizations, religious organizations, science and engineering, and the military.

Conducted from Sept. 5 to Oct. 31, the survey ''reflects the major changes in the world that have occurred'' since the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001, Pew said. The margin of error for most questions was plus or minus 2.5 percent.

In its analysis of the results, Pew said the Iraq war and continuing terrorism had ''dramatically affected the way opinion leaders and the public look at potential threats from other countries.''

While China was seen four years ago as the greatest threat, opinion leaders and the public now cite Iraq and North Korea as well as China, Pew said.

Regarding prospects for Iraq, a majority of opinion leaders say that the United States will fail to establish a stable democracy, while the general public was more optimistic, with 56 percent expecting success. Gloom was so deep, in fact, among the opinion leaders that at least 40 percent in each category predict that Iraq will split into three countries, Pew said.

On relations with Europe, the American public and opinion leaders agree that a strong partnership should be maintained, the survey found. At least 60 percent of each group of opinion leaders said a stronger European Union was good for the United States. In addition to France, however, some of the influentials pointed to Germany - which also opposed the Iraq war - as becoming a less important ally.

The public lined up with opinion leaders in disapproving of the way Bush is handling his job as president. Fifty-two percent of the public expressed disapproval; the figure soared to 87 percent among scientists and engineers.

Moreover, the poll found, ''Pluralities in every group of influentials - as well as the public - attribute the fact that there has not been a terrorist attack in the U.S. to luck.'' Just a third say it is ''because the government has done a good job protecting the country.''

International Herald Tribune


Brian Knowlton contributed reporting from Washington.

Private lives in public
Gail Collins
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2005


NEW YORK Another election has come and gone, and with it yet another demonstration of American voters' fascinating indifference to the sexual behavior of their public officials.

This year's prime exhibit was New Jersey, where Senator Jon Corzine scored a decisive win against his Republican opponent in the governor's race, Douglas Forrester, despite a last-minute barrage of attack ads in which Corzine's ex-wife was quoted as declaring that unlike Forrester, "Jon did let his family down, and he'll probably let New Jersey down, too."

That is not a connection most voters tend to make. The terrible truth is that great public leadership and domestic fidelity do not really go hand in hand. Some of our favorite national leaders were unreliable on the domestic front. Franklin Roosevelt comes to mind, and John F. Kennedy. And the current mood of the electorate seems to favor the argument that things were better when the worst thing the president did wrong was have sex with an intern.

The idea that private sexual misconduct is beside the point for an elected official goes way back. Alexander Hamilton famously, and rather hysterically, published a pamphlet detailing his affair with a married woman named Maria Reynolds. He wanted to make it clear that the mysterious payments he had been making to Mr. Reynolds were not part of an embezzlement scheme, but simply a result of good old all-American blackmail.

The Maria Reynolds affair did produce an outcry among Hamilton's political opponents - one newspaper thundered that "even the frosts of America are incapable of cooling your blood and the eternal snow of Nova Zembla would hardly reduce you to common propriety," which perhaps goes to show that they don't make editorial page editors like they used to.

But Hamilton shared the standards of his political peers when it came to morality - if not discretion. The public went on to elect Thomas Jefferson as president, despite the tavern songs about his relationship with the slave "Monticello Sally" Hemings; and to fall madly in love with Andrew Jackson, who they very well knew had lived with his wife, Rachel, when she was still married to another man.

Corzine, however, broke the rule that says the affair has to stay in the bedroom. All bets are off when adultery leaches into the public sphere (or the White House pantry). His affair - which Joanne Corzine claimed broke up her marriage - was with a woman who served as president of a state workers' union. And when it ended, Corzine forgave a $470,000 loan he had made to her when she bought her house.

This was not as severe a mixing of sex and policy as occurred with New Jersey's last elected governor, James McGreevey. The nation missed a chance to see what happens when an already elected (and already married) chief executive suddenly announces he is gay, because of the deeply complicating fact that McGreevey had given the job of special assistant for security to the object of his affections, an Israeli poet.

Nevertheless it's interesting that the adultery-doesn't-matter rule still seems so strong at a time when Americans have been mixing religion and politics so enthusiastically. It would be interesting to see if the voters in very red states were as impervious to these issues as New Jersey - or as California was back when it was ignoring all those fondling allegations and electing Arnold Schwarzenegger governor.

An even more interesting question is whether the public will separate sex from politics when it comes to female candidates. When the issue has come up in the past, it usually involved spectacularly messy marital meltdowns in which the woman was more sinned against than sinning.

Coya Knutson, one of the earliest women to win a congressional seat completely in her own right, was undone when newspapers published an open "Coya Come Home" letter signed by her alcoholic husband. New York voters didn't have much trouble in the end with Hillary Clinton's problematic marriage - but then New York is deep in the at-least-he-never-invaded-Iraq territory.

What would happen if a woman was running for governor and the voters discovered she had had an extramarital affair with a union leader, and her ex-husband told the media she'd probably betray the voters the way she betrayed him? Would the voters shrug it off so casually, and tell each other that at least she never put her inamorato in charge of fighting terrorism?

Two good bets: 1) Sooner or later we'll find out. 2) Probably not