The recent spat between Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama over whether or not the president should meet with nations like Iran, Syria, and N. Korea reflects a divide in the public about how much diplomatic engagement the United States should use when dealing with rogue nations. A Rasmussen Reports poll released on Friday found that Americans are divided about this issue. 42% of those surveyed agreed with the Obama position that the next president should meet with these types of leaders without any preconditions. 34% disagreed with this position, which would place them in the Clinton camp on this issue, and 24% were not sure.
Interestingly, Democrats agreed with the Obama position by a 55%-22% margin, but only 34% of all Americans and 34% of Democrats were aware that this was his position. 11% of Americans, 14% of Democrats, believed that this was Clinton’s position. Twenty four percent of those asked did know Clinton’s position was not to agree to these types of meetings. Seven percent of those asked thought that Obama who said he would not pursue such meetings. Republicans tend not to favor meetings with the leaders of Iran, Syria, and N. Korea, and unaffiliated voters are evenly divided on the issue.
This poll along with a separate one that found that only 15% of Americans think the presidential debates are “exciting,” tells me that most people aren’t paying attention at all. By the way, 58% of those asked said the presidential debates are boring. 30% say the debates are informative, and 50% think they are “useless.” I am a person who writes about politics everyday, and I wouldn’t say that these debates are very informative or exciting. If the point of starting the campaigns a year earlier than normal was to get more people interested and involved, so far the experiment has been a flop. Now if the point of campaigning early was to expand the campaign industry, that the year 2007 has been a resounding success.
What the Obama/Clinton diplomacy argument reveals is that Hillary Clinton is out of step with a majority of Democrats on yet another issue. However, one must ask if it really matters how in step she is right now? This issue might be the beginning of a divide which will distinguish Obama from Clinton, but for now it probably won’t change the race at all. It is likely that casual voters won’t start paying attention in any way until we get closer to the Iowa caucuses. That means that there is still another four months to go before people start to take even a cursory look at the 2008 candidates. For hardcore political junkies like myself, and I suspect those of you are reading this, the extra campaign time is great, but much of the country hasn’t bothered to tune in yet. The impact of this dispute between Clinton and Obama will likely be minimal.
Jason Easley is the editor of the politics zone at 411mania.com. His news column The Political Universe appears on Tuesdays and Fridays at www.411mania.com/politics
Jason can also be heard every Sunday at 7:00 pm (ET) as the host of The Political Universe Radio Show at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/thepoliticaluniverse
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3 users commented in " Poll Update: Public divided on president meeting with rogue nations "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackThe US has always met with their enemies:
FDR, Harry Truman and Ike met with Josef Stalin.
Vice President Nixon met with Castro.
JFK met with Nikita Khrushchev.
President Nixon met with Mao Zedong.
Besides that, H.Clinton flip-flopped:
In the January 27th interview on MSNBC H.Clinton was asked if she would “meet immediately” with leaders of Iran and Syria, she said:
“I don’t see it as a sign of weakness, I see it as a sign of strength. You know our president will not talk to people he considers bad. Well there are a lot of bad actors in the world and you don’t make peace with your friends. You’ve got to deal with your enemies, your opponents, people whose interests diverge from yours.”
Obama is absolutely correct in speaking from America’s strength. Never fear to meet when we occupy the high ground. Afraid those dictators will use the meetings for propaganda purposes? What a flimsy stance! Since when did the fear of spin-masters have ever been a factor in diplomacy (except now in Hillary’s heated imagination)? Diplomacy IS about going toe-to-toe with your antagonists; to quote Churchill, as so many have, it’s better to jaw, jaw than war, war. The war over words (propaganda) is NOT a US and global problem; military combat IS.
As this relates to the campaign, this is Hillary’s loss in that she lost the messaging fight. Now Obama can for the rest of the campaign say things like, “I’m not afraid to lose to a PR war to tin-pot dictators,” “I’ll stand toe-to-toe with them,” “Look them in the eye,” etc etc. These are things he can say to the public and be crystal clear, while any message Hillary has to counter these would have to be convoluted or vague and just not hit home quite like his message.
“If the point of starting the campaigns a year earlier than normal was to get more people interested and involved, so far the experiment has been a flop.”
I would imagine many more people are involved at this point than in any previous election. The fireworks will fly in 4-5 months, but especially for the Obama campaign, this is time used to raise money and get groups organized and ready to go for when that fight comes. Clinton inherited money (10 million) and a support network from her 2000 campaign and from loyalists to the Bill machine, while Obama is building from scratch.
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