\n\t \n\t<\/TITLE><br \/>\n\t<META NAME=\"GENERATOR\" CONTENT=\"OpenOffice.org 2.3 (Win32)\"><br \/>\n\t<META NAME=\"CREATED\" CONTENT=\"0;0\"><br \/>\n\t<META NAME=\"CHANGEDBY\" CONTENT=\"Evan Ravitz\"><br \/>\n\t<META NAME=\"CHANGED\" CONTENT=\"20080528;9511662\"><\/p>\n<p><\/HEAD><br \/>\n<BODY LANG=\"en-US\" DIR=\"LTR\"><\/p>\n<h3>Poll: Public, power elite differ in world views<br \/>\n<\/h3>\n<p>Monday, November 17, 1997<br \/>\nBy R.C. LONGWORTH <\/p>\n<p>Chicago Tribune<br \/>\n<br \/>\n CHICAGO .- If you suspect those folks in Washington don’t know what<br \/>\nyou think about the world, you might be right. A poll has found<br \/>\nvirtually everyone inside the Beltway -the White House. Congress, the<br \/>\nWashington media, the think tanks- believes the American public is<br \/>\nisolationist, anti-United Nations, anti-foreign aid and opposed to a<br \/>\nvigorous U.S. role in the world.<br \/>\n<\/P><br \/>\n<P> The pollsters then compared the leaders’ view of the public with<br \/>\nwhat Americans really think, as expressed in a series of recent<br \/>\npolls. These polls showed just the opposite: a nation that is<br \/>\nsteadily internationalist, pro-U.N., pro-foreign aid, committed to a<br \/>\nU.S. role in the world and eager to cooperate with other nations in<br \/>\nplaying it.<br \/>\n<\/P><br \/>\n<P> This misunderstanding between the leaders and the led is huge.<br \/>\nFor instance, the Washington elite think only 14 percent of the<br \/>\npublic wants to strengthen the United Nations, In fact. 83 percent of<br \/>\nthose polled say they do .<br \/>\n<\/P><br \/>\n<P> The elite think 74 percent of all Americans want. The U.S. to<br \/>\ndisengage from the world and be more isolationist. The polls show<br \/>\nonly 12 percent do.<br \/>\n<\/P><br \/>\n<P> The elite think only 5 percent of Americans are "basically<br \/>\nsupportive" of foreign aid. The actuality: 80 percent surveyed<br \/>\nsupport foreign aid.<br \/>\n<\/P><br \/>\n<P> Perceptions have consequences. The Washington elite are the<br \/>\npeople who frame and carry out foreign policy. Policymakers,<br \/>\nespecially in Congress, have justified cuts in foreign aid and<br \/>\nforeign policy spending, a refusal to pay America’s U.N. dues, a<br \/>\nweakened U.S. role in U.N. peacekeeping and other semi-isolationist<br \/>\nsteps on grounds that this is what the public wants.<br \/>\n<\/P><br \/>\n<P> This new look at the relationship between the views of<br \/>\npolicymakers and average Americans comes at a time when the United<br \/>\nStates is exerting its global reach in its increasingly tense<br \/>\nshowdown with Iraq over international weapons inspections.<br \/>\n<\/P><br \/>\n<P> Last week, Congress passed a foreign aid bill that deleted<br \/>\nPresident Clinton’s request for $926 million to cover the United<br \/>\nStates back payments to the United Nations’ and then adjourned.<br \/>\nMeanwhile, tbe United Nations and the administration are trying to<br \/>\ncope with the Iraq crisis. On Sunday. Newsweek magazine released a<br \/>\npoll showing a large majority of Americans would support U.S.<br \/>\nmilitary action against Iraq if Baghdad takes action against<br \/>\nAmericans or U.S. surveillance planes flying over Iraq.<br \/>\n<\/P><br \/>\n<P> The survey of elite and public attitudes is contained in a new<br \/>\nreport, "<a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/foreign-policy-gap-policymakers-misread\/dp\/B0006QTHIOk\">The Foreign Policy Gap: How Policymakers Misread the<br \/>\nPublic<\/a>," issued by the Program on International Policy Attitudes<br \/>\nof the Center for International and Security Studies at the<br \/>\nUniversity of Maryland, College Park.<br \/>\n<\/P><br \/>\n<P> Officials of the program interviewed members pf the Washington<br \/>\nelite and then compared their findings with broader public opinion<br \/>\npolls carried out by the program and other organizations, including<br \/>\nthe Chicago Council on Foreign Relations. It also held smaller focus<br \/>\ngroups around the country and in-depth interviews in Washington.<br \/>\n<\/P><br \/>\n<P> From this, the report said, three things became clear: "The<br \/>\nactual steps toward disengagement in the conduct of U.S. foreign<br \/>\npolicy, the seemingly widespread view among policymakers that the<br \/>\nAmerican public favors disengagement. and the lack of confirmation<br \/>\nfor this view among those who study public opinion."<br \/>\n<\/P><br \/>\n<P> In Washington, the study said, everybody is wrong, but some<br \/>\ngroups are more wrong than others. According to the polls, <strong>no one<br \/>\nmisunderstands the public as much as its representatives<\/strong>, the members<br \/>\nof Congress. Next come the staff members who serve those lawmakers,<br \/>\nfollowed c1osely by journalists who are paid to find out what people<br \/>\nthink.<br \/>\n<\/P><br \/>\n<\/BODY><br \/>\n<\/HTML><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\"><br \/>\n<HTML><br \/>\n<HEAD><br \/>\n\t<META HTTP-EQUIV=\"CONTENT-TYPE\" CONTENT=\"text\/html; charset=windows-1252\"><br \/>\n\t<TITLE><\/TITLE><br \/>\n\t<META NAME=\"GENERATOR\" CONTENT=\"OpenOffice.org 2.3 (Win32)\"><br \/>\n\t<META NAME=\"CREATED\" CONTENT=\"0;0\"><br \/>\n\t<META NAME=\"CHANGEDBY\" CONTENT=\"Evan Ravitz\"><br \/>\n\t<META NAME=\"CHANGED\" CONTENT=\"20080528;9511662\"><\/p>\n<p><\/HEAD><br \/>\n<BODY LANG=\"en-US\" DIR=\"LTR\"><\/p>\n<h3>Poll: Public, power elite differ in world views<br \/>\n<\/h3>\n<p>Monday, November 17, 1997<br \/>\nBy R.C. LONGWORTH <\/p>\n<p>Chicago Tribune<br \/>\n<br \/>\n CHICAGO .- If you suspect those folks in Washington don’t know what<br \/>\n <a href=\"https:\/\/www.evanravitz.com\/vote\/bubble\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">→<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1285","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.evanravitz.com\/vote\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1285","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.evanravitz.com\/vote\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.evanravitz.com\/vote\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.evanravitz.com\/vote\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.evanravitz.com\/vote\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1285"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.evanravitz.com\/vote\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1285\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.evanravitz.com\/vote\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}