public opinion: the beginning of ideology?

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Public Opinion: The Beginning of Ideology?Author(s): William SchneiderSource: Foreign Policy, No. 17 (Winter, 1974-1975), pp. 88-120Published by: Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, LLCStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1148115 .

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PUBLIC OPINION: THE BEGINNING OF IDEOLOGY?

by William Schneider

There is a rush to eradicate the bitter political memories of the 1960's. Have we es- caped the great controversies of the last 10 years-race, Vietnam, Watergate-without a scar? Underneath all the good feeling, there is evidence of a very deep scar: an "ideologization" of political debate supported by an increasing ideological alignment of the electorate. Nor is this new cleavage likely to fade away, despite official pronouncements that "our long national nightmare is over," for it is the product of long-term social and cultural trends as well as transient issues.

Ideologization has serious implications for foreign policy. Traditionally, public opinion on foreign policy has shown a fragile stability and an impulse to support the initiatives of our leaders. This is not because Americans have been in complete agreement in their foreign policy views. Rather, stability has been the result of (1) a reasonable degree of harmony among the foreign policy elite-the well-educated, the attentive public --over the basic goals and assumptions of our foreign policy, and (2) low polarization over foreign policy as a partisan or ideological issue in the mass electorate. America has been unique in this respect. In other so- cieties, foreign policy has been central to the division between Left and Right, and neither side has hesitated to exploit the grosser aspects of nationalism for its own ends.

Indeed, the leadership stratum in Amer- ican politics has often been bitterly divided over foreign policy, but never in such a way as to destroy the "operational consensus." From the time of the country's first party system-in which Republicans opposed Fed- eralists over America's alignment with Brit-

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ain or France during the Napoleonic wars -virtually every generation has witnessed a major foreign policy controversy at the high- est levels of government: the War of 1812, the Mexican War, the Spanish-American War, both World Wars, Korea, Vietnam. But none of these controversies, save Viet- nam, deeply or lastingly polarized the mass electorate. Every foreign policy controversy, and every foreign war in particular, precipi- tated some degree of protest, opposition, and dissent. But as a rule, the major parties and candidates have been reluctant to exploit such divisions, as if they feared the possibility of creating a cleavage that would tear the nation apart. Only one war, the Civil War, created such a lasting cleavage in the electorate. The "operational consensus" on foreign policy has not been the result of naivet6, i.e., that "politics stops at the water's edge." Rather, it has followed the line of Walter Dean Burnham's dictum that consensus in the United States "is far more procedural and political than substantive or social."1 Debates over foreign policy at the elite level have usually not-until Vietnam-resulted in the mobilization of mass political forces in such a way as to enlarge the sphere of conflict. Rather, the impulse has been to avoid and discredit divisiveness, to emphasize unity even at the cost of repression.

That foreign policy divisions have been weak and transient in comparison with domestic cleavages does not mean that foreign policy has been of negligible electoral importance. Foreign policy issues have been central to most Presidential elections in this century. The elections of 1916, 1920, 1940, 1952, and every election since (with the possible exception of 1960) were dominated by foreign policy.2 But the electoral debate has usually been over "peace," which, like "prosperity," is a noncontroversial perfor-

'Walter Dean Burnham, Critical Elections and the Mainsprings of American Politics (New York: W.W. Norton, 1970), p. 169.

* See Stephen Hess, "Foreign Policy and Presidential Campaigns," FOREIGN POLICY 8, pp. 3-22.

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mance issue. The frantic competition for office, in which foreign policy performance has weighed heavily, has produced little in the way of opposition between fundamentally different foreign policy goals and values.

In fact, public opinion research has not turned up many foreign policy goals and values on which Americans really do disagree. "American Public Opinion," one recent study concludes, "is characterized by a strong and stable 'permissive mood' toward international involvements. . . . Such a mood provides a blank check for foreign policy ad- ventures." "

The famous debate between isolationism and internationalism has also changed shape over time. Isolationism between the wars was a protest movement with a specific ethnic, regional, and ideological base. Like other foreign policy protests-the Hartford Conven- tion of 18 14, the various antiwar crusades- isolationism was never a mass movement with sufficient salience to polarize the entire electorate. World War II, of course, marked the conclusive defeat of this ideological isolationism, a defeat symbolized by the conver- sion of most leading isolationists. The isolationism that has continued to show up in

public opinion surveys since the war-reluc- tance to get involved in foreign ventures, feeling that the United States should cut its commitments abroad-has not been a di- mension of belief but one of support.

The Electorate

These assumptions have been profoundly modified by three basic changes in the shape and character of the national electorate: changes in education, in partisanship, and in

ideology. > Education. In 1940, just under one quar- ter of Americans aged 25 and older had

completed high school. By 1971, that figure had risen to well over half (56.4 per cent). But rising education has two quite different

' William Caspary, "The 'Mood Theory': A Study of Public Opinion and Foreign Policy," American Po- litical Science Review, Vol. 64, June 1970, p. 546.

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sociological implications. In the first place, education buys social and economic status, though the efficiency with which education sorts out status levels has diminished as everyone has become better educated. Status is es-

sentially a relative phenomenon with a fixed distribution, but knowledge, we hope, is not. In fact, there is good evidence that education, somehow, produces greater sophistication and tolerance-and, intellectually, the

ability to manipulate symbols and to think in terms of abstract causes.

GRIN AND BEAR IT BY LICHTY

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"I stand for peace and prosperity. . and will defend to the death the right of my opponent to

disagree with me!" Courtesy Publishers- Hall Syndicate

The reaction of the poorly-educated to foreign policy reflects a sense of remoteness and incomprehension. The poorly-educated are often found to support "tougher" and more forceful foreign policy positions-but not at the expense of getting involved in other countries' affairs. Thus in 1956, grade school-educated respondents in the Michigan Survey Research Center's national election study were more likely than better-educated respondents to feel that "the best way for

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the United States to deal with Russia and China is to act just as tough as they do." But they were not more likely, to approve of "keeping soldiers overseas where they can help countries which are against Commu- nism." In 1964 and 1968, grade school-educated respondents were less likely to favor a policy of "taking a stronger stand, even if this means invading North Vietnam," a "tough" option that would have clearly ex- tended American involvement in the war. Throughout the period from 1956 to 1972, poorly-educated respondents were consistent- ly more pessimistic than better-educated ones about the possibility of another war, were more likely to feel that the chances of war had increased, and were more likely, by a substantial margin, to agree that "this country would be better off if we just stayed home and did not concern ourselves with problems in other parts of the world."

The "populist" view of foreign policy is based very simply on an inability to understand the reasoning behind our involvement in distant events. Sometimes this incomprehension strikes us as ignorance and sometimes it looks like common sense. But it is not an ideology. Popular isolationism is not the same thing as the confirmed ideological isolationism of the 1920's and 1930's. Popular pacifism is not the same thing as the confirmed ideological pacifism of conscientious objectors and draft resisters. The reason why antiwar sentiment tended to show up so strongly among the poorly- educated was "not so much because the poorly-educated [were] willing to assert their opposition to the war as because they [were] far less willing to assert their support for it."t

The well-educated, by contrast, are more able to follow the complex reasoning behind foreign policy actions-and this fact has usually led to a critical margin of support for foreign policy decisions among the educated elite. But not necessarily. Simply being aware of the reasoning behind foreign I John E. Mueller, War, Presidents, and Public Opinion (New York: John Wiley, 1973), pp. 125-126.

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Schneider

policy decisions need not produce agreement with that reasoning or support for the policy entailed. Over the past decade, while the "followership" of foreign policy has broad- ened, the support which "followership" was often thought to imply has not increased in proportion. Instead, there has been a diver- gence of views among the educated elite, fracturing the consensus within the stratum of the electorate traditionally most responsive to leaders' initiatives. > Partisanship. Along with rising education, the United States has experienced steady partisan dealignment since World War II. Class polarization, the principal force behind the New Deal party system, has gradually lost salience for the electorate, given postwar affluence and social mobility, the maturation of a new, post-Depression generation of voters, and the tendency of the parties, until very recently, to de-emphasize their ideological differences and play for the center. Democrats have declined from over 50 per cent of the electorate in the early 1950's to just over 40 per cent in 1972. Republicans have fallen from close to 30 per cent in the early 1950's to 24 per cent today. Indeed, there have been signs that Independents, now well over one-third of the electorate, may outnumber Democrats and become our largest political "party."t"

Throughout the postwar era, partisanship has been related to foreign policy in two different ways. Despite a consistent Demo- cratic lead in party identification, the Re- publican party has usually been rated as more competent to handle the issue of "peace" and more likely "to keep the United States out of World War III." 6 Secondly, support for and opposition to specific foreign policies have tended to vary with partisanship. For instance, when the Vietnam war changed from a "Democratic" war to a "Re-

5 Figures are from the University of Michigan Survey Research Center national election studies.

6 Gallup Opinion Index, Report No. 106, April 1974, pp. 18-19. The Democrats earned a higher peace rating than the Republicans only between 1962 and 1966.

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publican" war in 1969, the nature of support for the war shifted as well. Before 1969, Democrats averaged 46 per cent for the war and Republicans 38 per cent, but after 1969 the relationship reversed to a 35- to-31 per cent edge for the Republicans.

Neither of these phenomena-a higher peace rating for the Republicans and a tendency to support one's party in office-sig- nifies any substantive difference in foreign policy beliefs between the two parties. Both parties supported the basic internationalist commitment of American foreign policy through the Cold War, the Korean War, the various Middle East conflicts, and Vietnam, competing more or less over the performance of this commitment. The tendency for the parties to converge on foreign policy issues has produced an important feature of postwar politics: the impulse for foreign policy dissent to go outside the bounds of partisan politics. In both the Korean case, when dissent was on the Right, and Viet- nam, when it came from the Left, the protesters attacked the inability of "the system" to present a clear ideological choice. These criticisms were neither irrational nor unjusti- fied. Convergence also stimulated dissenters to try to take over the party system in 1964 and in 1972, in revenge for the exclusion of their views from regular party politics.

If partisans have shown only weak differences in their foreign policy views, what of "the emerging Independent majority"? Independents, in fact, are the least homo- geneous category in the electorate. Once a haven for the apolitical and the uninvolved, two-thirds of the Independents in 1972 were well-educated, and ideologically divided-half strongly conservative and half

strongly liberal. The impact of the dramatic protest issues of the 1960's has thus been primarily ideological rather than partisan, as evidenced by the tendency of those most ideologically polarized to call themselves Independents instead of Democrats or Republicans. And, as our data will show, many issues which have no partisan mean-

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ing, like foreign policy, are strongly ideological in content. > Ideology. One can describe the electorate today in terms of two distinct alignments- traditional partisanship (Democrats, Inde- pendents, and Republicans) and ideology (liberals, moderates, and conservatives). The

"The most likely populist reaction is not militarism but protectionism."

two alignments overlap and, indeed, com- pete, but there is a reason for keeping them theoretically separate: partisan issues and ideological issues have altogether different political implications.

For one thing, party symbols can be grasped by a much broader cross section of the electorate. Despite the long-term process of partisan dealignment, almost two-thirds of the electorate in 1972 still claimed to be either Democrats or Republicans. Less than half the electorate in the same survey (45.5 per cent) were able to classify themselves as either liberals or conservatives. Ideologies are not as real as parties-liberals and conservatives do not hold conventions and nomi- nate candidates-and ideological identification is therefore much harder to measure. But certain trends have nevertheless been documented. The best evidence pre-1964 is that ideology counted for little in terms of mass political thinking and behavior. The best evidence post-1964 is that ideological thinking has become more prevalent.

In the 1972 Michigan national election survey, where respondents were asked to identify their own positions and the positions of the candidates and parties on 13 issue scales, people had the least difficulty placing parties and candidates on the ideology scale and the most difficulty placing themselves on the ideology scale. Most everyone knows which parties and candidates are liberal and which are conservative, but a substantial part of the electorate is unable to identify their own views one way or the

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other. Thus, fully 28 per cent said either that they "didn't know" what their ideological views were or that they "had never thought much about it," while an additional 27 per cent described themselves as precisely in "the middle of the road."

The ideological are the well-educated. Half the respondents with only a grade school education were unable, or unwilling, to define their ideological views in the 1972 survey. This figure fell sharply to 31 per cent among the high school-educated and 10 per cent among the college-educated. Unlike the choice between Democrat and Republi- can, identification as a liberal or a conservative seems to require an intellectual process for which a college diploma, apparently, helps.

Young voters are predisposed toward liberalism and older voters toward conserva- tism, but this generation gap becomes a pro- found political cleavage only among the college-educated. Those over 60 and those under 30 differ in their ideological views by no less than 35 per cent among the college-educated, while the same generations of non-

college voters are only about 10 points apart, a shadow of the division within the educated elite. Working-class Americans have tended to see the entire generational conflict of the last decade as a war between the upper middle class and its children-and they were right. The remoteness of working-class Americans from the conflict was typified by remarks made to this interviewer in 1968

by a middle-aged, white, high school-educated woman in Somerville, Massachusetts. The Vietnam war, she complained, was started by "a bunch of Harvard professors who run the State Department." These men were squandering the blood and money of

people like herself on a pointless foreign involvement. What about the Harvard students who were, at the time, sacrificing their own blood to stop the war? "It's disgust- ing," she replied. "They're worse than the professors.

Ideology and partisanship both cut across education, but in different ways. Ideological

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differences are most divisive at the top of the system, among the well-educated, and tend to lose intensity among the less well-educated. Partisanship is just the reverse. Partisan differences still have a good deal of meaning to poorly-educated voters, but less and less meaning to the well-educated. If the poorly- educated find ideological debate remote, the well-educated have a similar contempt for "narrow-minded" and "irrational" partisan loyalties. Partisanship, in this sense, is the poor man's ideology.

Education, partisanship, and ideology are, of course, intercorrelated. Democrats tend to be more liberal, Independents and Repub- licans better educated, etc. Thus, to test one alignment, the other two should be held constant. (This is done in the tables below by using partial correlations and corrected percentages.) In this way, we can determine whether an issue taps, say, a conservative response, or a Republican response, or both.

Take, for example, the two most recent Presidential votes recalled by survey respondents in 1972. Table 1 shows that in 1968, partisan differences were twice as strong as ideological differences for Humphrey, whereas the two sources of division were almost equal in importance for McGovern in 1972. Though it remains true that Democrats tend to vote for the Democrat, many Democrats in 1968 and 1972 did not-and the line along which the Democrats split was ideology, not class. (In the "moderate" 1950's, the Democrats were losing middle-class support to the Republicans. In the ideological 1960's, the Democrats started losing conservative support to the Republicans-and to Wallace.) Two observations: (1) Status differences in and of themselves have not had very much impact on recent Presidential voting. Since the New Deal, the economic interests that divide the classes have been ex- pressed through partisanship. (2) An issue -in this case, a Presidential vote can ac- tivate two cleavages simultaneously, and in- dependently. Thus, the McGovern vote in 1972 was neither a completely new ideolog-

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ical vote nor a completely traditional Dem- ocratic vote; it was partly both.

Social, Race, and Economic Issues

Social issues, race issues, and economic issues are analyzed in Table 2.7 Each type of issue has a distinctive structure.

Social issues send out two types of sig- nals--education and ideology. The well- educated are, on the average, a good deal more liberal than the poorly-educated on such social issues as amnesty, legalization of

marijuana, and the right to protest. Such questions in part tap sophistication and tolerance, and these are the blessings of education. Social issue questions often imply a

"right answer." The well-educated are like-

ly to know that women should have a more

equal role, that the law should protect the

rights of accused criminals, and that free- dom of speech and political participation are

good things. Poorly-educated people may not be so much opposed to these norms as

simply unaware of the "correct" answer. Thus we might expect such "unenlight- ened" attitudes to fade away with rising levels of mass education. Except for one

thing: social issues have become ideological and therefore intensely controversial in recent years. The well-educated are not only more sophisticated about marijuana, amnes-

ty, and the rights of accused criminals; they are also more divided over these issues. This controversial quality tends to cancel out the attractiveness of social liberalism as a symbol of enlightenment. Though in the long run education is on the side of liberalism, in the short run conservatives are able to exploit the fears and prejudices of the lower classes in resisting efforts to legislate greater tolerance and permissiveness.

When an issue shows any sign of racial content (including "law and order," an issue

7 All data in this analysis are taken from the University of Michigan Center for Political Studies 1972 National Election Study, made available by the Inter-University Consortium for Political Research. Neither organiza- tion bears any responsibility for the analysis presented here. The number of persons interviewed was 2,705.

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area heavily infused with racial sentiment), the complexion of the issue changes marked- ly. In the first place, race issues are not only ideological, they are also partisan. The years of Democratic civil rights leadership under Kennedy, Johnson, and Humphrey have pro-

Table 1 Vote pattern: Democratic Presidential vote, 1968-1972

Corrected percentages*

Per cent of each group for McGovern, 1972

Ideology Party Education Lib. 58% Dem. 56% College 32% Mod. 30 Ind. 37 High sch. 33 Con. 18 Rep. 7 Grade sch. 38

Lib -Con = Dem -Rep = College -Grade = 40% Difference 49% Difference -6% Difference

Per cent of each group for Humphrey, 1968


Lib -Con = Dem -Rep= College -Grade = 29% Difference 58% Difference -4% Difference

Source for all tables: University of Michigan Center for Political Studies, 1972 U.S. National Election Study.

*Percentage differences for each factor (ideology, party, and education) are calculated after having first been corrected for differences due to the other two factors. For example, the actual vote for McGovern among liberals - 69 per cent - is strongly influenced by the fact that so many liberals are Democrats. The corrected vote for McGovern among liberals - 58 per cent - removes the influence of party, which is then measured separately.

duced a clear association: the Democrats sponsor policies favorable toward blacks; Re- publicans are resistant to black demands.

The partisan correlation also illustrates another point. While social issues are predom- inantly ideological and divide primarily the well-educated elite, race issues are deeply divisive at all status levels. Thus the independent effect of education on racial attitudes

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is weak. Figure 1, for instance, compares a social issue (legalization of marijuana) and a race issue (Federal aid to blacks). On the social issue, the vertical differences of opinion among the grade school-educated, high school-educated, and college-educated are

Table 2 Analysis of liberal positions on social, race, and economic issues, 1972

2a Average partial correlation for issues in each category:

Liberal Ideology Party Education positions on:

7 Social issues + .70 +.21 +.63

8 Race issues +.68 +.49 +.18

10 Economic issues + .13 +.44 -.33

In coding ideology liberal was coded as the positive direction and conservative as the negative direction; for party, Democrat was positive and Republican negative; for education, college was positive and grade school negative.

Thus, liberal positions on social issues are correlated positively with ideology and education, whereas the correlation with party is relatively weak, and so forth. The survey included 2705 voting-age Ameri- cans grouped by ideology, party, and education into 27 types. Partial correlations were computed by treating each of the 27 subgroups as a unit.

quite strong, but ideological differences lose intensity at lower educational levels. Race, on the other hand, is of immediate and pro- found salience throughout the electorate, with less-educated respondents as polarized as the more ideological elite. Among the well- educated, differences over race tend to be more ideological in structure (McGovern and Goldwater). Among the poorly-educated, differences over race have tended to produce a partisan versus antipartisan split (Humphrey and Wallace). Working-class people do not like hippies, protesters, women's liberationists, and draft dodgers, but they are not particularly concerned about them either. Working-class people are very much concerned, and very much divided, over issues involving race and law and order.

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Economic issues are less ideological than race issues or social issues, but they are still strongly partisan. The class polarizations of the 1930's---over government spending, trade unionism, and Federal social-welfare support-have been preserved in the party system. Indeed, balancing the budget is probably the last remaining test of Republican orthodoxy. But the old ideologies of the

2b Selected examples of issues by ideology, party, and education Corrected percentages

Social issue: per cent favoring legalization of marijuana


Lib -Con = Dem -Rep = College -Grade = 27% Difference 2% Difference 32% Difference

Race issue: per cent in favor of dealing with urban unrest by correcting problems of poverty and unemployment rather than by using all available force



Economic issue: per cent who feel that the government should see to it that everyone has a job and a good standard of living


Lib -Con = Dem -Rep = College-Grade = 10% Difference 16% Difference -12% Difference

New Deal seem to be only faintly remembered by the new liberals and conservatives of the 1960's. Modern-day liberals, for instance, show mixed reactions to the old symbols of economic liberalism. In the 1972 survey, liberals were relatively positive in

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their feelings toward unions, the Democratic party, and government spending. But they were relatively negative when asked their feelings about workingmen and farmers, both traditional symbols of American rad- icalism. And there was no ideological direction whatever on the one currently dominant economic issue-inflation.

Finally, economic policy is the one area in which the college-educated are more conservative than lower-status groups. For instance, the college-educated were less likely than the grade school-educated to agree that "the government in Washington should see to it that all Americans have a job and a good standard of living," but they were more likely than the grade school-educated to support racially qualified welfare spending.

Foreign Policy Issues

Foreign policy issues (see Table 3) did not follow one dominant pattern. Instead, when the more liberal position was analyzed on each issue, three distinct types of foreign policy issues emerged:

1. Issues dealing with military policy and the use of force, on which the liberal position was antimilitary.

2. Issues dealing with America's involvement with other countries as well as concern over the risk of war. Here liberals were more isolationist and pessimistic.

3. Issues tapping Cold War attitudes- hostility toward Communist countries, un- willingness to give foreign aid to countries which "don't stand for the same things we do"-on which liberals were less hostile and more willing to support detente.

The most strikingly ideological foreign policy issues were those relating to militarism and the use of force: the choice between dove and hawk policy alternatives in Vietnam

("withdraw immediately" or "do every- thing necessary to win a complete military victory") and the question of reducing defense spending. In 1972, liberals and conservatives were as sharply divided over Viet- nam and military spending as they were over

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Figure 1 Two issues by ideology and education, 1972

la Social issue: per cent in favor of legalization of marijuana

100

80

0

60 'v

40

20

Liberal Moderate Conservative

lb Race issue: per cent in favor of special Federal aid to help blacks and other minorities

100

80

C0,,

60

40. o

20.

0Liberal Moderate Conservative Liberal Moderate Conservative



social issues and race. This is clear evidence of the demise of the "followership" role ("responsible support for official policy") among the educated elite. In Figures 2a and 2b below, where military issues are graphed, one is struck by the fact that ideological di-

Table 3 Analysis of foreign policy issues, 1972

3a Average partial correlation for issues in each category:

Foreign policy Ideology Party Education positions:

Antimilitary + .69 + .49 + .03

Isolationist + .34 + .06 - .62

Anti-Cold War +.37 -.03 +.81

In coding ideology liberal was coded as the positive direction and conservative as the negative direction; for party, Democrat was positive and Republican negative; for education, college was positive and grade school negative.

Thus, antimilitary positions are correlated positively with ideology and party, whereas the correlation with education is relatively weak.

Antimilitary positions: 1 Favor immediate withdrawal rather than military

victory in Vietnam 2 Cut defense spending

Isolationist positions: 1 Feel that U.S. should not be concerned with other

countries' problems 2 U. S. should have stayed out of Vietnam 3 Chances of U.S. involvement in a bigger war have

increased

Anti-Cold War positions: 1 Favor China's membership in the United Nations 2 Favor U.S. recognition of China 3 Favor U.S. trade with Communist countries 4 Favor aid to foreign countries "even if they don't

stand for the same things that we do "

vision over military policy increases sharply as the educational level rises. The consensus among the college-educated, which at one time was supportive of an aggressive foreign policy and a strong military establishment, has clearly disintegrated. There was also a fairly strong degree of party differentiation on the issues of Vietnam and military spend-

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Schneider

ing, an indication that military support, like race, tends to be controversial throughout the electorate and not merely among the well- educated. Traditionally, foreign policy issues have been strongly related to status. In- deed, isolationism and Cold War issues are still status-related, but support for the military is not-a fact which might surprise

3b Selected examples of foreign policy issues by ideology, party, and education Corrected percentages

Antimilitary position: per cent favoring cut in military spending



Isolationist position: per cent who think U.S. should stay home and not concern itself with other countries' problems


Lib -Con= Dem -Rep = College -Grade = 7% Difference 0% Difference -27% Difference

Anti-Cold War position: per cent in favor of foreign aid to countries which don't stand for the same things we do



those who expect greater military support among the lower classes. Instead, militarism is now as divisive as any supposedly more immediate domestic concern.

The problem with such intensely divisive issues-race, Vietnam, military support-is that it is almost impossible to construct a

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Figure 2 Three foreign policy issues by ideology and education, 1972

2a Per cent "doves" on Vietnam (favor immediate withdrawal)

100

80

60

40 Grade School

20


2b Per cent agree: Military spending should be cut

100

80

60

40

20




Schneider

2c Per cent supporting' foreign aid to countries even if they don't stand for the same things we do

100

80

60

40 ... aide

o Meeo Cnevtv

20


national majority supporting any one position. Thus, one of the striking aspects of the Vietnam experience: neither the doves nor the hawks could ever manage to build a national coalition because their positions were too controversial and-like many positions on race-had the tinge of extremism. "Center" politicians, like Nixon and Humphrey in 1968, avoided becoming associated with either side of the Vietnam issue for fear of losing a critical margin of votes. Wallace, the forthright hawk, and McGovern, the forthright dove, antagonized vast numbers of voters who respected their honesty but could not accept their extreme positions on the war. Everyone in 1968 and 1972 was in favor of ending the war as quickly as possible, but only distinct minorities were willing to endorse total military victory or immediate withdrawal. "Ending the war-no matter how" was the only basis for a major-

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ity coalition, since it was the only noncontroversial position on the war. It was Nixon who masterfully exploited the opportunity, with promises of "secret plans" in 1968 and proclamations that "peace is at hand" in 1972. Moreover, Nixon rather neatly ful- filled the "no matter how" aspect of his 1968 mandate by being a dove and a hawk at the same time, withdrawing troops while intensifying the bombing. One senses the bitter irony in McGovern's campaign debate with a Columbus, Ohio worker in September 1972: "What's the difference between a pull-out and a surrender?" asked the Democratic nominee. "You say it's a victory when Nix- on pulls out, yet when I say get out in 90 days, you say it's surrender." It was a sub- tle difference to the antiwar Left, but a very real difference to the mass electorate.

Antimilitarism and Isolationism

The war is over, at least for the United States, but it has left a strong residue of antimilitarism among liberals-particularly college-educated liberals. Support for the military, which was virtually consensual as recently as 10 years ago, is now deeply controversial, and conservative members of Con- gress now spend a good deal of time fending off liberal efforts to cut the defense budget and reduce America's troop commitment overseas. Bruce Russett has analyzed data on attitudes toward military spending since the 1930's. His data show that prior to 1964, the percentage of respondents favoring less defense spending had seldom reached as high as 30 per cent. During the height of the Cold War, from 1950 to 1960, opposition to defense spending usually remained below 20 per cent. When military spending sud- denly became controversial in the mid- 1960's, the topic was again picked up, after a considerable lapse of time, by commercial and academic polls. From 1968 to 1973, opposition to military spending has hovered around 50 per cent. Moreover, the data show that, while the better-educated in the past were "almost always more favorable toward

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the military.... antimilitarism is now strong- est in the attentive public." 8

The poorly-educated and the well-educated differ strongly, however, in their views on isolationism and on the Cold War.

Uneducated Americans show a decided re- luctance to support foreign involvements of any sort and are particularly fearful and pessimistic about possible involvement in war. After correcting for partisan and ideological differences between the classes, one finds that the grade school-educated in 1972 were 9 per cent more likely than the college-educated to feel that the Vietnam war was a mistake, 24 per cent more pessimistic that the United States would become involved in a bigger war, and 27 per cent more favorable toward a policy of "staying home and not concerning ourselves with problems in the rest of the world." We have already reviewed the nonideological quality of lower-status isolationism and pacifism, as distinguished from isolationism and pacifism at the elite level. One implication of this difference is that forceful solutions are likely to be acceptable to lower-status "isolationists" if such mea- sures are taken for the purpose of ending international involvements, rather than extend- ing them. This helps to explain some ap- parent inconsistencies that frequently turn up. For instance, in one 1972 poll, 76 per cent of a national sample favored "bringing home all U.S. military, naval, and air forces from Vietnam," while in the same poll, 55 per cent favored "continued heavy bombing and mining as a way to achieve peace."

Less-educated Americans in 1972 were also a good deal less willing to endorse detente and the relaxation of Cold War hostility. After corrections for ideology and partisanship, grade school-educated respondents were 20 per cent less willing to support the recognition of "Mainland China" than were

8 Bruce M. Russett, "The Revolt of the Masses: Public Opinion on Military Expenditures," chapter 3 in John P. Lovell and Philip S. Kronenberg (Eds.), New Civil- Military Relations (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transac- tion Books, 1974), pp. 57-88.

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the college-educated, 3 1 per cent less willing to approve of China's membership in the Unit- ed Nations, 21 per cent less likely to support foreign aid to countries which "don't stand for the same things we do," and 29 per cent less willing to endorse trade with Commu- nist countries. And in the same 1972 poll just cited-which showed strong majorities in favor of ending U.S. involvement in Viet- nam-no less than 74 per cent agreed that "it is important that South Vietnam not fall into the control of the Communists."

These status differences are consistent with the classic definition of "followership." V. O. Key, Jr. noted some time ago that:

... the relation between internationalism and education... should not be taken to mean that education generally predisposes people to an internationalist position. Rather, the probabilities are that when a dominant view develops on international policy it will be most notably present among persons concerned or informed about foreign policy, and these individ- uals are especially numerous in the upper educational strata.9

In 1972, active involvement in the rest of the world and a relaxation of tensions with Communist countries had become "the dominant view . . . on international policy." Most likely, those at the lowest educational levels were unaware of major policy shifts, uninformed about such norms as d6tente and international cooperation, and therefore less

willing to express approval. This passive nonsupport on the part of the mass population has not been particularly dangerous in the past because most foreign policy issues have not been deeply controversial. But the evidence shows that isolationist and Cold War issues have obtained a degree of ideological salience. If internationalism and d6tente become politically controversial, if liberals and conservatives break out into open debate over them, then there is a serious risk that the mood of the lower classes may be open to exploitation-in the sense that such peo-

-Public Opinion and American Democracy (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1964), p. 337.

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Schneider

ple may not understand (or may disagree with) the ultimate political purposes for which their support is being mobilized.

Isolationist and Cold War issues are clas- sified separately because they show precisely opposite relationships between status and ideology. On isolationist issues, liberals' views are closer to those of the less-educated. On Cold War issues, including d6tente, it is conservatives who are closer to "the mass mind." In neither case is it likely that the poorly- educated and the "ideologues" really share the same views. What sounds like isolationism to working-class respondents (the Unit- ed States should stay home and not get involved with other countries' problems, the Vietnam war was a mistake) probably con- notes antiwar sentiment and antimilitarism to liberals. Opinions that represent suspi- ciousness and alienation among working- class respondents (opposition to foreign aid, disapproval of d6tente) probably connote militant anti-Communism to conservatives. But such shades of difference do not prevent potent political coalitions from being formed, if the timing is right.

Vietnam is an excellent case of an issue activating a diverse mass-elite coalition. The antiwar movement essentially won its point by appealing to the isolationist sentiments of the mass population: not that the war was evil or the country immoral, or that the Vietcong were the true liberators of Viet- nam, but that the war was costly, remote, pointless, inconclusive, and likely to tear the country apart. Because the war failed to rad- icalize the masses, and because the mandate to end the war passed into the hands of Richard M. Nixon (though it was no less a mandate to end the war for that reason), the Left persisted in seeing the antiwar movement as a failure.

The end of the war has meant the end of the war issue, but the same coalition- liberal antimilitarism and mass isolationism -could be reactivated in response to any conceivable military adventure. Something inspired the Gallup poll to ask the follow-

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ing question in November 1973: "In order to declare war, should Congress be required to obtain the approval of the people by means of a national vote?" Two revealing correlations showed up in the response pat- terns. (1) Only 25 per cent of college-educated Americans felt that a national vote should be required to declare war, but this figure rose to 37 per cent among high school- educated respondents and 43 per cent among grade school-educated respondents. Mass isolationism? (2) To approximate the views of liberals, look at the views of those under 30. Among those over 30 in the Gallup sample, only 30 per cent approved of a national war referendum. This figure rose to 41 per cent of respondents aged 25 to 29 and fully 53 per cent of those between 18 and 24.10 Liberal antimilitarism?

Both isolationism and the Cold War are no longer highly controversial. Such values as internationalism and d6tente are more or less established in the electorate, with the

poorly-educated simply taking more time to catch up. Thus, by 1972, only 20 per cent of the electorate felt that the United States should keep out of other countries' affairs and only 22 per cent felt that the chances of getting involved in a bigger war had become greater. But just over 50 per cent felt that this country had made a mistake becom-

ing involved in Vietnam. Similarly, by 1972 the relaxation of in-

ternational tensions elicited very strong support across the entire electorate. Initiation

by a Republican administration clearly had the effect of muting conservative opposition to d6tente, especially since the administration had proved its credentials by remaining tough in Vietnam: 69 per cent of conservatives approved of trade with Communist countries (compared with 72 per cent of liberals), 79 per cent of conservatives supported China's membership in the United Na- tions (90 per cent of liberals), and a re- markable 85 per cent of conservatives (93

10Gallup Opinion Index, Report Number 102, Decem- ber 1973, p. 13.

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Schneider

per cent of liberals) favored recognition of Communist China. It is likely that the Nix- on-Kissinger policy of rapprochement with the Soviet Union and China won the approval of the vast majority of the electorate because, to most voters, the policy meant peace, and peace has an isolationist meaning to many Americans. But if, for some reason -a dramatic international crisis, another wheat deal, a major political campaign at- tacking concessions which weaken Amer- ica's defenses-the risks of d6tente were to become more salient than the promise of peace, then public sentiment might easily, and rapidly, shift to the Cold War pattern, destroying public confidence in the new structure of international politics. Such public moods are notoriously unstable, particularly when both sides of a policy are essentially legitimate alternatives.

The two issues in Figure 3 illustrate the fundamental shifts that have occurred in the structure of foreign policy attitudes.

What happened to elite opinion can be seen in Figure 3a. Whereas at the time of the Korean War, the college-educated could be counted on to provide a critical margin of support, educational differences in support for the Vietnam war tended to break down. Higher support for the Korean War among the college-educated persisted across all the upturns and downturns of public opinion during that conflict. Initially, educational differences over the Vietnam war resembled those found earlier in Korea. But as the war issue "ideologized," college-level support fell off. > In 10 Gallup polls taken before the 1968 Tet Offensive, opposition to the war (agreement that "the United States made a mistake getting involved") averaged 28 per cent among the college-educated, compared with 31 per cent among the high school-educated and 37 per cent among the grade school- educated. This pattern was quite similar to the pattern of support throughout the Ko- rean War. > After the Tet Offensive, in 12 Gallup

"13.



polls taken between 1968 and 1971, opposition rose among the college-educated to nearly the grade school-educated level, an average of 55 per cent opposed among the college-educated, 52 per cent among the high school-educated, and 56 per cent among the grade school-educated.Ix > In a final Gallup poll taken in January 1973, just at the time of the peace settle- ment, the relative standings by education were, for the first time, breathlessly reversed: 65 per cent of the college-educated now felt that the war had been a mistake, compared with 56 per cent of the high school-educated and 64 per cent of the grade school-educated.12

The foreign policy backlash occasioned by the Vietnam war has not been limited to the well-educated, ideological elite. Figure 3b, the trend in support for foreign aid from 1956 to 1972, reveals an altogether different pattern of disorientation from that in Fig- ure 3a. Looking back at Figure 2c, one per- ceives immediately that foreign aid, unlike Vietnam and defense spending, is not an ideological issue. Support for foreign aid in 1972 was primarily a function of education. On such a nonideological, education-driven issue, one would confidently predict a trend of steadily rising mass support. But after an initial period of stability and even a slight increase in public favor between 1956 and 1964, foreign aid experienced a precipitous collapse of public approval during the Viet- nam years. From 1964 to 1968, nationwide support for foreign aid fell from 59 per cent to 46 per cent, and opposition rose from 21 per cent to 32 per cent (other responses being "don't know"). On the highly ideological Vietnam issue (Figure 3a), the college- educated defected from their traditional role of leading public support for the war, caus- ing status differences on the war to diminish. On the foreign aid issue (Figure 3b), de-

"Calculated from Mueller (n.4), Table A-i, pp. 272- 273. See also Figures 5.3 and 5.4, pp. 124-125, for trends.

" Gallup Opinion Index, Report Number 92, February 1973, p. 8.

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Figure 3 Trends in foreign policy support

3a Per cent who felt that the United States did not do the right thing getting involved in Korea (1952) and Vietnam (1964-1968), by education

100

80

60

40 *-*o

20

0 1952 '64 '68 '72

3b Per cent supporting foreign aid, 1956-1972

100

80

60

40 ,High School

20

0 1952 '56 '60 '64 '68 '72*

*wording of question changed (see text)



spite the relatively steady level of support among the college-educated, the status lines have unraveled because of the defection of the less-educated. (George Wallace, in his 1968 campaign, criticized "Federal giveaway programs to the Bushmen and Hottentots," a neat packaging of racism and opposition to foreign aid.) The unraveling continued from 1968 to 1972, even though the wording of the foreign aid question was altered significantly in the 1972 survey (from the earlier, "We should give aid to other countries if they need help," to "We should give help to foreign countries even if they don't stand for the same things we do").

Refusal to accept the opinion leadership of the better-educated on foreign aid signi- fies the lesson of Vietnam as read by lower- status groups: increasing mistrust of foreign entanglements, greater alienation from the norms of internationalism, and heightened suspicion of the foreign policy elite. In other words, a confirmation of all the traditional lower-status fears and resentments concerning foreign policy-and not without reason. Nothing epitomized this resentment more than the outburst of support for Lieu- tenant Calley following his arrest and trial for the My Lai massacre. What many liberals failed to perceive was that the targets of the Calley protest were the military and "the system": the big brass in the Pentagon and the politicians who started the war in the first place.

There is no evidence of any reversal in these trends since the January 1973 Viet- nam truce. In four surveys taken between 1964 and 1974, Americans were asked whether they agreed that "the United States should maintain its dominant position as the world's most powerful nation at all costs, even going to the very brink of war if necessary." Overall agreement with this aggressive point of view fell from 56 per cent in

1964, to 50 percent in 1968, to 39 per cent in 1972; the 1974 figure, 42 per cent, "was far from enough.. . to restore the majority support for the proposition evident in 1964

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Schneider

and 1968." 13 Disapproval of the proposition was substantially higher in 1974 among the college-educated (66 per cent) than among any other major population group. The persistence of antimilitarism as an at- titude associated with education represents a basic change in the traditional structure of foreign policy opinion. The antimilitarist trend has been accompanied by a strongly isolationist trend. Indeed, isolationism ap- pears not only to have persisted since the Vietnam truce but actually to have intensified, even though the social basis of isolationism is different from that of antimilitarism. Using the same indicators in all four surveys, Potomac Associates estimated a sharp increase in total isolationism from less than 10 per cent through 1972 to over 20 per cent in 1974, while internationalism has been declining steadily over the past decade. The increase in isolationism was found to be especially pronounced, from 20 to 35 per cent, among people with only a grade school education. The fallout from the Vietnam war among liberals has taken the form of antimilitarism-opposition to defense spending and pressure for military disengagement- while the effect on their partners in the great antiwar coalition, the poor and the poorly- educated, has been more fundamental-mistrust of leaders on such issues as aid and hostility toward all international involvement.

Alienation and Populism

Political competition now occurs at two levels in American politics: ideological politics ("pure issue politics") at the top, among the well-educated, and partisan politics at the bottom. Ideology has increased in salience and partisanship has decreased, for both sociological and political reasons: the population is becoming better educated and therefore more responsive to ideological debate, and the great issues that

" Lloyd A. Free, "'The International Attitudes of

Americans," in Donald R. Lesh (Ed.), A Nation Ob- served (Washington, D.C.: Potomac Associates, 1974), p. 141; see results reported on pp. 133-150.

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have emerged in recent years have been more ideological than partisan in content. Though there have been important shifts in party support, and though the major parties have intensified their ideological differences, a complete party realignment has not occurred. On the most ideologically divisive issues in the electorate-race, social issues, and military policy-there is still a large "center" of opinion which refuses to be polarized. Ideo- logical debate simply leaves too many people out. Instead of massive realignment, the party system seems to be trapped in a dangerous, self-reinforcing cycle. Ideological fac- tions gain dominant influence in each of the major parties. Large numbers of voters, particularly among the poorly-educated, are un- comfortable when faced with a choice between extreme ideological alternatives; they are neither racists nor militants, neither pac- ifists nor militarists, neither cultural radicals nor reactionaries. The result is that the "pu- rified" parties lose their coalition appeal to the broader electorate. A weakening of party regularity simply means that the parties are left more and more defenseless against ideological blackmail, thus reinforcing the cycle of party decline.

The outcome is likely to be a massive alienation of the electorate, a process that has actually been going on for some time now. Distrust of government was increasing even before Watergate confirmed the point. The percentage of people who claimed that they did not trust the government "to do what is right" increased from 22 per cent in 1964, to 37 per cent in 1968, to 46 per cent in 1972. Agreement with the statement that "the government is run for the benefit of a few big interests" grew from 3 1 per cent in 1964, to 44 per cent in 1968, to 58 per cent in 1972. The combination of declining partisanship and increasing alienation means that one must take seriously the possibility of a massive populist reaction, perhaps a new populist majority.

Both the Left and the Right have sensed this opportunity and have tried to find is-

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sues on which to construct a new national majority. Conservatives tried to do so on the basis of "the social issue." This theory, best elaborated by Kevin P. Phillips in The Emerging Republican Majority, argues for an appeal to the moderate, antiradical, law- and-order sentiments which most Americans endorse, without going so far as to espouse racist sentiments, which only a minority of Americans endorse. Phillips' book now seems to hold only historical interest in the wake of Watergate and the destruction of the cred- ibility of the Right on law-and-order issues. But the fears and antipathies that drove voters into Nixon's short-lived New Majority have certainly not vanished.

The Left has developed the theory of "the alienated voter," a massive populist coalition based on the collapse of confidence in the system and its institutions. There was much talk in 1972 about building a great coalition of discontent that would unite McGovern supporters and Wallace supporters. The catch to this plan, as a New York Times survey revealed at the time, was that McGovern voters and Wallace voters were miles apart on the ideological issues which dominated their concerns-not tax reform and consu- merism, but Vietnam and race.14 Both Ken- nedy and Wallace, by far the most popular Democrats, share an appeal to mass sentiments of alienation and discontent. But they also have sharply defined ideological images on race and on foreign policy-images which would take more than a shared platform at a Fourth of July picnic to displace.

A populist majority based partly on foreign policy is no longer a contradiction in terms, but a very real possibility. The link between current economic distress and foreign policy is not all that remote to most voters. Confidence in foreign policy leadership is only temporarily sustained by the prestige of the Secretary of State. The current round of inflation was initially stimulated by the Vietnam war. The idea of for- 14 See Jack Rosenthal, "Alienated Voter Theory Doubt- ed," The New York Times, April 28, 1972, p. 23.

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eign aid in a time of economic crisis only provokes resentment. The wheat deal is keenly remembered as a symbol of bad bar- gaining and a compromise of American interests. The oil crisis was a direct product of American foreign policy. And the current (and intensifying) shortages of food and fuel will demonstrate nothing so clearly as the precarious interdependence of world economic relations. History provides many examples of economic discontent translated in- to foreign policy crusades, especially when no workable domestic solution is forthcom- ing. (The oil cartel is the obvious target, and not an altogether irrational one.)

The most likely populist reaction, however, is not militarism but protectionism. An atavistic "America first" economic movement is entirely consistent with the isolationist mood of the mass public. A protec- tionist alliance of business and labor would be an especially potent political coalition. Could liberals be counted on to defend the oldest certifiably liberal value-free trade? There are reasons for doubt.

What a populist majority on foreign policy would look like, or whether such a ma-

jority would be left-wing or right-wing, is

impossible to foretell. One can imagine economic discontent being channeled against Communist countries or against American allies, against Israel or against Arab oil pro- ducers, against multinational corporations or

against the American military establishment, against foreign aid or against foreign im-

ports. Populist movements, like the people they represent, resist easy classification into

ideological categories. But the very possibility of such a reaction is the result of all the

converging trends in American politics-in- tense ideological controversy dividing the

leadership, a decline of partisanship at the mass level, an increasing lack of confidence in the capacity of political leaders to solve critical problems, and open competition for the political support of the alienated voter.

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public opinion: the beginning of ideology?

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