Colucci on Americans’ desire for our country to lead

Lamont Colucci, associate professor and chair of politics and government and interim director of the Center for Politics and the People at Ripon College, wrote an opinion piece criticizing President Obama’s national security strategy that was published by U.S. News & World Report. Click here to read the full article.

Earlier this month, Colucci writes, Fox News, Anderson Robbins Research and Shaw and Company Research conducted a random sample poll of 1,011 registered voters in order to gauge the electorate’s attitude about President Barack Obama’s strength in foreign affairs and national security.

About specific issues concerning national security, Colucci writes that 53 percent of respondents felt that the United States is less safe after 9/11; 59 percent of feel that Obama has been a weak negotiator with foreign leaders; 57 percent believe that we are not aggressive enough when dealing with Iran; and 67 percent endorse military action against Iran, if it were the only way to keep them from having nuclear weapons.

“Overall, it seems clear that the trajectory of the electorate favors a conservative foreign policy where America is both prime mover and prime actor,” Colucci writes. “The citizenry wants a nationalistic leader that understands that the world is dangerous and full of duplicity, often couched in the language of diplomacy. It realizes that the Obama presidency’s attempt to be ‘anything but Bush’ has taken the country on an extremist path towards aimlessness.”

He adds, “Polls are mere snapshots of the mindset of a group at a given time. … The media have told us that the American people are tired of foreign intervention and aiding other people, and that the people want diplomacy at any cost. Neither of these is true, and has not been the case since the world has seen the rise of the Islamic State group, the imperial ambitions of Iran, Russian militarism and a newly aggressive China.”