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Foreign Policy Doesn’t Matter to Voters, But Competence Does
Why Signalgate is a big deal
It’s a truism in American politics that voters don’t care about foreign policy.
If this is true, it must be great news for Donald Trump, whose administration is currently embroiled in a foreign-policy scandal that I guess we’re calling “Signalgate.” I’m sure you know the details by now, but in case you’ve been under a rock, most of the Trump national security team seems to have planned airstrikes on Houthi targets in Yemen — discussing sensitive details like weapons and timing — over Signal, a widely available messaging app. Planning secret missions with life-and-death stakes over an insecure platform would have been bad enough, but the National Security Advisor, Mike Waltz, somehow added Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor of The Atlantic, to the group chat.
It’s interesting that this, of all the strange events in the early months of this administration, has captured the national imagination, especially since it centers on foreign policy. Why, it doesn’t even affect the price of eggs, which is apparently the only important metric of our national well-being!
In some ways, the response to Signalgate reflects the American disinterest in foreign policy. Nobody seems terribly interested in why American planes were bombing Yemen, whether it was justified, or who was killed. Nobody seems all that exercised that American planes were, without clear Congressional authorization, bombing nations that we’re not at war with. There’s not much outrage about the fact that the Houthis actually hadn’t attacked a ship since January, nor that many of the people killed were civilians, including children.
No, it’s a big scandal for other reasons. It has a little bit of everything:
- Rank hypocrisy from the guys who wanted to “lock up” Hillary Clinton over her breaches of email protocol;
- A clear attempt to weasel out of federal records laws (a pattern of Trump’s time in politics);
- Questions over Donald Trump’s engagement (there are several that he may not fully have understood the situation — did he even authorize these strikes?)
- The obviousness of the mistake (it’s pretty clear to the layperson why…
