ABSTRACT
The relationship between public opinion and the development of US foreign policy has always been a contested one. The very principle of public involvement in foreign policy has been hotly debated. On one side range the advocates of the elite control of foreign policy, those who argue that the complex work of international relations and the advancement of the long-stem strategy interest of the United States should not be subject to the whims, passions and unreasoned positions of the general public. Alexis de Tocqueville warned that democracy and a stable foreign policy were mutually exclusive terrains, asserting, “Foreign Politics demand scarcely any of those qualities which a democracy possesses.” De Tocqueville argued that democracies “obey the impulse of passion rather than the suggestions of prudence” and were driven to “abandon a mature design for the gratification of a momentary caprice.”1
The concern over the danger of allowing the unreasonable and overly emotional influence of public opinion on foreign relations has persisted well into the twentieth century. In his 1922 study on public opinion Walter Lippmann lambasted the influence of the public in foreign policy whilst diplomat/historian George Kennan sought to avoid the short-term “emotionalism and subjectivity” which made public opinion “a poor and inadequate guide for national action.”2 Set against this position are those who have sought to disprove the assumption of the over-emotional and unreasonable position of public opinion and have instead sought to define their position as “rational” and “sensible.”3
