Politics and Government

Polls and Public Opinion

  • Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
    Academic Webinar: Public Opinion on Israel and Palestine
    Play
    Shibley Telhami, Anwar Sadat professor for peace and development at the University of Maryland and nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, leads the conversation on public opinion on Israel and Palestine.   FASKIANOS: Welcome to the final session of the Fall 2023 CFR Academic Webinar series. I’m Irina Faskianos, vice president of the National Program and Outreach here at CFR. Today’s discussion is on the record and the video and transcript will be available on our website, CFR.org/Academic. As always, CFR takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. We’re delighted to have Shibley Telhami with us to discuss public opinion on Israel and Palestine. Dr. Telhami is the Anwar Sadat professor of peace and development and distinguished scholar-teacher at the University of Maryland, and director of the University of Maryland Critical Issues Poll. He is also a nonresident senior fellow with the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. He is an expert on U.S. policy in the Middle East and on Arab politics, and regularly conducts public opinion polls in the Arab world, Israel, and the United States. He has advised every U.S. administration, from George H.W. Bush to Barack Obama. And Dr. Telhami is the author and editor of numerous books. His most recent is a coedited book with contributions volume entitled The One State Reality: What is Israel/Palestine?, published by Cornell University Press in March 2023. So, Dr. Telhami, thank you very much for being with us today. I thought you could start us off by talking about how the Israel-Hamas war has affected American public attitudes toward the Israeli-Palestinian issue more broadly. TELHAMI: Well, first of all, thank you, Irina, for hosting me. And thank you all for attending. Let me just do maybe a little bit of a background about shifts in public opinion even before the war, and then talk about what happened after the Hamas attack October 7. I think it’s important to put this in historical perspective, because I had been doing polling on this issue for decades, literally, with some tracking questions about whether the public wants the U.S. to lean toward Israel, toward the Palestinians, or toward neither side. So historically, it used to be the case when we first started doing polling on this issue that the majority of the public wanted the U.S. to be neutral, to take neither side. That, by the way, has not changed. But what used to be the case is that a significant minority wanted to take Israel’s side, and very few wanted to take the Palestinians’ side. And that used to be the case across the partisan divide, Democrats and Republicans held it across the board, and independents. Over the past fifteen years, there has been a shift. It is still the case that the majority of Americans want to take neither side. And even during the war, and even after the first week of the war after the Hamas attack, still a majority of Americans want the U.S. to take neither side. But what happened among those who want to take a side, has been a shift. More and more on the Republican side wanted to take Israel’s side, to being close to almost half of the Republican constituency. And among Democrats, what happened is that more and more started being either evenhanded among Israelis and Palestinians or, increasingly in recent years, a slight majority, particularly among young Democrats, wanting to lean toward the Palestinians. In fact, right before the before the Hamas attack, there were many polls that showed—including Gallup polls in the past year—that showed that there was more sympathy among Democrats to the Palestinians than for the Israelis. So there has been a shift that has taken place over time. That shift is really a function of four things that might be useful to think about. One is demographic, in the sense that the Democrats became less and less white and more diverse. And we know that typically African Americans, Hispanic Americans, young Americans, women, Asian Americans tended to be somewhat more sympathetic with the Palestinians. So we’ve had that demographic shift take place. We have also had been the media sources. So we know that more and more young democrats, particularly, have shifted to social media. So the sources of information coming to young Democrats is different from the general public, the establishment media, the establishment TV, and newspapers. That source has really impacted the way people form opinions. The third reason is that the democratic constituencies have become more and more focused on social justice when they view Israel-Palestine. And we’ve seen them look at Israel-Palestine less through the prism of strategic interests of the U.S. or, unlike many of the Republicans who are Evangelical who look at it through a biblical lens, they look at it through the view of social justice, like Black Lives Matter. And we’ve seen sympathy increase for the Palestinians through that prism across the board. I would also add the fact that in the past decade and a half, Israel has had a right-wing government, mostly headed by Netanyahu. And that has seemed to be aligned with the Republicans in American politics, which alienated Democrats further, especially young Democrats. So we’ve seen this shift take place all before—well before the October 7 attack. We’ve also seen that more people, more Democrats, had a somewhat negative—young Democrats, people under thirty-five, have a negative opinion of Israel. It used to be that Israel—and many Americans still have a positive view of Israel across the board. But young Democrats increasingly had a negative view of Israel. And, remarkably, I did a poll a few months ago asking—and this obviously is before the attack in October. We did this in March of last year—in March of this year, I mean. Last March. We did a poll asking whether Americans thought Israel is a vibrant democracy, a flawed democracy, a state with restricted minority rights, or state was segregation similar to Apartheid. And the remarkable thing is that slightly over half of Americans said they don’t know whether Israel is a democracy or not. This kind of by itself is a big shocker, because you think the talking points about what Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East and shared values. And a slight majority of Americans say they don’t know whether it—of those who said they know, the plurality of Democrats, 44 percent, said it is a state with segregation similar to Apartheid. More people said that among Democrats than said it is a democracy or flawed democracy. So there is a perception, obviously, already before this war that had shifted in terms of views of Israel and Israel-Palestine. When the war happened, when Hamas had its horrific attack—and we know how horrific it was. There was a lot of publicity around the Israeli victims, the depth of that attack, the shock, and also a lot of official support from the U.S. —our White House, Congress, establishment organizations, community organizations, and local leaders all expressed a lot of support. So we did a poll within two weeks of that to see whether there has been a shift. And there was, in fact, a shift. There was a spike in sympathy for Israel, of increasing the number of people who want the U.S. to lean toward Israel two weeks after the war, across the board. Meaning among Republicans, among Democrats, among independents. The only group that was unaffected, even after the first couple of weeks, were young Democrats who are under thirty-five, who didn’t change their view from prior to the war. We then did another poll. And remember, while I say there’s a spike in the support for Israel, it’s still the case that a majority—the majority of Democrats and independents—wanted the U.S. to take neither side. So that hadn’t shifted. They still, even after—immediately after the attack a majority wanted the U.S. to be neutral, not to take Israel side. But among the minority who wanted to take sides, more people wanted to take Israel’s side than the Palestinians’ side. Two weeks after that, after the kind of the media shifted to the Israeli attack in Gaza and with all of the destruction and death that we’ve seen, we did another poll. And we found that most of the gains that Israel had made in the poll that we conducted two weeks before had disappeared. But the most important impact was really among young Democrats, who more and more of them wanted to lean toward the Palestinians, not to lean toward Israel. And we also found that a plurality of those who gave opinions thought that—among Democrats and independents—thought that Biden was too pro-Israel. Very few thought he was too pro-Palestinian. And more importantly, when you ask them whether the posture on Israel-Palestine made them less likely to vote for Biden, we found that young Democrats, like 21 percent, said that they’re now less likely to vote for Biden compared to only about 9 percent who said they’re more likely to do it. Now since then, there have been some striking polls that indicated further deterioration, particularly in terms of criticism of Israel, people who said Israel has gone overboard. Particularly the NBC poll that was done November 10 to November 14. And a substantial percentage of people who have disapproved of the way Biden handled, meaning his overwhelming support for Israel—including, remarkably, 70 percent of voters ages eighteen to thirty-four, some constituents that he needs. And a majority of Democrats— that included a majority of Democrats overall. And also, we found a majority of Democrats who wanted to withhold military aid from Israel.  So we have a really significant shift that has taken place in the past few weeks in a way that has undermined the posture of the Biden administration. And there is every indication that the posture that Biden has taken, of wholehearted support for the Israeli bombings in Gaza particularly over the first few weeks, has hurt him politically. It certainly has hurt him in the Middle East and elsewhere internationally. But we know that some of the decline in his popularity and approval ratings in the U.S. has been a direct function of his posture on the war. So I’ll stop here and just open it up for discussion. FASKIANOS: Great. Thank you so much, Shibley. We’re going to go to all of you for your questions. (Gives queuing instructions.) There is a written question. Monica Byrne asking about if these polls are available. Yes, they are. And we will send after this event. We’ll send the link to the video and transcript as well as links to some of the polls that Dr. Telhami referenced, so that people can access them. OK, let’s see. We’re going to go now to raised hand from Jonathan Van Hecke, who’s at the Indiana University Bloomington. Q: Hi. This is actually—it’s David Bosco with the Hamilton Lugar School of Global International Studies at Indiana University, with a group of students. But we had a question about perception of what happened on October 7. There’s been a kind of video circulating on the internet of some pro-Palestinian activists kind of essentially saying that what happened on October 7, or what seems to have happened, didn’t happen or questioning, you know, the accounts. And I wonder if that’s kind of—you mentioned social media. And I wonder if that’s something that you’re able to ferret out from the polling, is kind of what trust there is in information about what is actually happening on the ground. TELHAMI: Yeah, thanks for the question. But also, I have a soft spot for both Hamilton and Lugar. So—(laughter)—so I have to say that I worked for Lee Hamilton. This is—he was my teacher on American politics, in a way, when he was the chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee. I advised him. And guess what, Irina? That was a Council on Foreign Relations international affairs fellowship, when I advised Lee Hamilton and became close to him for years. And Lugar, Senator Lugar, who was one of the finest bipartisan, in a way, voices who—the kind of American politics we don’t really see now, unfortunately. But it was much more common. I had the pleasure of traveling with him and spending a week with him in Finland, at a conference and got to know him very well. And so I have a very soft spot for those two men, and therefore for the school that’s named after them. So thank you for the question. Of course, there’s a lot of stuff going on. And, frankly, part of—even within Israel itself, there are conspiracy theories among even people who are supportive of the government, who are blaming the security forces, that this is a way of kind of attacking the prime minister, and the prime minister is using that against the security services, the establishment. So there are conspiracy theories even in Israel itself. That’s not unusual, in a way, when we have an event of this sort, because it was honestly shocking. The shock wasn’t that it took place. I mean, Hamas was capable of doing it. That was not the thing. The main thing is that it was shocking, given the perception of Israeli security and given their perception of the limitation of Hamas, that they were able to do something on this scale, was shocking to everyone. And so I think it was bound to create all kinds of conspiracy theories. I don’t think that most people that I’m polling, and I’m talking to, and following on social media, and people who are communicating with me, who are very, very opposed particularly to the Biden administration policy, are mostly doing it because they’re questioning the fact that it happened. They might be questioning a little bit about the reporting about casualties on the Palestinian side. There was disbelief about some of the reporting of civilian casualties. People wanted to dismiss that. You see that on both sides. And when the Israelis say, well, it’s Hamas numbers. I don’t trust them, even the president said that initially.  So you find that kind of narrative more or less. But I believe that the bulk of the opposition that you see, particularly among young people, is mostly based on a preexisting sympathy with the Palestinians. Meaning that they have become sort of—they look at it through the narrative of occupation. They don’t condone what Hamas did, but they don’t think that history started on October 7. And that is the more common source of opposition people, who have preexisting views that blamed Israel for the occupation or called Israel an apartheid state. And they don’t condone what Hamas did, but they don’t think that justifies what transpired afterwards. FASKIANOS: And, just to follow up that, a written question from Carolyn Ford, who’s an undergraduate at Georgia State University: Is the shift in attitude among young Democrats related to specific events prior to October 7? TELHAMI: That’s really a good question. I think that the multiple Gaza wars, because I’ve traced those. For example, the 2014 Gaza war, when Obama was president, that generated quite a bit of attention among young Democrats. I do think that during that period, the Obama administration, we started finding a lot of shift. Part of that shift was based on confrontation between President Obama, which was admired by a lot of, obviously, Democrats, but especially young Democrats. His confrontation with Benjamin Netanyahu, right-wing prime minister who was kind of—had a very confrontational relationship with President Obama. And then he came to the U.S. behind the president’s back, in order—working with Republican opponents of the president trying to undermine the president’s most important deal in his second administration, the Iran nuclear deal. It created a lot of tension and resentment, certainly, in that relationship. But we also saw it in my polling, for example, after—during the Trump years. Because obviously Trump is not exactly liked by young Democrats, or any Democrats for that matter. But he was seen also to be particularly anti-Palestinian, particularly pro-Israel. That generated—that polarization also played into the hands of young Democrats. The rise of the Black Lives Matter movement put more focus on—at the same time, on the suffering of the Palestinians. We saw after Biden was elected in the 2021 Hamas war that was much more limited—I did a lot of polling. I wrote actually two pieces, I reviewed them recently, in which I showed that Democratic public opinion became critical of Biden. In fact, Biden’s drop in approval rating started right there with that war, and most of it came from Democrats. And at a time when Democrats, a good percentage of them, was disapproving of his policy of support for Israel during that war as well. So it’s more than one thing. And I do think that the fact that many young Democrats go to social media for news, rather than, let’s say, watching CNN or MSNBC or any of the major news media or Fox, or read the New York Times or the Washington Post, they will principally go to the bubbles in the media that they have. FASKIANOS: And there’s a follow up question from Thomas Ferguson, who’s a professor emeritus in political science at the University of Massachusetts, Boston: What can you say about perceptions of antisemitism over time? And, secondly, have you tried any questions involving Biden that include Trump in their framing? TELHAMI: First of all, with regard to Trump and just the framing, I try to avoid that to the extent possible, because we don’t want to bias the kind of the answers, by referring to names. We did have lots of questions about Trump policy and Biden policy separately over time. On antisemitism, we did a poll on antisemitism last year. We found that a majority of Americans think—a slight majority of Americans think that antisemitism is on the rise in the U.S. So there’s that impression. Most do not consider criticism of Israel to be antisemitism. Most, obviously, consider bias against Jews to be antisemitism. Many also consider criticism of Zionism to be—though not a majority—to be antisemitism. But a majority don’t consider criticism of Israel to be antisemitism. That is available on our website. You can go there and find it. We have done it. In fact, it is—actually, at the same time we ask questions about Israeli system of government, whether it’s a democracy or something else. FASKIANOS: And on the other—a corollary question from Ahad Din, who comes from Dallas College: Has your work uncovered a shift in sympathies for Muslims as people, societies, or nation, that correlates with the uptick among younger American voters who are also being targeted by Islamophobic violence? TELHAMI: Well, this is really an interesting story, actually. Thanks for asking that. I have—and the answer might really surprise you, in a way, because I have actually been tracing attitudes towards Islam and Muslims for years. And I started doing it more intensively with the beginning of the 2016 presidential campaign, because of the rise of Trump and his anti-Muslim kind of speech, even before he became president. And then I did, like, multiple polls per year, not just one. Maybe sometimes two or three per year throughout the Trump presidency, well into the Biden presidency, trying to trace a shift that is taking place. Let me tell you what we found that is really remarkable. From the moment Trump began his anti-Muslim campaign, attitudes among Americans improved toward Muslims—improved, incrementally. Every poll we did was more favorable than the poll before. And in fact, you see, graphically, it’s remarkable. I have a couple of articles on it. I did one for the Washington Post, one for Politico, one for Brookings over the years. They are all on our website. You can see it. But it’s really, really interesting. And the reason for it is that it mostly came from a kind of a rallying behind Muslims, mostly among Democrats and independents who didn’t like Trump. So it was kind of like, Trump dislikes Muslims. Therefore, we like Muslims. And so we had this kind of interesting trend. Obviously, that was more true of young Democrats, for sure, but across the board we have seen this remarkable shift that has taken place, even among—on attitudes toward Islam. Because historically we find that attitudes toward Muslims are somewhat more favorable than attitudes toward Islam as a religion. I have written about this as to why that is the case. But you will find that even attitudes toward Islam improved as well. Not quite as much, but also improved over time. So, yes, there has been a marked shift that has taken place during the Trump years into the Biden years. FASKIANOS: Thank you. I’m going to take the next question from Angela Williams with a raised hand. If you can identify yourself. Q: Can you hear me? FASKIANOS: Yes. TELHAMI: Yes. Q: Hi.  TELHAMI: Hi. Q: Thanks for having us here today. Now, my question for Dr. Shibley is, you speak of social justice, but I want you to go back and speak of justice, because you also referenced Evangelicals. TELHAMI: Yeah. Q: Now, justice is what is in the Bible, not social justice, which came about 1970s and 1980s, or if you want to go Luigi, in 1840s. But I think that we are—don’t have authentic conversations or perspective because justice is not the focus. Most of the conversation is related to nations, not all the social justice emotionalism that we witness in media. FASKIANOS: Angela, give us your affiliation? Q: Yes. Professor at Georgia Military College.  FASKIANOS: Thank you so much. TELHAMI: So let me answer that a bit. I use the term “social justice” because that’s what we traced, meaning that if you look at—particularly during the Trump years when we have a value divide in America, obviously. I mean, it’s not just a partisan divide. And much of it, particularly the things that animated young Democrats, have been issues of justice, you’re right, in a global justice, international law, rule of law, but also social justice, because the issues that have animated much of the conversation had to do with Black Lives Matter, anti-Hispanic sentiments that was seen to have come together with the Trump presidency. And we were focused more on domestic issues because that was what the fight was. And it was wrapped into this worldview that brought people into other issues as well. But you’re right. It’s justice more broadly. But since you raised the Evangelical issue, I do have a lot of polling among Evangelicals. So I’m actually writing a book on Evangelicals. I’ve been doing this for a number of years. In fact, I started it in 2015, doing a lot of polling among Evangelicals related to our politics, and particularly their interest in the Middle East. And, clearly, Evangelicals have been perhaps the most supportive constituency in America of a right-wing Israel, meaning an Israel that wants to claim ownership with the West Bank. Evangelical leaders have been very much behind that. And we see them supportive of Israeli policies and Israeli government attitudes over time. But what is interesting is that while this is predicated on some biblical interpretation—what is Israel, or support for Israel—as I have found in interviewing many of the Evangelical leaders, they say their support for Israel is really coming not so much out of their interpretation of the Bible as much as it is about being socialized into a political process in which they have come to certain strategic conclusions. So what happened among the grassroots Evangelicals is that in the polling that have been done over the past five years, including our own but also scholars in the University of North Carolina, what we found is actually support for Israel is diminishing among young Evangelicals. And we have anecdotal evidence that that’s principally because increasingly also young Evangelicals see the Israeli-Palestinian issue through a prism of justice, whether you want to call it social justice or another prism of justice. But there is increasing evidence. I’ve written about that. I have a couple of articles about it. You’re welcome to see it. It’s also posted online and then other scholars have written about it. But there is a shift taking place among young Evangelicals, that seems to be justice connected, that is moving them toward more evenhandedness on Israel-Palestine. FASKIANOS: Thank you. I’m taking the next question from Kathy Long Holland, who gets a number of upvotes. She’s an auditor and faculty member at Portland State University: Why do you think Biden did not take a more neutral stance from the beginning? TELHAMI: Well, this is really an interesting question, honestly. And we now know quite a few things. I have—the president himself has been, of course, pro-Israel. He considered himself—in fact, he called himself a Zionist, including while visiting Israel this time, but over the years he called himself a Zionist. He has been— whether this is being socialized into a political system where support for Israel was kind of automatic if you were a member of Congress—he spent so many years in the Senate and obviously was attuned to the political environment— or whether he has his own belief system, is hard to know.   I happen to have interacted with him when he was a senator and testified before his committee, had conversations with him on Israel-Palestine. Had one conversation with him about this issue when he was vice president. I knew where he stood. But he still surprised me quite a bit. And so it has led to a lot of reinterpretation of where his position comes from and including people who are looking back to see his posture in 1982 during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. I went through—a couple of articles led me to some material related to his posture when Israel was invading Lebanon in 1982, when he thought Israel was justified to even do more damage to civilians at that time, when everybody was criticizing what they thought was overreaction by Israel or affecting civilian casualties more than was warranted. He seemed to say, I’m fine with that, and people have been referring to that now. The New York Times has an article now, I think it may even be today, about how the president himself had disagreed with Biden back in 2014 when—with Obama, sorry. When President Obama in 2014, when there was a Gaza war and Obama wanted to be publicly critical when the Israelis were attacking in a way that led to many civilian casualties. That Biden disagreed with him. Biden said, you shouldn’t do that. We should embrace Israel. And that will give us more leverage with Israel. We should hug them and not criticize them publicly. So he talked about it as if it were a tactic. So he had, obviously—I’m also finishing up another co-authored book on Biden, Trump, and Obama presidencies. And in our interviews with Obama officials, we discovered a number of areas in which on this issue there was disagreement between Biden and Obama, and Obama supporters. So we don’t really know exactly what is driving him personally, because we do know that it was a rather unique position that he was the one who was leading this kind of embrace of Israel. We know there’s been division within the State Department, people who are critical. I’ve spoken to many of the officials who are privately not pleased with the way this has gone. Been a lot of public writing about disagreements within the White House. The State Department, the initial instinct was let’s deescalate and let’s have a ceasefire. Then information came from the White House, no, that’s not what we’re going to call for. We’re going to support them for the purpose of destroying Hamas. And I don’t think the president fully understood, separate from how this is going to play internationally—it’s not playing well, by the way. As one official said, we are taking a lot of water over Israel right now internationally. No question about it. But I don’t think he realized how much more damage it would do domestically. There are a lot of members of Congress, Democratic members, who are very angry with him, who don’t support his policy, who are not going to go out and publicly criticize him in a very strong way because he is a Democratic president who is in an election year, and they don’t want to weaken him further. So they’re kind of being quiet. But the polling is shaking them up. And I think you can see a little bit of change in the discourse in the past couple weeks. I think this chapter hasn’t been written about why the president took a decision very early on to embrace, almost a blank check, for the Israeli operations in Gaza in a way that has generated devastating results, for an aim that is probably not achievable—whatever that means, destroying Hamas—in a way that impacts U.S. national security interests. This is not just about supporting Israel. There are huge American interests at stake. One is blowback. A lot of people in the Arab and Muslim world are watching this. They can’t believe this is—they blame America more than Israel over this. I happen to think this is a paradigm-forming moment. I don’t think this is a temporary anger. I think a whole generation of Arabs and Muslims are now going to have this picture in mind, what happened in Gaza in 2023. And they’re going to blame the United States for it. There’s obviously a risk of escalation. We’re already seeing some of it, in terms of attacking American forces in Iraq and Syria, and elsewhere. There’s a chance of escalation to draw the U.S. into a war with Iran, if there is an ultimate escalation that that brings Iran and Hezbollah into the fight. And yet, there has not been—from day one—an interagency process about what choice we should make and what are the implications—what the implications are for U.S. interests if, in fact, we took that particular course. There is no evidence there was any kind of interagency process the president initiated, or military strategizing before he sent two carrier groups to the Middle East, that obviously he thought of them as a deterrent to Iran or Hezbollah. Maybe they served that purpose, but also they were escalatory in in various ways. There was no apparent consideration of this. Instead, he went to Israel. Sure, he needed to support the Israelis. The Israelis came under a horrific attack on October 7. They felt vulnerable. The U.S. is a supporter. That was the right thing to do for president, to go and say, look, we’re with you at your moment of pain. We will support you. We will not allow somebody to destroy you. But that’s different from saying we’re going to give you a blank check to define what is your self-interest. Every state has the right to self-interest, but no state has a right to define alone what action constitutes self-interest. And we do know that this Israeli government—sure, a lot of them want just self-defense, and they want security. But many of them want a lot more. This is an extremist government. And many of the objectives of the ministers in that government do not coincide with interest in the United States, whether they’re—some of them want to expel the Palestinians from Gaza, ethnic cleansing. Some of them, including the prime minister, have been known in the past to want to draw the U.S. into a war with Iran. And so the interest, sure—the overlap, at some point, you want to support self-defense. But you don’t want to give a carte blanche in a way that undermines your interests. And the president has—we don’t really know what process he undertook to reach this conclusion. I think this chapter has not been written yet. And I think there will be a lot of things that we—certainly there are a lot of things we don’t know about Biden personally. But we don’t also know a lot of things about how these decisions were made. FASKIANOS: There has been a lot of talk in the media about President Biden putting pressure on the ceasefire, in order to have the hostages released. Have you done any polling on that? Like, has the—is he getting some credit for his role in that—those discussions to release hostages? TELHAMI: We haven’t done any polling on that. I probably will when I do my next poll. But here’s my instinct. My instinct is, no, he’s not getting credit for it, except among those who already support him. This is a talking point, not an opinion shifting point. Because the people who bought into the paradigm of criticism are looking at the destruction that’s already been done. And part of the narrative is this offer of hostage exchange was on the table much earlier. Hamas had referred to an exchange early on. The question is, of course, whether it could have been done. I mean, obviously, but nobody had tried it. So whether you needed the kind of destruction that already happened—and, again, let’s talk about magnitude here, OK?  We are talking about more than 15,000 people killed, thousands of children. Most of the 15,000 are children and women. We are talking about 80 percent of the population rendered homeless. We are talking about destruction, according to the U.N., of up to 50 percent of the structures. So damage or destruction. We’re talking about the dropping of bombs over Gaza that are equivalent to more than two nuclear devices, on a very small population over a period of a month and a half. So we’re talking about an enormous amount of devastation. That’s what’s registering, not what you might get out of it now. And, by the way, you have prisoner exchanges. It’s a good thing. It’s necessary. Hamas taking hostages was a war crime. You do not—especially civilian children and woman. I mean, that is an awful thing and needed, obviously, to be addressed. And they need to all come back home to their loved ones. But the Israelis have also taken prisoners in the West Bank, obviously not in the same way. But nonetheless, if you look, for example, at the prisoner exchanges, you’re talking about for—you might end up with maybe a hundred Israelis—150 Israelis released. I hope all are released. In exchange for maybe three times as many Palestinians. But there are 7,000 Palestinians held by Israel under occupation. And just since the war started on October 7, the Israelis are said to have arrested 3,000 people, just since October 7. Three thousand people in operations in the West Bank. Most of them are said to be under administrative detention, meaning they’re not facing any charges.  So this is a—obviously, the exchanges are important. Even a single one coming home is important. But I don’t think those people who are assessing Biden policy are going to reward him for the outcome so far. They might, if there’s some other huge deal coming out that we don’t know about. But for now, I don’t think so. That’s my assessment. Obviously, I could be wrong. Sometimes I’m surprised when I do a poll, and I’m making an assumption, and it turns out I’m wrong. And that does happen—though, not frequently, I must say. FASKIANOS: I was just going to say, I don’t think it’s that frequent. (Laughter.) I’m going to go next to Monica Byrne, who’s an undergraduate student at Bard College, and really focusing on the campus: This conflict has comment from every corner, even those with only a glancing acquaintance of the history or the complexities involved. Right now, especially on campuses the conversation is a binary one, you’re either for Palestine or for Israel with no nuance or understanding. How can we raise the level of dialogue and amplify more diverse voices who are interested in solutions? TELHAMI: Yeah. I really appreciate that. I mean, my initial reaction when this—I started speaking out very early, as you can imagine, talking all over the country at various academic institutions and the media on this issue. And my take, I look at it, obviously, as somebody who’s been studying this issue for decades. And I’m also a student of war, broadly. And what I have put out there is that, look, I mean, we do know that wars harden the hearts and they fog the minds.  And so—and it doesn’t matter who it is. It’s not just the Israelis and the Palestinians. You know, when you have family members, or relatives, or loved ones who were killed in an awful way and you feel helpless, and it comes as a surprise and you feel vulnerable, many of us have come under these kinds of situations, you want to lash out. You want to—you start demonizing the other. You start seeing every signal from the other as something—they’re all alike. They all want to kill us. They all want to do this. And it happens on both sides, and they both have a long history that leads to demonization. And so that’s why—one reason I’ve been critical of Biden administration. That’s because when you are in the middle of something like that, and you know the urge for vengeance—and, yes, everybody wants self-defense. But you know that the urge goes well beyond self-defense, even under the best of circumstances. And these are not the best of circumstances, with leaders whose aims go well beyond self-defense. And we know that. That’s where you need a better conversation outside. That’s why you need international leaders to speak out with a moral authority. That’s why you need restraint, handholding, yes. Empathy is important. Empathy is part of what is needed in times of pain, for sure. But what you need is empathy for both sides. What you need is also a bit of restraint. What you need is create an environment that allows for more clarity than is allowed typically by the hardened hearts that you face. And we need to do that in academic institutions. We need to do that in every arena that we have. And we haven’t seen that. We haven’t seen that. The president, I think, supported the Israelis. It worked for him, in the sense that Israelis really, really like him now. He could even get elected if he were running for prime minister of Israel. But he did it in a way where he failed to express even minimum empathy with—even in the face of horrific Palestinian casualties—in a way that lost him a whole generation of people. And now, nothing he will say will be trusted by the people on the other side. It’s not as if he can put a plan on the table. They’re going to say, are you kidding me? You’re the one who allowed this. You’re going to—because they blame him for enabling what transpired. So, yes, we need space. We need it in academic institutions, particularly. We need it in the public discourse. We need it in the media. But the signals come from our leaders. And that’s why I think—the fact that the president is the highest authority in giving signals. I happen to think that his discourse initially dehumanized Palestinians, even though he was warning from day one Hamas is not Palestinians, don’t take it out on Palestinians, don’t take it out on Muslims, don’t take it out on Arabs. He was saying that, to his credit. But what people are hearing through the signals when he’s condoning the kind of mass destruction and killing that’s taken place, and in his news conference even dismissing it, saying, well, this is what happens in war, rather than saying I feel for them, initially. Or even challenging the numbers when, in fact, his own officials were saying they’re probably even higher than Hamas is revealing. And so that is dehumanizing. And that kind of dehumanization, we do know there’s rising antisemitism, for sure. We’ve seen it, as a result of this as well. But there’s been a rise, with the three students who were just shot in Vermont—Palestinian Americans who were shot in Vermont in an apparent hate crime. And so I think the dehumanization that has come out probably has more impact than the verbal saying, oh, don’t take it out on these people. And so that’s why I think, yes, it is important to set a different tone in our discourse than we have set for ourselves. FASKIANOS: Thank you. I’m going to take the next spoken question from Ashley De Oliveria. If you can unmute. There you go. And tell us what your affiliation is. Q: I’m about to start graduate school at Florida International University in cybersecurity technology policy. And my question is related to the cyberattacks that I have found in my own research that are currently going on. Immediately after October 7, after the Hamas attack, there were cyber disinformation attacks by—suspected to be from Russia, China, and Iran, by foreign actors on social media, which we’re seeing across Twitter, Facebook, TikTok. And don’t you think that there could be a correlation possibly between the sharp inapproval (sic) and drastic shift in public opinion, especially, again, to younger people who are the biggest consumers of social media, corresponding to the polls you referenced, which you said showed a decrease in Israel support within a week after the beginning of the war, and then I believe you said another poll, which showed a gradual increase for the support of Muslims and on their—on that side of the dispute over the course of the conflict?  So are you considering that a lot of what we’re seeing is the result of both long-term and short-term foreign policy—or, short-term foreign influence of cyber disinformation campaigns across social media? Because especially in TikTok, I think there’s been, really—the algorithms have shown a sharp increase in what they are putting out. And the younger people are the ones who don’t seem to have a grasp of the—a lot of the history coming from the beginning of this situation and the influences also that fascism has on the dispute at the origins of this. Because it just goes back a long way. And I feel like there’s a drastic misunderstanding of some of the history. And I feel like this is really being amplified right now by social media in a big way. So I would like to know if you consider that an influence on the situation. TELHAMI: Sure. FASKIANOS: Thanks, Ashley. TELHAMI: So let me just give you a kind of—a bit of a take on this. I mean, obviously, I don’t know the exact— the question that you said about particular cyberattacks or state-sponsored manipulation of social media, which, of course, exists. I worry about it tremendously. As you know, we worried about it here in the election campaign because of what we thought was Russian influence early on in the campaigns during the Trump era in the previous election. We still worry about it now. I actually held a conversation about it at Maryland with General Hayden a couple of years ago, with the head of the NSA and CIA, as well as Dana Priest of the Washington Post, and my colleague at Maryland. So I certainly take that seriously, and I worry about it now with the introduction of AI as another factor that we all are worried about in terms of impacting the social media. I want to say that everybody’s doing it, right? So the Israelis are doing their own, right? So this is a media war. This is an information war. So everybody is—we know that we have bots, we have all kinds of attempts at creating the narrative on the social media. Which one is working? Which one is not? It’s hard to tell.  My instinct, though, on the shifts that have happened related to Israel-Palestine in recent months, is probably not a function of—or, not mostly a function of direct manipulation by particular players, like China or Iran. Why do I say that? Because it’s just consistent with the trends that we have seen about sort of the basis of the information they have and why they attribute certain—why they hold certain views, what are the issues that matter to them, and what is their value system that leads them to take a particular position? So I don’t find it at all surprising that we see what we see in the trends. It’s exactly what I would have expected, with or without any attempt at manipulation of social media. But, of course, I don’t know. I mean, as I said, we’re in a game where these factors are increasingly important. None of us know exactly how important. And we need to study more rigorously. FASKIANOS: I’m going to take the next question from Steven Shinkel, who is a military professor of national security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College. It has five upvotes: Do you have any insights on the feeling about Hamas being allowed to stay in power or perceptions about Palestinian control of Gaza without Hamas? TELHAMI: Well, let’s put it this way: There was—when I talked to the Biden administration people from day one, both in the White House and the State Department. I’m not going to talk about—at a pretty high level. Let’s put it that way. And clearly, one of the views that they had was, let’s tell people—the Palestinians, and the Arabs, and Muslims, we’re really only against Hamas. And Hamas is responsible for your misery. And Hamas is responsible for what the Israelis are doing. And so blame Hamas. Don’t blame the Israelis. Don’t blame the U.S. And I thought from day one that is just a naïve approach. It’s just like telling the Israelis, blame your government for the occupation. Don’t blame Hamas for attacking you, and don’t go after Hamas. I mean, nobody’s going to buy that. Even people who hate their government, they rally behind the flag. They feel for the—they will go after the people who actually fired the shots and people who actually carried out them. And they see that as their priority. They think they have another battle to be had. Like many of the liberals say: We need to fight this fight against Hamas now, and then we’ll go on and maybe revisit the issue about who’s responsible among us for this or that. You see the same thing among the Palestinians. So among Palestinians, there is no doubt—whether it’s in Gaza, in the West Bank, in the Arab world, the Muslim world. The blame is principally going to Israel and going to the U.S., and not to Hamas, even among people who don’t want Hamas, don’t like Hamas ideologically. People who are secular, people who don’t want to anything to do with it. So the idea that you create this separation, particularly, of power, who’s not trusted to begin with, that they’re going to listen to you and your pitch on this is naïve. And I put it that way to high-level officials in the U.S., naïve. I used even the term “naïve” for doing that. Now, what might happen afterwards? I have never believed that the idea, quote, of “destroying Hamas” was an idea that was coherent, because I don’t really know what that means, honestly. I mean, if you mean destroying their infrastructure, and destroying most of the weapons, killing most of their leaders, it’s probably achievable but at the cost of destroying Gaza, all of Gaza. Maybe a couple of hundred thousand casualties, and everybody’s displaced, and maybe becoming refugees. A) That’s a war crime. B) It’s totally immoral, aside from whether it’s a war crime or not. And, three, it generates far more not just misery, but a huge political problem. Because for every Hamas member you’re killing, you’re generating twenty others whose families have been destroyed, and you’re planting the seeds of more violence down the road. So it’s a crazy idea. It just has no meaning whatsoever. And in any case, it’s not just in Gaza. Hamas has supporters in the West Bank. They are in Lebanon. And whether or not it’s that particular organization, that organization emerged in a vacuum, in part because of the weakening of the PLO, which was the principle Palestinian representative organization. And it was encouraged initially by Israel, who wanted and saw the PLO as the main threat to Israel and wanted to weaken it. So they allowed Muslim Brotherhood to rise and create something like Hamas. Obviously, not exactly anticipating the same outcomes. And in recent years, as the Israeli press has been full of stories, the Netanyahu government has kind of had—was happy to have Hamas—of course, not expecting the kind of attack they carried out on October 7—as something they can scare people with, as something that is a barrier to having a two-state solution, which obviously the government doesn’t want. So it’s much more complicated than we think. And I think that’s why, to me, when the president embraced the idea that Hamas must be destroyed, I didn’t think that was a coherent idea that was vetted through the system. And it needed to be vetted through the system. And it has consequences, because if you carry it through, all the way through until they really are destroyed, you’re going to have the devastation that we’ve seen, and more. And, of course, it could draw Hezbollah, it could draw Iran, could draw us into the fight. And so I am very concerned about this posture. FASKIANOS: Well, with that, we are at the end of our time. I am sorry that we had so many questions and raised hands that we could not get to them all. But sadly this issue is not going away, and we will need to continue to have discussions on it. Shibley Telhami, thank you so much for everything that you—all the work that you have done. We will send out a link to the website—to this discussion and transcript, as well as links to some of the polls and other writings that Dr. Telhami has done. Is the correct URL for your polls CriticalIssues.UMD.edu? TELHAMI: Yes. And also Sadat.UMD.edu, both. FASKIANOS: Both. So you can go there for a full listing of all the polls. And I encourage you to do that, as well as follow Dr. Telhami on X, the app formerly known as Twitter, at @ShibleyTelhami. And so I hope you will do that as well. We just announced the winter/spring Academic Webinar lineup in the November issue of the CFR bulletin. So if you’ve not already subscribed, you can sign up by emailing us at [email protected].  I also encourage you to learn about CFR paid internships for students and fellowships for professors at CFR.org/Careers. And you will see there the international affairs fellowship that was referenced at the top. And please do follow us at @CFR_academic and visit CFR.org, ForeignAffairs.com, and ThinkGlobalHealth.org for research and analysis on global issues. Again, thank you for this conversation. Shibley, we really appreciated it. And, to all of you, good luck with your finals and the end of semester work. And we look forward to reconvening in 2024. (END)  
  • South Korea
    Evaluating Extended Deterrence at the U.S.-South Korea Summit
    The Washington Declaration offers concrete and visible U.S. efforts to reinforce its extended deterrence commitment to South Korea, but the media response to its implications has been mixed. 
  • South Korea
    Beyond U.S. Credibility Concerns: Factors Driving the Nuclear Weapons Debate in South Korea
    The public debate in South Korea over nuclear weapons reflects South Korean desires to have greater agency over their own security, shaped by factors beyond concerns over U.S. credibility.

Experts in this Topic

Elise Labott
Elise Labott

Edward R. Murrow Press Fellow

James M. Lindsay
James M. Lindsay

Mary and David Boies Distinguished Senior Fellow in U.S. Foreign Policy and Director of Fellowship Affairs

Christopher M. Tuttle
Christopher M. Tuttle

Senior Fellow; Managing Director; Secretary of the Corporation

  • North Korea
    Can U.S. And South Korean Public Opinion Align On North Korea?
    U.S and South Korean polling on North Korea show strong support for denuclearization negotiations and summitry. How will growing consensus in public opinion impact U.S.-South Korea policy coordination toward North Korea? 
  • United States
    The U.S. War in Afghanistan Twenty Years On: Public Opinion Then and Now
    Two decades after the start of Operation Enduring Freedom, Americans view the war very differently.
  • Polls and Public Opinion
    Term Member Discussion on the Future of the Arab World: Youth Perceptions Looking Ahead
    Play
    Panelists discuss the 12th Annual Arab Youth Survey and the public opinion trends among Arab youth, including religion, perceptions of economic opportunities, and post-COVID-19 governance.  
  • Tanzania
    Magufuli is Transforming Tanzania's Ruling Party From a “Benign Hegemon” Into a Malevolent One
    Nolan Quinn is a research associate for the Council on Foreign Relations’ Africa Program. Prior to working for the Council, he lived in Tanzania, returning in March 2020. Tanzania’s Chama cha Mapinduzi (CCM) is the longest-serving ruling party in Africa, having held power since independence in 1961. CCM has previously been dubbed a benign hegemon, winning elections largely—but not entirely—on merit since the advent of multiparty politics in 1992. On October 28, Tanzania will choose a president and members of the country’s National Assembly. This year, few observers expect a fair vote, given incumbent President John Magufuli and his government’s weaponization of the law in the lead-up to the elections. This march towards authoritarianism appears a stark shift for a country that has been lauded for its traditions of political stability and democratic transfers of power. CCM’s dominance has roots in Tanzania’s postcolonial nation-building. Julius Nyerere, the revered first president of Tanzania, believed African political parties, formed in response to colonial occupation as opposed to internal issues, were fundamentally different [PDF] than those in the West. He saw one-party systems, representing the aspirations of an entire nation, as more democratic than multiparty systems, which he argued were prone to factionalism. Ruling party officials, meanwhile, said a one-party system would better align with traditional African forms of governance, which value consensus over competition. Nyerere, to his credit, exhibited flexibility in his commitment to one-party rule. Before departing his role as CCM chairman in 1990, he encouraged a national debate on pluralism. Yet the commission created to explore the issue found that 77 percent of Tanzanians supported [PDF] a continuation of one-party rule, with many citizens expressing concerns that multiparty politics would bring instability. (The commission attracted genuine popular interest, though questions were raised about whether it was truly representative.) In 1992 the constitutional ban on new party registrations was lifted—but CCM has continued to win elections. Polling data by Afrobarometer suggests that Nyerere’s one-party doctrine has had a lasting effect on how Tanzanians view democracy. In 2005, the final year of Benjamin Mkapa’s presidency, only 44 percent [PDF] of mainland Tanzanians disapproved of one-party rule. Disapproval of one-man and military rule, on the other hand, never fell below 82 percent and 79 percent, respectively, in the seven polls conducted since 2001. And in 2017, 50 percent of respondents said [PDF] they trust CCM “a lot,” a far higher figure than for opposition political parties (19 percent) and traditional leaders (20 percent). Tanzanians’ growing resistance to the ruling class appears, in the context of CCM’s enduring popularity, exceptional. However, pushback at present should be seen primarily as a rejection of Magufuli and his quest for one-man rule rather than CCM’s post-liberation ideology. Indeed, many members of the public have called upon the CCM Elders, a group of twenty-one Tanzanian and Zanzibari former presidents and prime ministers, and other prominent party figures to push for a national dialogue that will halt the rapid erosion of the country’s good-government and democratic norms. While the Elders' formal powers within CCM have diminished in the last fifteen years, their opinions continue to hold unique weight across the political spectrum. If, as seems likely, Magufuli wins (or successfully steals) this month’s election, the lead-up to 2025 will be critical. The president has said he will “respect the constitution” with regard to term limits, but the speaker of parliament has reportedly indicated he will seek to scrap presidential term limits after the election. This could bring latent intra-party tensions to the surface. Magufuli was originally a compromise candidate [PDF] without strong backing from any CCM faction, and rumors have emerged throughout his presidency that other party members want him gone. Resistance from within CCM—by members of parliament, the Elders, and other party bigwigs—would probably offer the best chance at rebuffing a third-term bid, given the party’s control of the electoral machinery. On several occasions, such as when President Mkapa helped end electoral violence in Kenya and when CCM advanced [PDF] democratic means of conflict resolution in South Sudan, Tanzania’s ruling party has shown its ability and desire to steer African states toward the better angels of their nature. Under Magufuli, CCM is unrecognizable, using violence and intimidation to maintain control. What the party needs now is to rediscover its moral compass and reverse its slide into authoritarianism. Learn more about John Campbell's upcoming book, Nigeria and the Nation-State: Rethinking Diplomacy with the Postcolonial World, out in early December 2020.
  • Election 2020
    Campaign Foreign Policy Roundup: How Americans See the World
    Each Friday, I look at what the presidential contenders are saying about foreign policy. This week: Democrats and Republicans see foreign policy very differently.
  • Bangladesh
    One Year After a Contentious Election, Bangladeshis are Satisfied With the Country’s Direction
    Geoffrey Macdonald is resident program director for Bangladesh and Vivek Shivaram is program officer for South Asia at the International Republican Institute. !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}})}(); Around Dhaka, fresh candidate posters line city streets and commandeered rickshaws cruise neighborhoods with loudspeakers blaring political slogans. Dhaka’s municipal elections will be held on February 1—marking the largest scale election in Bangladesh since the Awami League (AL) and its leader Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina won a third five-year term in an election marred by claims of fraud in December 2018. In the aftermath of the 2018 general election, the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) boycotted local elections, alleging they would be rigged against them. But the BNP is back on the campaign trail. Despite fears of electoral manipulation, the Dhaka municipal election presents yet another showdown between the AL and BNP in Bangladesh’s political and population center. The AL enters 2020 buoyed by strong economic and development achievements, but dogged by corruption, student wing violence, rising inequality, and persistent critiques of its democratic record. According to the new public opinion survey of Bangladeshis conducted by the International Republican Institute (IRI) in August and September 2019, positivity about the government and country has rebounded since IRI’s May 2018 survey, but an undercurrent of frustration remains. If key domestic issues continue to go unaddressed, the government may find it difficult to maintain its current levels of support. Development and Growth Drive Optimism, Government Support Improvements in development and the economy have driven public optimism in Bangladesh. From 2018 to 2019, the belief that Bangladesh is heading in the right direction rose 14 percentage points to 76 percent, its highest level in the last seven years of IRI’s polling. Large majorities of the public positively rate the economy, security, and political stability and 54 percent believe the economy will improve over the next year. Bangladeshis praised the government’s performance on a wide range of issues, such as providing education and electricity and fighting extremism. In the last year, approval for the Awami League-led national government rose 19 percentage points to 83 percent. Political and Governance Concerns Continue In the wake of the controversial December 2018 election, significant portions of the public remain disillusioned with the state of politics and political competition. Three-quarters say the gap between political elites and citizens is growing and roughly half say they are fearful to express political opinions in public. Seventy percent say the Awami League, whose governing coalition holds over 95 percent of the elected seats in Parliament, should include other political parties in its decision-making process. The top-rated concerns among Bangladeshis are corruption, drug abuse, and unemployment, issues on which the government gets its lowest performance marks. Three-quarters of the public say income inequality is rising. Corruption has “a lot” or “some” impact on 31 percent of Bangladeshis’ lives, and a plurality (19 percent) say corruption is the single most important problem facing the country. The Awami League has recently tried to allay public concerns with a high-profile crackdown on corruption. Amid violent campus politics, Bangladeshi youth appear disillusioned with formal politics. Over 70 percent of youth respondents say they are unlikely to run for office and over 80 percent have never contacted an elected official, signed a petition, or engaged in other forms of democratic activism. In a country governed almost exclusively by female leaders since 1991, 56 percent prefer male candidates to female candidates, all other things being equal. But there is a stark gender divide in the results: a plurality of women would prefer a female candidate, whereas 72 percent of men would prefer a male candidate. International and Transnational Issues Bangladeshis are deeply concerned about the Rohingya refugee crisis. In 2017, approximately 750,000 Rohingya refugees fled to Bangladesh from Myanmar amid a military crackdown. The refugees settled in over thirty camps along the Bangladesh-Myanmar border and have benefited from an enormous Bangladeshi and international relief effort. Initially supportive of their co-religionists from Myanmar, Bangladeshis are clearly frustrated by the strain and instability created by the camps. Only 37 percent rate the government’s handling of the refugee crisis positively. Recent studies show the refugee population has disrupted medical care, reduced wages and job opportunities, and increased social tension in the areas around the camps. In an era of rising great power competition in South Asia, Bangladeshis are split between the major players in the region. Asked about the impact of India, China, and the United States on Bangladesh, a small majority say India has a positive effect (52 percent), with China (47 percent) and the United States (42 percent) trailing slightly behind. However, this survey was fielded mostly before recent controversies in Bangladesh around India’s Citizenship Amendment Act (which accuses Bangladesh of persecuting religious minorities, a charge that rankles Dhaka, and provides fast-track naturalization for six religions but excludes Muslims), and the National Register of Citizens in Assam (in which people unable to prove Indian citizenship could potentially be rendered stateless and deported to Bangladesh, which could further inflame anti-migrant sentiment there). The Awami League-led government, which is closely aligned with India, initially said these issues were India’s “internal matters” but Prime Minister Hasina recently called the citizenship act “unnecessary.” Anti-Indian protest movements have sprouted in Bangladesh and unprovoked violence against Bangladeshi citizens along the India-Bangladesh border has risen recently. There is good reason to believe public sentiment toward India could be shifting. Renewed Confidence, Persistent Challenges IRI’s survey shows Bangladeshis have renewed confidence in the country’s economic and development outlook and the government’s performance on some kitchen table issues. Yet problems of corruption, inequality, and dysfunctional political competition persist, and the Rohingya refugee crisis shows no signs of abatement. The BNP is pressing these issues on the campaign trail in Dhaka, with the hopes of winning back power in the nation’s capital. If the country’s challenges go unsolved, it could wear on the Awami League’s favorable standing nationally over the course of its third term.
  • South Korea
    South Koreans and Americans Agree on How to Deal With China
    South Koreans and Americans strongly support the U.S.-South Korea security alliance as a hedge against China’s rise.
  • Election 2020
    Meet Steve Bullock, Democratic Presidential Candidate
    Update: Steve Bullock announced on December 2, 2019, that he was dropping out of the race.  Can one of the last candidates to enter the 2020 race be the last one standing? Steve Bullock certainly hopes so. The Montana governor waited until after twenty-one other Democrats had declared for the presidency before throwing his hat in the ring. His late start is one of the reasons he didn’t qualify for the first round of Democratic debates. But while Bullock doesn’t qualify as the proverbial early bird, his candidacy is unique: he is the only one of the Democratic candidates to have won a state-wide race in a state that Donald Trump won in 2016. Bullock’s challenge, though, is that his home state of Montana ranks forty-fourth in the country in terms of population, with slightly less than 1.1 million people. That’s a half million fewer people than live in Manhattan. If Bullock does pull off his longshot bid, he will not just be the first president from Montana. He will be the first president from any of the states in the Rocky Mountain West. The Basics Name: Stephen Clark Bullock Date of Birth: April 11, 1966 Place of Birth: Missoula, Montana Religion: Catholic Political Party: Democratic Party Marital Status: Married (Lisa Bullock) Children: Caroline (17) Alexandria (15), Cameron (12) Alma Mater: Claremont McKenna College (BA) and Columbia University (JD) Career: Governor of Montana (2013-present), Attorney General of Montana (2009-2013), lawyer, adjunct professor at George Washington University Law School Campaign Website: https://stevebullock.com/ Twitter Handle: @GovernorBullock Bullock’s story: Bullock grew up in Helena, Montana. His parents divorced when he was in elementary school, and he was raised by his mother. He was active in politics in high school — he was the student body president at Helena High, student representative on the Montana Board of Public Education, and the 1983 Youth Speaker of the House for the YMCA Youth and Government Program. He attended Claremont McKenna College, which is located thirty miles east of Los Angeles. He studied politics, philosophy, and economics. He then ventured to the other coast to earn his law degree from Columbia University in 1994. Bullock joined a New York City law firm coming out of law school. But the appeal of Big Sky Country proved too strong. He returned home in 1996 to become chief legal counsel to Montana’s secretary of state. A year later, he joined Montana’s Department of Justice. He served first as assistant attorney general and then as acting chief deputy attorney general. Bullock lost a race for attorney general of Montana in 2000. He then spent time as an adjunct professor at George Washington University. He opened his own law practice back in Helena in 2004. He was elected attorney general of Montana in 2008. In 2012, he was elected governor of Montana. He won re-election easily in 2016, even though Donald Trump carried Montana in a landslide. Because Bullock is so popular in Montana, many Democrats want him to abandon his presidential bid in favor of a run against Montana’s incumbent Republican senator, Steve Daines, next year. Bullock has consistently said “no” to the idea. Bullock’s Announcement Bullock announced his bid for president on May 14 by releasing a video. Later that day, he held a kickoff event in a classroom at his old high school in Helena, Montana. In both instances, he stressed fighting the influence of money in politics, citing his own battle as attorney general of Montana and as governor of Montana against the consequences of the Supreme Court’s ruling in battle against Citizens United. In Bullock’s view, the United States must “defeat the corrupt system that lets campaign money drown out the people’s voice, so we can finally make good on the promise of a fair shot for everyone.” He also stressed how he succeeded in a red, pro-Trump state by bringing people together. He did not mention foreign policy in either the video or at the launch event. Bullock’s Message Bullock wants to get big money out of politics. As his website puts it: “If we can kick the Koch Brothers and foreign donors out of Montana, we can do the same thing all across our nation.” Steps he said he would take as president on this score include an executive order to “crack down on dark money,” a ban on super PACs, and a push to spur a movement to overturn Citizens United. Bullock’s Foreign Policy Views Bullock hasn’t said much about foreign policy. Partly that reflects his career trajectory. Governors and state attorneys general seldom venture into the foreign policy thicket. But Bullock’s relative silence also reflects the fact that he hasn’t been asked much about the topic. As a late entrant into the presidential race, he failed to qualify for the first round of Democratic debates. He did make the debate stage during the second round, where he got perhaps ninety seconds to speak about foreign policy. He failed to qualify for the third debate earlier this month, and he’s unlikely to qualify for the October 15 debate. Like his fellow Democratic candidates, Bullock opposes Trump’s foreign policy. He says that America First has “turned into America Alone.” He goes as far as to say that the United States will be its own worst enemy if the “the level of divisiveness we have” continues. Bullock has called for a return to much closer cooperation with U.S. allies. To that end, he says: “My first trip [as president] would be assuring our allies that the trusted partner that they’ve had for four decades would continue to be their partner.” Bullock has joined with his Democratic rivals in arguing that the United States should stop supporting Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen. He has not followed his Democratic rivals, however, in committing to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan before the end of his first term. He only says he wants “our brave service members to come home as soon as possible.” Bullock has also declined to sign onto the pledge by Elizabeth Warren to never use a nuclear weapon unless another country does so first. He says he “wouldn’t want to take that [option] off of the table.” He does want to rejoin the Iran nuclear deal, even as he acknowledges its flaws. He attributes the Obama administration’s ability to strike the deal to its willingness to cooperate with U.S. allies. As president, he says he would work with European allies to denuclearize Iran and stabilize the region so that it no longer lives under the “threat of nuclear conflict.” As for the other major proliferation challenge, Bullock proposes to “work to ensure that North Korea provides more than hollow promises but demonstrates real progress towards denuclearization.” One issue on which Bullock would exercise U.S. leadership is climate changeHe says he would rejoin the Paris Agreement on his first day in office, which he believes will make the United States “better positioned to influence other nations in the fight against climate change.” He emphasizes the importance of working with multilateral organizations, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, to move all countries toward carbon-neutrality by 2050. Bullock also says he would ensure that the departments of Commerce, Energy, and State, as well as the Export-Import Bank, take on a global role to help countries “to consider and adopt U.S.-engineered carbon-free energy technologies.” Like most of the other Democratic candidates, Bullock says he would not have the United States rejoin the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) as it is currently written. He says he intends to sign only free trade agreements that guarantee high labor standards, “leverage improved environmental conservation,” and prioritize American workers. But he also says that a reworked TPP could be part of a strategy to push back against China, which he calls a “tremendous economic threat.” He also says that the United States should stand up to China’s human rights abuses. Bullock agrees with the Trump administration’s policy of supporting Juan Guaidó as the president of Venezuela. He says that the United States should work with its allies to pressure the Maduro regime to work toward a democratic transition. More on Bullock Bullock hasn’t written the standard presidential campaign memoir. He did write an op-ed for the New York Times back in 2017 offering his fellow Democrats advice on how they can win in the Red State West. He suggested that they get outside their “Beltway bubble” and “take a more expansive view of the America that exists beyond the confines of the Eastern Seaboard.” In 2017, Politico Magazine called Bullock “one of the most popular governors in the country” but suggested he would be a longshot Democrat presidential candidate because he lives “in the heart of the 185th-largest media market in the country (out of 210)” and “55 percent of registered voters report never having heard of him.” The New Yorker sat with Bullock at a bar in Des Moines watching the third presidential debate on television as he admitted: “I’d rather be on the debate stage, but I don’t think being on the debate stage is going to define what the first week of February looks like.” Vox described Bullock’s campaign strategy for the 2020 election as “pragmatic progressivism.” The Atlantic asked Bullock why he is staying in the race when the odds are stacked against him and got a direct answer from the governor: “At least in the past, there’s been a premium for people that have actually had to run things and make government work.” Bullock appeared on the Daily Show earlier this month and explained what sets him apart from other presidential candidates in the race: “I am the only one in this field that won a Trump state.” The Washington Post talked to Bullock about the issue he has put forefront of his campaign—eliminating “dark money”—and concluded that he has “yet to find that pithy, relatable message” on campaign finance “that can elicit a visceral reaction among voters and cultivate a loyal following. Bullock answered fifteen questions from the New York Times. When he was asked where he would go on his first international trip as president, he answered “that could be as close as Canada, it could be down to Mexico. It could be over to Europe as well.” CFR asked Bullock twelve foreign policy questions. When asked to name America’s greatest foreign policy accomplishment since World War II, he said it was “the construction of the post-war liberal world order through our establishment of a system of alliances and institutions.” He said that biggest mistake the United States has made since World War II was the Iraq War because it was “started based on the naïve belief that the U.S. could overthrow a regime in the Middle East and democracy would naturally ensue.” Anna Shortridge assisted in the preparation of this post.
  • Election 2020
    Meet Tom Steyer, Democratic Presidential Candidate
    Update: Tom Steyer announced on February 29, 2020, that he was ending his campaign. Can lightning strike twice? Tom Steyer hopes that it does. Back in 2016, Donald Trump was a billionaire businessman with no government or military service who won a longshot race for the presidency by arguing that Washington doesn’t serve the people. Steyer, a billionaire businessman with no government or military service, hopes to win the 2020 presidential election by running a longshot campaign that argues that Washington doesn’t serve the people. If Steyer wins, he would be the first president from California since Ronald Reagan. The Basics: Name: Thomas Fahr Steyer Date of Birth: June 27, 1957 Place of Birth: New York City, New York Religion: NA Political Party: Democratic Party Marital Status: Married (Kathryn Taylor) Children: Henry, Tom, Gus, Evi, Sam Alma Mater: Yale University (BA); Stanford University (MBA) Career: Founder of Farallon Capital (hedge fund) and of the nonprofits NextGen America and Need to Impeach Campaign Website: https://www.tomsteyer.com Twitter Handle: @TomSteyer Steyer’s Announcement In January 2019, Steyer told the world that he wouldn’t run for president because he wanted to focus on his “Need to Impeach” initiative, which advocates for impeaching President Trump. Six months later Steyer changed course. He released a video on July 9 that announced he was running to combat corporate greed and climate change. “If you think that there’s something absolutely critical, try as hard as you can and let the chips fall where they may. And that’s exactly what I’m doing.” He did not mention foreign policy in his announcement video. Steyer’s Story Steyer was born and raised in New York City. His father was assistant to the chief prosecutor of the Nuremberg Trials and later became a successful New York lawyer. Steyer’s mother was a teacher and journalist. Steyer attended Philips Exeter Academy, the elite New Hampshire boarding school. He then went to Yale University, where he captained the soccer team. He graduated summa cum laude in 1979. (In case you are wondering, Steyer’s time at Yale overlapped with Amy Klobuchar’s; he was a senior when she was a first-year student.) He earned his MBA from Stanford University in 1983. Steyer started his business career on Wall Street. He worked at Morgan Stanley after graduating from Yale, and then at Goldman Sachs after finishing his Stanford MBA. He left Goldman in 1986 to start his own investment firm, Farallon Capital Management. It was a smart move. Farallon became a top hedge fund and made Steyer a billionaire. Steyer stepped down from Farallon in 2012 to pursue his new passion—environmental activism. In 2013, he founded the environmental advocacy group NextGen Climate and the NextGen Climate Action Committee, a PAC. Among other things, Steyer lobbied President Obama against approving the Keystone XL oil pipeline. Steyer has been willing to use his estimated $1.6 billion net worth to advance his favored causes. Back in 2013 he spent more than $30 million on a clean-energy referendum in California. He has also contributed generously to the Democratic Party, donating more than $100 million to support Democratic candidates in the 2018 midterms. Steyer’s national television campaign to persuade Congress to impeach Trump caught the president’s eye. Last October, Trump tweeted: “Wacky & totally unhinged Tom Steyer, who has been fighting me and my Make America Great Again agenda from beginning, never wins elections!” Steyer’s family responded by giving Steyer a T-shirt emblazoned with the phrase: “Wacky and totally unhinged.” Steyer’s Message Steyer’s platform focuses on combatting climate change and reforming the American political system through changes such as term limits for members of Congress and the repeal of Citizens United. He argues that Americans inherently have “Five Rights”: the right to vote, a clean environment, a full education, a living wage, and solid healthcare. Like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren Steyer argues that corporations wield a disproportionate influence on political decisions. He wants to restore political power to the people. As he put it in remarks to the New Hampshire Democratic Party Convention on September 7: There’s been a hostile corporate takeover of our democracy, and I’m determined to undo it–to restore government of, for, and by the people. Because I know if we break the corporate stranglehold on our democracy, we will get the progressive vision that everyone in this room wants. Sanders and Warren have criticized Steyer for using his wealth to gain the presidency. On the day Steyer announced his campaign, Sanders tweeted: “I am a bit tired of seeing billionaires trying to buy political power.” Warren tweeted much the same thing: “The Democratic primary should not be decided by billionaires.” Steyer calls Warren and Sanders “part of the establishment” and that only an “outsider” like himself can get things done: If we're going to reform this system, if we're going to break this corporate stranglehold, I believe it's going to take an outsider to do it. I believe it's going to take an outsider who's done it, successfully, for ten years, not somebody from inside the Beltway, but someone who's going to bring fresh energy to this problem. Steyer has pledged to spend at least $100 million of his own money on the campaign. To put that number in perspective, that is more than what the top five Democratic candidates combined raised in the second quarter this year. Steyer’s Foreign Policy Steyer hasn’t said much about foreign policy. One reason why is that he didn’t launch his campaign until after the first round of Democratic debates, and he didn’t qualify for either the second or third round of debates. So he didn’t have to answer the (relatively) few foreign policy questions that were asked of the candidates who did make the debate stage. Steyer has, however, qualified for the October 15 (or 16) debate. But Steyer also hasn’t volunteered much about his foreign policy views beyond his intention to make combatting climate change job number one. Nearly three months into his presidential run, his campaign website didn’t have a page devoted to foreign policy. He also hadn’t responded to the Washington Post’s survey on foreign policy or to the New York Times’s survey on presidential power. Steyer has called America First “so stupid that it almost beggars description” and “so darn dumb and so darn self-centered. The result, he argues, is that Trump has “turned allies into enemies” and created “an international leadership vacuum that Russia and China are eager to fill.” Steyer wants to work with “our traditional allies in a multilateral way because that’s the world we’re in.” Climate change is the one foreign policy issue that Steyer has addressed at length. He says that on his first day in office he “will declare the climate crisis a national emergency” and demand that Congress pass a Green New Deal. The plan he is advocating comes with an estimated price tag of $2.3 trillion. It aims to cut “fossil fuel pollution from all sectors in order to achieve a 100% clean energy economy and net-zero global warming pollution by no later than 2045.” The plan also proposes to establish a Civilian Climate Corps to create new jobs. Steyer would also reenter the Paris Agreement to ensure that the United States leads global efforts to combat climate change. He would also redouble the U.S. commitment to a host of other international climate agreements. More on Steyer The Atlantic interviewed Steyer about why he changed his mind about running for president and got this response: “I was watching how this [impeachment] campaign was going, and in my opinion, the overriding issue today is that the politics of our country, the government, has been taken over by corporate dollars. We have a broken government as a result of corruption from corporations. The solution to that, the only solution to that, is retaking the democracy and returning the power to the people.”  Vogue profiled Steyer last year and concluded that “impeachment is to Tom Steyer what ‘build a wall’ is to Donald Trump: an incendiary issue with potential both to stoke the base and to inflame its opposition.” The Los Angeles Times followed Steyer last October as he walked the campus of Cal State Fullerton trying to get students to vote, telling them: “You can change this world, or it can be run by a bunch of arrogant, entitled, rich white old men.” Forbes documented how Steyer accumulated his wealth, calling him “the first billionaire to officially challenge America’s first billionaire commander-in-chief for the presidency.” Vox sought to explain Steyer’s presidential campaign and concluded that “he is a noteworthy figure in the race for one main reason: He’s a billionaire.” The New York Times called Steyer “a virtual one-man ‘super PAC’ [who] is already upending the carefully laid strategies of Democratic rivals who must now grapple with the fact that they are unlikely to have the airwaves to themselves.” Steyer used his time on The View last month to press his argument that "the biggest question in America is the corporate takeover of our government. We have a government that can't get anything done. Because corporations have bought it." Earlier this month, the New Yorker followed Steyer on a campaign trip to Iowa City, where his uncle was a law professor for many years, and noted that unlike Trump, he lacks “an aggrieved constituency whose interests he appears to represent better than the other candidates. Another difference is that Steyer appeals more to optimism than to aggrievement.” When Steyer failed to make the cut to participate in the town hall that CNN held at the start of this month, he held his own “Climate Change Emergency Broadcast,” which lasted more than an hour. Anna Shortridge assisted in the preparation of this post.