BETWEEN LEADERSHIP AND RETREAT: THE PRESIDENT, FOREIGN POLICY AND DOMESTIC OPINION

David Skidmore

Author

David Skidmore is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Ralph Carter, Akitoshi Miyashita and three anonymous referees for helpful criticisms and suggestions on earlier drafts of this paper.Introduction

Scholarly assessments of the relationship between presidential foreign policy-making and domestic opinion (encompassing congress, interest groups, the media and the public) are currently in flux. The traditional "top down" view of presidential leadership has given way to a "bottom up" interpretation that emphasizes the domestic constraints on presidential decision-making. While the newer school of thought indeed offers welcome insights, this paper cautions against an either/or approach to understanding the direction of influence between the president and domestic opinion on foreign policy issues. It argues for a more differentiated approach to describing presidential responses to actual or potential domesticresistance and sensitivity toward the particular conditions underwhich the foreign policy-making process comes to approximate either the top down or the bottom up models.

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Top Down or Bottom Up?A brief description of these two models will be useful in

setting the stage for our later discussion.1 Traditionally, mostscholars adopted a top down model of foreign policy decision-making: the president led while the public and various elite constituencies largely followed (Almond, 1960, Cohen, 1963, Cohen, 1973, Cohen, 1983, Hinckley, 1994, Hughes, 1978, Koh, 1988, Krasner, 1978a, Krasner, 1978b, Milbrath, 1967, Weissman, 1995, Wildavsky, 1966). The rationales underlying this view wereseveral. First, it was argued that foreign policy issues, especially those with a strong security dimension, tended to promote domestic unity around a common conception of the nationalinterest. Unlike domestic issues, which evoke distributional struggles, foreign policy issues affect the nation as a whole. Second, the institutional structure of foreign policy decision-making was portrayed as much more centralized and insulated than those designed to deal with domestic problems. Third, the top down model depicted the public as ill-informed and scarcely interested in foreign affairs. Opinion tended to be unstable andcould be easily manipulated by the president.

In recent years, each major tenet of the top down model has been challenged by scholars who instead embrace a bottom up model1 The “top down” and “bottom up” models described below are stylized depictions of contrasting aproaches to conceptualizing the relationship between presidents and domestic opinion in foreign policy decision-making. For present purposes, this classification of the relevant literature into two broad camps serves to highlight essential differences in interpretation. It goes without saying, of course, that the work of many of the authors cited below is more subtle and complex than suggested by this overarching scheme.

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of foreign policy decision-making. These revisionists argue thatdomestic constraints play a central role in shaping presidential foreign policy choices (Bennett, 1993, Blechman, 1990, George, 1980, Graham, 1993, Hinckley, 1992, Holsti, 1992, Jentleson, 1992, Meyer, 1990, Meyer, 1993, Nincic, 1990, 1992, Page and Shapiro, 1983, Putnam, 1988, Ripley and Lindsay, 1993, Risse-Kappen, 1993, Rockman, 1993, Rogers, 1993, Rohde, 1993, Shapiro and Page, 1993, Skidmore, 1996, Tierney, 1993, Trubowitz, 1998, Van Belle, 1993). According to the revisionists, the costs and rewards flowing from various foreign policy decisions are not distributed equally across the population. As a result, foreign policy issues do indeed give rise to significant domestic cleavages, including occasionally intense interest group mobilization. As for institutional structure, proponents of the bottom up model point out that the U.S. has a relatively "weak state" combined with a "strong society." A decentralized foreign affairs bureaucracy gives rise to turf battles, slows down decision-making and provides many points of access for critics ofexisting policy. An open and aggressive media ferrets out secrets, forces the government to respond quickly to changing circumstances and airs competing viewpoints, including those critical of the president. The congress has become increasingly assertive in claiming new foreign policy powers or recovering oldones and partisan strife has intensified over the past quarter century. Finally, recent survey findings suggest that the traditional top down model unfairly maligns public opinion. The

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public is better informed, more interested and holds more stable and consistent views than previously supposed.

This revisionist bottom up model of the foreign policy-making process provides a needed corrective to the increasingly outdated claims of the top down model. Nevertheless, this new approach runs the risk of exaggerating the domestic constraints on presidential control of foreign policy. Just as it is erroneous to argue that the president can easily lead domestic opinion in any direction he wishes, so is it mistaken to suppose that presidents passively decide foreign policy issues on the basis of the latest public opinion poll.Strategies of Domestic Adjustment

The way around the false dichotomy created by the debate between the top down and bottom up models is to adopt a more differentiated approach to describing how presidents respond to varying kinds of domestic constraints. We also need to recognizethat, despite their obvious differences, the two models describedabove do share important commonalties.

The top down and bottom up models each share the assumption that presidents are intolerant of significant gaps between domestic preferences and actual policies. In the top down model,presidents seek to ensure a close alignment between domestic opinion and their own policy preferences by manipulating and guiding domestic sentiment. In the bottom up model, presidents respond to potential or actual gaps by adjusting policies to match public expectations. In both cases, the goal is the same: to minimize negative public judgments about presidential foreign

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policy decisions. The two models differ in (1) their assumptions regarding the intensity of presidential policy preferences, and (2) their estimation of how easily domestic opinion can be molded. These differences lead, in turn, to varying assessments of which options are realistically available to the president for closing the gap between official and public preferences.

In order to ensure adequate domestic support for his foreignpolicies, in other words, the president must adopt a strategy of domestic adjustment: either domestic opinion must be swayed or adjusted to bring it into line with planned or existing policies or, if this proves infeasible, policies must be adjusted to enhance their domestic acceptability. Strategies falling between the poles of leading or following domestic opinion are also conceivable.

Presidents are faced with this necessity because the pursuitof an unpopular foreign policy can bring serious political costs:the president's chances of reelection or those of the members of his party in congress may be harmed, drawn out domestic debate and controversy over foreign policy can distract attention from higher priority issues, the president's ability to successfully implement his broader policy agenda may be diminished and the president may lose control over the policy in question if the congress moves to force a change in direction (Quandt, 1994, Van Belle, 1993).

These stakes do not attach to all foreign policy decisions. In some cases, domestic actors may overwhelmingly support the

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president from the beginning. Or, even if there exists substantial disagreement, the issue may nonetheless lack sufficient domestic salience to exact political damage on the president. With regard to highly salient issues where the gap between presidential and domestic preferences is substantial, however, presidents generally feel compelled to devise a strategyof domestic adjustment.

To learn more about the relationship between presidential foreign policy making and domestic opinion, we must begin with two steps. The first is to develop a more differentiated way of classifying or characterizing presidential strategies of domesticadjustment. Put another way, we need a better means for describing movement along the dependent variable. When faced withsignificant levels of domestic resistance, what are a president’soptions for closing the gap between policy and opinion? The modeloffered below distinguishes among four general strategies of domestic adjustment: (1) lead, (2) placate, (3) circumvent, and (4) retreat.

The second step is to specify the conditions under which a president can be expected to turn toward one strategy of adjustment over another. How does a president decide which of these strategies is most prudent and feasible given existing political circumstances? Here our concern is to specify relevant independent variables. Two factors are most important in shaping the political incentives and calculations that determine presidential choice: (1) the intensity of presidential foreign policy preferences, and (2) the degree of actual or potential

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domestic political resistance that given policies can be expectedto encounter.

In sum, this paper explores the range of domestic adjustmentoptions available to the president and the conditions that influence his likely choice among such strategies. Illustrations from the record of U.S. foreign policy-making are offered.

Other equally important related questions deserve careful treatment, but lie largely outside the scope of this paper. We make no assumption that presidents will always succeed in closingthe gap between their own preferred policies and domestic opinion. Indeed, failure may prove quite common. Additional research would be necessary to identify the determinants of success or failure of a given adjustment strategy, once attempted. Another important issue concerns the possible international "externalities" of domestic political strategies and choices. How do presidential attempts to sway a domestic audience on foreign policy issues affect the perceptions of national leaders abroad or the likelihood of success in the pursuit of U.S. international objectives? These questions addressthe ultimate consequences of domestic adjustment strategies rather than the narrower issue of explaining presidential choice.The following discussion touches upon these issues at various points without subjecting them to systematic evaluation.Presidential Preferences and Domestic Resistance

Which path a president takes - whether to lead, placate, circumvent, or retreat - is determined in considerable part by the conjunction of two factors: the intensity of presidential

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policy preferences and the degree of actual or anticipated domestic resistance. The relative intensity of each goes a long way toward explaining which strategy of domestic adjustment a president is likely to consider most appropriate and feasible.

The intensity of presidential policy preferences may, in principle, be measured by reference to political costs. A strongly held policy preference is one the president is willing to pursue and defend even if faced with significant domestic political costs in doing so. A weakly held policy preference is one the president is inclined to abandon or considerably modify if otherwise faced with the likelihood of paying a significant domestic political price. Care must be taken to develop measures for this variable that are independent of outcomes. Otherwise, the argument becomes vulnerable to circular reasoning.

Relevant data on the intensity of presidential preferences can be culled from a variety of sources, including public statements, official government documents, budgetary requests andpresidential meeting logs. Presidential priorities regarding a given issue may become evident by seeking answers to questions such as: Does the president have a long history of commitment to a given issue or policy? Does the president devote a major speechto the issue? Does the president initiate or actively lobby for major legislation addressed to the issue at hand? Does the president raise the issue as a central focus of his meetings withrelevant foreign leaders? The aim is not so much to arrive at a precise quantitative measure of the intensity of presidential

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preferences, but to sort policies into rough categories of high or low priority.

As conceived here, domestic political resistance may arise from a number of sources, including mass opinion, interest groupsor the congress. Since the president may give varying weight to different sources of domestic opinion, no single indicator can fully capture this variable. Nevertheless, public opinion, as revealed through survey research, is probably the most important single measure and, as a first cut, can be consider a rough proxyfor the overall degree of domestic resistance. As a crude rule ofthumb, it seems reasonable to consider the degree of domestic political opposition to be low if it does not exceed 25% of the public. A high degree of domestic opposition exists if 50% or more of the public disagrees with a given policy. Moderate levelsof domestic opposition fall in the range between 25% and 50% opposed.

A more complete, accurate and differentiated measure of domestic political opposition to presidential foreign policy preferences can be achieved by considering other factors, such asthe leanings of editorials in major newspapers, the degree of interest group mobilization, the number and fate or congressionally-initiated bills, amendments and resolutions devoted to a given issue, relevant provisions of party platforms,the size and number of public demonstrations and protests, the number and leanings of letters, Faxes, e-mails and phone calls tothe White House or congressional representatives, the amount of negative media coverage on daily television news programs, the

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sources, size and direction of issue-related campaign contributions and the content of congressional testimony. Beyond serving to gauge the overall level of domestic resistance to a policy, such a multi-faceted approach to measuring this independent variable may allow for a more subtle and textured assessment of patterns of support and opposition to the president.

These two independent variables - presidential preferences and domestic opposition - are interactive. It is the intensity ofeach in relation to one another that matters. At one extreme, thepresident may attempt to overcome domestic opposition through vigorous leadership. This choice is most likely if the intensity of presidential policy preferences exceeds the level of domestic opposition. A president who faces only moderate levels of opposition to a strongly held policy preference will be willing to expend the political capital necessary to mobilize supporters and convert or neutralize opponents to his position. At the otherextreme, a president may retreat from an unpopular policy position once the domestic political costs arising from strong domestic opposition have reached critical levels. If, in other words, presidential policy preferences are weakly held while domestic opposition is strong, it will be tempting to alter existing policies to bring them into closer alignment with the climate of domestic opinion.

Where the intensity of presidential preferences and the intensity of domestic opposition are more closely matched - both pitched at either lower or higher levels - one should expect

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domestic adjustment strategies that fall between the extremes of leadership or retreat. Where weakly held presidential policy preferences are matched by moderate levels of domestic opposition, a compromise strategy seems most suitable. The president will attempt to placate a sufficient number of swing opinion-holders to dilute the political threat posed by those holdouts who remain unwilling to endorse the president’s modifiedapproach. These concessions may be either symbolic or substantive. This split-the-difference approach produces a policywhich may differ in style or substance from the president’s original preference, but which falls short of a fundamental reversal.

Where strongly held presidential preferences are matched by high levels of domestic opposition the president will attempt to circumvent domestic constraints, either through secrecy and deception or the use of executive discretion in implementing congressional mandates. Circumvention represents an attempt to avoid the choice between capitulating to domestic opposition on apolicy that is important to the president and paying the heavy political costs that open defiance might bring. A discussion of each domestic adjustment strategy follows.

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LeadOne might suppose that leadership is something that

presidents do as a matter of routine. In fact, leadership is called for only under very specific circumstances. Leadership is costly, requiring a president to invest considerable time and political resources in order to insure that his policy preferences prevail. As a result, presidents typically ration their attempts to lead domestic opinion, focusing on issues wherethe president holds strong policy preferences.

The need for leadership is also circumscribed. Leadership isabout persuasion. Persuasion is unnecessary where a large proportion of the public already shares the president’s policy preferences. On the other hand, the prospects for successful leadership are very poor in cases where a great majority of the public opposes the president’s wishes.

A strategy of leadership, or persuasion, becomes both necessary and feasible when a president faces moderate domestic

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opposition to strongly held presidential preferences. Leadership is necessary under these circumstances because significant opposition exists. It is feasible because that opposition is not so entrenched or pervasive that it cannot be overcome through vigorous effort. This effort will only be forthcoming, however, if the issue is one that engages strong presidential policy preferences.

Leadership is made difficult, however, by the fragmented anddecentralized nature of the U.S. political system. The president must contend with an independent congress, a decentralized bureaucracy and an aggressive media. These circumstances can pushpresidents toward leadership strategies that feature a large doseof rhetorical overkill.

International crises, whether real or imagined, typically maximize presidential freedom from domestic constraints on the management of foreign policy issues, at least for a time. Duringcrises, the public rallies around the president and decision-making authority flows to the apex of the state. This creates anincentive, as Theodore Lowi (1979) has pointed out, for presidents to manufacture or exaggerate crises as a means of preempting potential domestic opposition to presidential foreign policy initiatives. Lowi refers to this practice as oversell.

Oversell is typically invoked when a president wishes to undertake major new international commitments or expand old ones.This tactic serves to mobilize public and congressional support and short circuits debate over costs and risks. Often, oversell is triggered by an international incident that can be used to

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illustrate broader dangers and is accompanied by dramatic presidential gestures or rhetoric.

Presidents must pick and choose the occasions on which they resort to oversell. The use of oversell to win support for mundane policy initiatives is unlikely to prove convincing. Too frequent a use of oversell will rob the tactic of its dramatic effect and lead critics to charge that the president is crying wolf. Moreover, once mobilized to meet a crisis, the public may resist efforts to restore a sense of calm and normalcy after the president finds it expedient to bring the crisis to a close. Public fears and expectations may compel a president to act out his earlier alarmist rhetoric and the nation may be impelled toward risky and militant actions out of proportion to any real threat. Oversell may give rise to overreaching.

The Truman Doctrine and the Tonkin Gulf Resolution each provide useful examples of oversell. President Truman used his Truman Doctrine speech before a joint session of congress in 1947to prepare the nation for the sacrifices that would be demanded in the emerging Cold War. Although Truman's immediate objective was to gain congressional support for aid to embattled U.S. allies in Greece and Turkey, the president's dramatic rhetoric evoked a grand global struggle between the forces of light and darkness. The exaggerated fears and expectations that the TrumanDoctrine helped to foster in the United States came back to hauntTruman when his administration was later pilloried for losing China to the communists without a struggle.

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President Lyndon Johnson chose a minor clash between a U.S. destroyer cruising off the coast of North Vietnam and three NorthVietnamese P.T. boats as an occasion for seeking congressional authorization to expand the U.S. military role in Vietnam.2 Although Johnson’s strategic preferences for coping with the Vietnam conflict remained vague at this point in time, the president had already resolved not to lose South Vietnam to communism. Johnson anticipated domestic opposition to future escalation of U.S. involvement and sought to lock-in congressional authorization for a U.S. military role in Vietnam as early as possible so as to maximize the president’s freedom ofmaneuver. In fact, the basic outlines of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution had been prepared months beforehand and Johnson withheld evidence that would have cast the incident in a more ambiguous light. When later congressional hearings exposed the administration's manipulative management of this incident, the credibility of Johnson and his war policies, already slipping by that time, sunk further in the eyes of congress and the public.

As these two cases illustrate, oversell often leads to immediate success but may give way to political complications in the long run. The need to manufacture or exaggerate an international crisis in order to gain the domestic freedom to carry through favored policies can lead to dangerously

2 The initial attack on the Maddox took place on August 2, 1964. Two days later, the crew of the Maddox, now joined by the C. Turner Joy, reported a second attack. Most observers believe that the second attack never took place, attributing the probably erroneous report to a skittish crew and stormy weather. See Moise, 1996.

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confrontational rhetoric and actions. This sort of behavior mighteasily be misinterpreted by foreign rivals, who fail to appreciate that U.S. words and actions are aimed in large part ata domestic audience (Christensen, 1996).

Indeed, the practice of oversell may exacerbate the well known security dilemma. Robert Jervis (1978) points out that one state’s efforts to enhance its own international security often threaten the security of other states. This can give rise to a spiral of suspicion and hostility, built not upon overtly aggressive intent, but instead upon defensive motivations on the part of both states. Oversell stems from a leader's search for domestic political security. The consequences can be similar to those identified by the concept of a security dilemma. If domestic political incentives prompt the leadership of two statesto resort to exaggerated rhetoric and actions, a similar spiral of hostility and distrust can easily result - even if neither side has aggressive intent.

A further danger is that, if oversell succeeds too well, presidents may later find it difficult to disengage from confrontational policies without paying a price domestically (Trout, 1975). If, on the other hand, the public later comes to believe that the original crisis was manufactured in a conscious effort to manipulate domestic opinion, the president will face a credibility gap that may make it difficult to rally public support the next time that a real crisis threatens.

Oversell is, of course, not the only sort of leadership strategy available to a president. In cases where cooperative

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international treaties must be approved by the congress, presidents may seek to overcome opposition through protracted mobilization. Oversell depends upon the invocation of external threat as a means of justifying foreign commitments. This is bestdone by exploiting or manipulating an atmosphere of crisis and seizing the moment. Treaties and other international agreements, by contrast, typically rest upon the opportunity for mutual gain.The negotiations leading up to such agreements and the congressional deliberations that surround the ratification process often stretch over years. The time frame for mobilizing domestic support and the appropriate political tactics are therefore different than in the case of crisis situations.

Cooperative treaties or agreements with other states stir controversy and opposition when they impose costs on specific groups or offend the ideological dispositions of various domesticactors. To counter such resistance, a president must mobilize support among three distinct constituencies: the general public, organized interest groups and members of congress. To the public,the president must issue direct appeals that stress the general national interests served by the treaty or agreement. Among interest groups, the president must mobilize and expand the constellation of interests that perceive particular gains to be had from cooperation with other states. And in relation to the congress, the president must manipulate rewards and punishments in bargaining for votes with individual representatives or their leaders. Protracted mobilization takes time and requires a multi-

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tiered effort drawing upon relevant officials throughout the executive branch and deft use of the media.

President Carter’s ultimately successful campaign to sell the Panama Canal treaties in the face of concerted domestic opposition featured each of the tactics discussed above (Skidmore, 1993). President Clinton’s efforts to gain congressional approval for the controversial NAFTA agreement followed much the same script.Circumvent

A strategy of circumvention is likely to be considered when a president faces potentially fatal levels of domestic oppositionto a strongly held policy preference. Persuasion is unlikely to prove adequate in itself when the president’s preferred policy approach faces widespread and entrenched resistance at home. Where the gap between public and presidential perspectives is especially wide, it will be difficult to formulate a stable compromise position from which to placate domestic opinion. Yet apresident who is strongly committed to a given course of action, however unpopular, may be willing to take political risks before sounding retreat.

Circumvention may provide an attractive alternative under these circumstances. If domestic opposition cannot be overcome, apresident may seek ways to navigate around political obstacles athome. Most obviously, a president can employ secrecy and deception to pursue his preferred policy out of public view, thusavoiding the constraints of democratic debate and deliberation. Less dramatically, the president can attempt to circumvent

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domestic constraints by shifting the arena of decision to a more favorable venue (Krasner, 1978a) or by bargaining with the congress for greater executive discretion in how and whether to implement unwelcome legislative mandates.

Although secrecy and deception are often justified on substantive foreign policy grounds, many cases can more plausiblybe attributed to domestic political considerations. Desperate to find some way to turn around a losing military venture in Southeast Asia, yet certain that expansion of the Vietnam war would provoke debilitating domestic opposition, President RichardNixon ordered the secret bombing of communist sanctuaries in Cambodia in the Spring of 1969. When the congress cut off official U.S. funding for the Nicaraguan Contras in 1984, the Reagan Administration secretly sought ways around congressional restrictions by soliciting private and third-country funds, as well as diverting profits from the sale of arms to Iran.

The obvious danger of circumventing domestic opposition through the resort to secrecy and deception is that the politicalcosts may prove all the greater later on if such operations are exposed. Indeed, neither Nixon nor Reagan found it possible to sustain a strategy of secrecy and circumvention. Once revealed in1973, Nixon’s critics cited his secret bombing of Cambodia as grounds for impeachment. The Iran-Contra scandal seriously weakened Reagan’s political standing during his last two years ofhis presidency.

Circumvention need not involve outright deception. Instead, presidents can seek ways to minimize legislative input into

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policy-making or negotiate for administrative discretion over implementation. When it became apparent, for example, that the congress would not approve a proposed financial bailout for Mexico in the midst of the Peso crisis of 1995, the Clinton Administration withdrew the proposal from legislative consideration and located a source of funding not subject to congressional control: the Treasury Department’s Economic Stabilization Fund. Clinton salvaged his preferred policy by shifting the arena of decision to one solely under his own control.

Congress often conspires to undercut its own control over presidential behavior by including so-called “waiver provisions” in foreign policy legislation (Doherty, 1992). Whatever policy a particular piece of legislation purports to impose upon a president, these waiver provisions specify various conditions under which the president is permitted to waive or ignore the policy mandate invoked by the congress.

After the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989, for example, a large congressional majority disagreed with President Bush’s relatively conciliatory approach to dealing with Chinese authorities, preferring a punitive policy designed to place pressure on China to end violations of human rights. Recognizing the inevitability of congressional action against China, Bush expended little energy in lobbying against sanctions legislation as it moved through the congress. Instead, he bargained for institutional flexibility, insisting that a generous waiver provision be attached to any sanctions bill. Congress acceded to

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this request, giving Bush the authority to waive sanctions against China where he found it to be in the “national interest” to do so. The president subsequently exercised this authority on numerous occasions, substantially undercutting the expressed intent of congress (Skidmore and Gates, 1997).

Congress includes waiver provisions of this sort in foreign policy legislation in part out of recognition that legal mandatesare often overly blunt and inflexible instruments of foreign policy. Presidents may convincingly argue that they need the ability to alter policies quickly in response to changing circumstances. Yet another reason for including such waiver provisions is that congress is often reluctant to take full responsibility for the consequences of the foreign policy mandates it seeks to impose upon the president. Even when, therefore, the president cannot persuade a majority of the domestic audience that his preferred course of action is wise or desirable, he may nevertheless possess or seek a sufficient degree of executive discretion to implement his favored policies in spite of resistance at home.Placate

In circumstances where the president holds weak or unclear policy preferences and the public is itself divided, a strong temptation will exist to design policy with the aim of appealing to the greatest number of domestic constituencies. This attempt to please everyone, or, in other words, to placate domestic opinion, can have perverse consequences, especially when public attitudes are contradictory.

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Effort to placate domestic opinion can render policy a hostage to public ambivalence. In cases where overseas conflict raises the issue of U.S. military intervention, for instance, public opinion is often given to conflicted impulses. The public takes a problem seriously enough to demand that something be done. But a majority also wishes to avoid the costs or risks that might accompany any foreign intervention substantial enough to hold some realistic prospect of success. Under these circumstances, a president may become trapped within a narrow range of options lying between the lower and upper bounds of domestic tolerance. The president incurs criticism if he does too little, but also risks opposition if he takes truly decisive actions that prove costly. A president wishing to maximize shortterm domestic support will end up pursuing a middle of the road approach that produces international consequences inferior to either decisive escalation or immediate disengagement.

This “stalemate machine” typically gives rise to a pattern of piecemeal and indecisive escalation. The president does enough to establish a commitment and to satisfy the domestic callfor action, but does too little to solve the problem. By choosing this route, the president hopes that the issue will gradually fade in salience and that muddling through will sufficeto silence critics even if the problem ultimately remains less than fully resolved (Van Belle, 1993).

The danger in this strategy is that an unresolved problem islikely to boil over once again at some point in the future. Thisraises the issue's salience level all over again and gives rise

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to another round of escalation. The public once again demands action, but does not support moves that threaten high costs. U.S. involvement thus escalates in an incremental fashion until the costs and risks have finally risen far beyond those originally anticipated by the president or the public. To make matters worse, actions at the highest rungs of escalation, which might have worked if tried initially, may not suffice by the timethey are actually employed because the problem has worsened or the opponent has hardened in the meantime. By this time, the public's patience will have worn thin and the president will haverun out of appealing options for buying further domestic support.A particularly farsighted president might, of course, avoid this trap by choosing a more decisive policy early on - either non-intervention or rapid escalation. Unfortunately, the short term political incentives, which often prove decisive, pull in the opposite direction.

The foregoing discussion of the “stalemate machine” is borrowed from Daniel Ellsberg (1972: 42-135), who applied the concept to presidential decision-making toward U.S. involvement in the Vietnam. Ellsberg’s analysis of U.S. policy in Vietnam isseconded by Leslie Gelb (1971), who offers a roughly parallel argument. Both suggest that the middle-of-the-road pattern of piecemeal escalation adopted by the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations toward Vietnam was wholly (Ellsberg) or partly (Gelb) a product of domestic constraints.

During the early sixties, Kennedy and Johnson formulated U.S. policy with two rules in mind: (1) don’t lose South Vietnam

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to communism, and (2) don’t involve the U.S. in a large-scale ground war in Asia. Each rule drew upon recent precedent. The “loss” of China to communism in 1949 led to bitter domestic recrimination, charges that Democrats were “soft of communism,” and a wave of McCarthyite hysteria. On the other hand, the public would not, it was believed, readily tolerate another ground war similar to the Korean engagement, which had become increasingly unpopular over time. The perceived domestic costs of either extreme - withdrawal or unrestrained escalation - steered Kennedy and Johnson toward the middle. As long as it proved feasible to do so, each president did enough to avert the loss of South Vietnam to communism but avoided the direct commitment of U.S. troops and air power that many military advisers insisted would be necessary to bring victory.

By 1965, the deteriorating political and military situation in South Vietnam cut this middle ground from beneath Johnson’s feet. The minimum necessary to stave off defeat breached the preexisting upper boundaries of escalation - direct U.S. troop involvement could not be avoided. Even once this line had been crossed, however, troops were introduced in a gradual, controlledmanner and Johnson sought to delay reinstatement of the military draft or the introduction of higher taxes to pay for the war. Asboth Kennedy and Johnson anticipated, public support for the war waned over time as U.S. losses mounted. Upon taking office in 1969, Richard Nixon responded to these domestic pressures by seeking to reestablish a stable middle ground: “Vietnamization”

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gradually reduced troop levels even while prolonging U.S. effortsto prevent a communist victory.

President Clinton’s policy toward the Bosnia conflict also serves as an example of a strategy of calculated stalemate. As in the Vietnam case, the American public proved ambivalent in itsattitudes toward American involvement in the Bosnian war. Horrific stories of ethnic cleansing, images of gaunt men slowly starving to death in Serbian run concentration camps and reports of the shelling and destruction of beautiful Sarejevo all moved many Americans to demand that something be done to aid the victims of this war and bring the fighting to an end. Still, fewAmericans supported direct U.S. troop involvement in such a brutal and confusing conflict.

The Clinton Administration tailored its policies to satisfy both of these impulses. Rather than sitting on the sideline, the U.S., in cooperation with the U.N. and its NATO partners, supported economic sanctions targeted at Serbia, an arms embargo on all parties to the conflict, the insertion of U.N. troops to deliver relief supplies to civilian victims, the creation of safehavens, the declaration of a no-fly zone, diplomatic mediation and NATO air strikes against Serb targets in retaliation for attacks on U.N. forces. These measures clearly entangled the U.S. and other powers in the affairs of the former Yugoslavia.

Yet the U.S. set limits on its involvement. Through his first three years in office, President Clinton resisted European calls for the insertion of U.S. ground troops in Bosnia. The administration seemed content to preside over a continuing and

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calculated stalemate: outside intervention by the U.S. and other powers succeeded in preventing an outright Serb victory, but it did not force the Serbs to give up their considerable gains or toaccept a compromise peace. Only after successful Croatian offensives against Serb positions in the summer of 1996 had shifted the local balance of power did the U.S. manage to broker a peace agreement at meetings in Dayton, Ohio. U.S. troops finally deployed to Bosnia, but only after the Dayton Accord was in place, limiting the risks of warfighting and casualties.

Clinton’s policies toward the Bosnian conflict reflected an astute reading of American public opinion. The president sought to demonstrate to the American public his continuing concern withthe Bosnian conflict and to project an image of action. Yet he also understood that the American people are not willing to pay aprice in blood to impose peace upon the warring parties. Clinton therefore rejected high risk or potentially costly options at each point along the way. The combatants in Bosnia’s ugly civil war were allowed to battle one another until reaching a point of exhaustion. Only then did the U.S. step forward as a peace-maker.Retreat

There are times when presidents neglect the task of cultivating domestic policy legitimacy or attempt to arouse domestic support, but experience failure. In either case, the gapbetween existing policy directions and public preferences may grow to politically costly dimensions.

Once the public loses confidence in a president's foreign policy competence and/or faith in the underlying aims and

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strategy of the administration's international endeavors, piecemeal tactics for regaining trust and support are unlikely tobe effective. Under these circumstances, a president may choose,as a matter of political survival, to retreat from existing policies and to seek a fundamentally new direction. The goal is to win back public confidence by taking a series of policy adjustments across a range of issue areas, along with a reorientation of presidential rhetoric, to align the administration's foreign policy priorities more closely with those of the public.

An example can be found in the Carter Administration’s foreign policy record (Skidmore, 1996). Initially embracing a liberal agenda of foreign policy reform, Carter promised to pursue détente and arms control with the Soviet Union, cut defense spending, curb arms sales, reign in CIA covert activitiesand place a higher priority on human rights concerns. Over time, however, Carter’s liberal foreign policy approach produced a domestic backlash. Conservative groups criticized the Panama Canal and SALT II treaties, lambasted Carter’s allegedly weak defense policies, rejected U.S.-Soviet détente as a “one-way street” and complained that the administration’s human rights policies harmed relations with important U.S. allies. Public opinion surveys revealed steadily declining public confidence in Carter’s foreign policy performance, many associating Carter withan image of weakness.

Carter responded to these adverse domestic political trends by seeking to reverse public perceptions through the cultivation

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of an image of strength and resolve. Carter took advantage of three opportunities during the latter half of 1979 to reshape hispublic image. The first of these arose in August when intelligence reports revealed the presence of a Soviet military brigade in Cuba. Carter took a tough public stance, initially demanding that the Soviet brigade be withdrawn. Carter took a second step toward constructing a tougher image when a number of senators made their support for the SALT II treaty contingent upon increased defense spending. Carter responded by backing $40 billion in new funding for the deployment of MX missiles and agreeing to support large annual increases in defense spending.

Finally, Carter’s stern response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in late December also reflected, at least in part, the president’s desire to appear resolute at a time of international tension. Carter severed almost all official contactwith the Soviet Union, withdrew the SALT II treaty from Senate consideration, imposed economic sanctions, boycotted the 1980 Moscow Olympics and announced the "Carter Doctrine," which committed the United States to militarily resist any Soviet thrust to seize control of territory in the Persian Gulf region. Raymond Garthoff (1984: 957) plausibly suggests that "Part of thereason for the Carter administration's adamant stand was the president's own concern over the widespread domestic criticism that he had been irresolute on a variety of other issues..." Carter actions were partially designed to save his presidency.

The Reagan Administration’s efforts to soften its initially hawkish image with regard to nuclear weapons may provide a second

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example of a strategy of retreat (Meyer, 1990; 1993).3 Once Reagan took office in 1981, his foreign policy and defense team adopted an openly militant posture on nuclear issues. Reagan proposed major spending increases for strategic weapons systems and rejected the resumption of nuclear arms control talks with the Soviet Union. A number of Reagan’s aides spoke publicly about the “winnability” of nuclear war and engaged in speculationover various nuclear war fighting strategies. In the context of deeply strained U.S.-Soviet ties and Reagan’s own reference to the Soviet Union as an “evil empire,” critics charged that the administration had begun down a reckless and dangerous course. Significant segments of the public agreed. Fears about the possible outbreak of nuclear war became more urgent and widespread. In reaction to Reagan’s hawkish policies, massive peace movements arose in both the United States and Western Europe. Many states, municipalities and even the congress itselfpassed resolutions calling for a “nuclear freeze.”

These developments placed the administration on the defensive. Reagan and his advisers became increasingly sensitiveto the political costs of previous rhetoric and policies. Gradually, the administration devised a strategy for calming public fears and crafting an image of Reagan as a champion of peace. Top officials toned down their previously militant rhetoric and Reagan himself repeatedly affirmed his belief that “nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.” Reagan 3Though this case could be considered a hybrid since some elements of Reagan’s response to domestic opposition could be considered consistant with the strategies of concilation or circumvention, as described above.

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dubbed the MX missile, which some observers considered a potential first strike weapon, the “peacekeeper.” More substantively, Reagan reembraced arms control, proposing a negotiated elimination of U.S. and Soviet intermediate range nuclear weapons in Europe and calling for START talks with the Soviet Union on strategic force reductions. Perhaps most effectively, Reagan announced plans for development of a Strategic Defense Initiative, designed, in Reagan’s vision, to render nuclear weapons “obsolete.” These initiatives largely succeeded in calming public fears and reworking Reagan’s hawkish image. The nuclear freeze movement abated as quickly as it had arisen.

When public disaffection springs from clear and unambiguous policy failure abroad, simply reversing course may be insufficient to stem the ensuing political costs. Visible failuremay embolden a president’s critics and render him the target of drawn out recriminations and attacks on his competence. Under these circumstances, a president will seek ways to cover his retreat and remove the taste of failure. This can be accomplishedby diverting media and public attention toward another issue where success can be quickly achieved. The best way to cope with a negative media feeding frenzy is to offer journalists a newer, better and more positive story. Since television news time is limited, the new story, if it catches fire, will likely push the old story off the air.

The U.S. invasion of Grenada in 1983, for instance, served to divert public and media attention away from the failure of the

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Reagan Administration’s troop deployment to Lebanon (Van Belle, 1993). Images of “rescued” American medical students kissing the airport tarmac upon their return to the United States replaced pictures of ruin and rubble following the terrorist bombing of a U.S. military encampment outside Beirut which left 241 marines dead.4 Subsequently, Reagan removed U.S. forces from Lebanon, short of achieving their principle goals, with little public fanfare.Conclusion

The traditional “top down” model of U.S. foreign policy decision-making argues that presidents lead domestic opinion. The“bottom up” model instead suggests that presidents tend to followdomestic opinion. Each errs in treating the dependent variable - how presidents respond to domestic opposition to their foreign policy preferences - as essentially fixed. Yet it is evident thatpresidents sometimes lead domestic opinion (or attempt to do so) and at other times follow domestic opinion. Efforts to model the relationship between presidents and domestic opinion on foreign policy issues should focus on explaining this variability.

4 Most accounts suggest that preparations for the invasion of Grenada preceeded the attack on the marines in Lebanon by several weeks, thus discounting the claim that the Grenada invasion itself was prompted by adesire to drown out domestic criticism of Reagan’s Lebanon policy. Considering that the deployment in Lebanon was subject to considerable domestic criticism prior to the destruction of the marine barracks, however, the possibility that domestic politics played a role in the decision to launch the Granada invasion cannot be ruled out. Moreover, it seems evident that the Reagan Administration took active steps to encourage and facilitate the shift in media attention from Lebanon to Grenada and to control the tone of coverage of the latter.

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This paper has offered a model that specifies the conditionsunder which presidents opt for different strategies of domestic adjustment. The dependent variable ranges from leadership to retreat. Between these extremes presidents can seek to placate orcircumvent domestic resistance to their initial policy preferences. The independent variables are the intensity of presidential attachment to his preferred policies and the degree of domestic opposition to those policies.

Where the intensity of presidential preferences exceeds the degree of domestic opposition, presidents are likely to opt for aleadership strategy. Where the degree of domestic opposition exceeds the intensity of presidential preferences, presidents arelikely to retreat from initial policies. If both the intensity ofpresidential preferences and the degree of domestic opposition are of moderate dimensions, then presidents will prefer to placate opponents. Presidents with strong policy preferences facing strong opposition will attempt to circumvent domestic obstacles to the pursuit of their original policies.

Besides laying out the logic of this argument, this paper has offered plausible illustrations of each of the four patterns.Much, however, remains to be done in order to refine, elaborate and test the proposed model. Better measures must be developed for the independent and dependent variables. How does one independently ascertain the intensity of presidential preferences? What indicators, besides public opinion, should be considered for determining the degree of domestic opposition to particular policies? Measuring the dependent variable -

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strategies of domestic adjustment - also presents challenges. Presidents may fashion hybrid responses that combine, simultaneously or sequentially, more than one of the adjustment strategies outlined above.

Comparative case studies of a qualitative nature offer one means by which the relationships posited above might be tested and refined. What Alexander George (1979) refers to as “process tracing” can be employed to illuminate the dynamics of historicalcases. For some purposes, however, quantitative methods might be more appropriate. A combination of events data and content analysis might allow for careful testing of the relationships hypothesized above.

Although presidential adjustment strategies are treated as the dependent variable in the model proposed in this paper, they can also be regarded as intervening variables once the scope of our inquiry is broadened. We treat adjustment strategies as dependent variables when we ask how presidents are likely to respond to domestic opposition to their preferred policies. Understanding the conditions under which presidential responses take various forms, however, does not tell us whether these efforts to reduce the gap between policies and domestic opinion are likely to succeed for fail.

The same is true once we inquire into the international consequences of various domestic adjustment strategies. The sparemodel illustrated in Table 1 does not illuminate possible connections between particular adjustment strategies and their effects on the effectiveness of U.S. foreign policy. Nor does the

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model factor in possible feedback effects as actual foreign policy outcomes influence subsequent iterations in relations between the president and domestic opinion. Additional theoretical and empirical work is needed in order to explore the consequences, at home and abroad, of various presidential strategies of domestic adjustment. The domestic adjustment model offered above provides a place to start along this chain of inquiry.References

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