Popularity and Moral Authority

It is being reported, to the surprise of absolutely no one at all, that people throughout the world strongly prefer Barack Obama to John McCain. What, if anything, does this mean? In practical terms, perhaps not much. Such stories may even hurt Obama's popularity at home. Should this sort of data point be of any interest whatsoever to an American voter?

A case could be made that such things should be irrelevant to American voters. In the first place, it seems there's no reason to think that citizens of Panama or Indonesia or Italy would know much of anything about the policy positions of either candidate or that they are directly affected by them (although the latter point is perhaps more difficult than ever to make in a global economy). Indeed, American voters themselves are often woefully uninformed about the issues which most directly concern them: why should we think that citizens of other countries would have opinions worth hearing about our own presidential elections? In the second place, it could be argued that in competitive global labor markets, citizens of other countries might take an interest in a weaker, rather than a stronger, United States.

Of course Americans have generally given very little importance to foreigners' views on US politics (remember how John Kerry may have actually been hurt by his popularity with the French in 2004?). But should that be so? With respect to the first question--the degree to which foreigners are knowledgeable about the candidates--I don't have any firm basis upon which to draw conclusions. But I can say, having lived in Spain for some ten months between 2004 and 2007, that the foreign press covers American presidential politics extensively. The days leading up to the November 2004 presidential election were filled with almost non-stop coverage on the main television stations there. Take it for what it's worth, but my gut feeling--supported by admittedly modest anecdotal evidence--is that foreign observers are generally much more sophisticated and informed than we give them credit for in the US. Certainly there's no question that they're better informed about our domestic politics than we are about theirs (quick: who's the Canadian Prime Minister? The President of Mexico? The Prime Minister of Italy?).

With regard to the second point, I think we citizens of the US sometimes misunderstand anti-American sentiment abroad. I daresay--and no, I'm not gonna back this up with evidence here: I've got more important stuff I should be doing now!--that envy or resentment of the U.S. is fueled less by our economic prosperity than by a vague sense that the US has become politically, militarily, and culturally hegemonic and that the US perceives itself to be above international law and unanswerable to anyone or anything other than its own interests. That may be wrong. But it's certainly not good that such a sentiment is so widespread. I believe, and I suspect that I could back this up had I the time and the inclination, that we have unquestionably lost a great deal of what might be called our "moral authority" over the last eight years.

"So what?" some of my readers might say. "Who cares what foreigners think about us?" Well, I do, for one. As maudlin as it might sound to some, I think Reagan's "city on a hill" metaphor is inexplicably powerful and that it speaks to our "better angels." A real tragedy of Iraq in general and Guantánamo in particular is that they tarnish that image of a country guided by ideals rather than brute political calculation. I don't envy US diplomats assigned to convey to Russia our disapproval of their attempt to reassert control over Georgia. That's the sort of task that becomes more difficult when our rivals can gleefully point to the hypocrisy (whether perceived or real) of our own foreign policy. The point is not that popularity entails moral authority on any given issue: it is indeed possible to imagine a government taking a morally principled stance that is widely unpopular, just as one can admire a certain vice-presidential candidate's decision to keep a child rather than abort it, even if one does not share that candidate's policy views about the matter of abortion (and I'm definitely not making a point about abortion one way or the other here). But rather I'm claiming that moral authority is not altogether separable from perception: one must be generally perceived to be acting not in one's own self-interest (or at least not exclusively so) but rather in terms of a higher principle. In a nutshell, I think there's ample evidence that the US is widely perceived to be incapable now of acting out of anything but naked self-interest and I think that that perception is unlikely to change if John McCain is elected.

To be sure, foreigners may be spectacularly wrong about Obama: if he were to be elected they may decide that he's as bad, or even worse, than Bush (a logical possibility, if difficult to imagine). But to the extent that one cannot claim moral authority without being perceived to merit it, it stands to reason that we should take an interest in what others think of us. It would be too crude to say that we need to elect Barack Obama to make up for eight years of George Bush. But it wouldn't be entirely wrong either.

I'll blog some other time on the implications of the "war on terror" in terms of the popularity of Obama and McCain and the question of moral authority. Tune in later. Or, not.