Steven Schone

President Trump ran his 2016 campaign on the slogans “Make America Great Again” and “America First.” While the Trump administration’s actions have not always lived up to their stated ideals, the underlying message has resonated with both parties’ respective bases. Sen. Bernie Sanders has frequently called for an end to the American wars in the Middle East, such as American involvement in the Saudi-led war in Yemen, and Rep. Tulsi Gabbard has gained a sizeable following by placing foreign non-interventionism at the forefront of her presidential campaign. Trump’s foreign policy message is therefore far from iconoclastic; to the contrary, it is the new foreign policy consensus on “Main Street”, even if it has not yet supplanted the general consensus in Congress and the mainstream media. What explains this inversion in foreign policy preferences? A brief review of key events since World War II is instructive.

For the last three years, the American body politic has been obsessed with foreign election interference. Democrats angry with the results of the 2016 presidential election asserted that Donald Trump colluded with Russia to hack and release emails damaging to the Clinton presidential campaign. Robert Mueller investigated the email hacks as well as a Russian social media troll farm. Republicans, in turn, focused their ire on Clinton’s purchase of a salacious, but factually incorrect, dossier produced by Christopher Steele, a British spy with Russian sources.

Every fall, loyal fans around the country converge to watch “their” college team play against its rival. Some rivalries, such as the Ohio State—Michigan rivalry, are so entrenched that many diehards will consider the entire season a success so long as that single game returns a favorable outcome. While such sports rivalries may be genuinely exhilarating, recent research has illuminated a disturbingly similar trend in politics. Voters increasingly place more value on a partisan label, such as “Democrat” or “Republican,” than they care about actual government policy.