Wanted: A Globally Minded President – Does Government Work?

Chapter 12 of the Struggle for Democracy discusses the expansion of the president’s roles and powers, defining the roles and powers in terms of the world, the American people, and other branches and institutions within the federal government. In addition, the roles and powers are furthered defined into political, social, and economic spheres.

Two common themes are presented throughout the chapter: presidents being defined by and reacting to when the time period and representation of the American people by the president. Since the end of the Cold War, globalization defines our recent presidents. In addition, a conflict exists about who the president represents with questions of time adding complexity to the concept of presidential representation.

With an increasingly divided and polarized nation, an issue has arisen concerning how a president ensure representation of the American people abroad through promoting American interests. It is a crucial aspect of foreign policy that dictates whether or not fundamental aspects of our democracy are working.

According to a recent Pew Research Survey, an average of 22% of the 37 countries the survey spanned had confidence in President Trump. Since the President of the United States is supposed to represent the United States, its values, and its interests abroad, it is not shocking that the survey also found that favorability of the United States has decreased to 49% since the end of Obama’s presidency. On the surface, this appears that our democracy is not working. With an unfavorable outlook held by most of the world, it is very difficult to advocate for the interests of the United States and the American people.

On the other hand, it also appears that our democracy is working. Donald Trump was elected and is representing the platform that his consistency voted for, America First and fighting against globalization. Trump is doing well among his voters in terms of approval. In addition, global opinion does not matter to him when his platform puts focus on America and fights plurality and globalization. However, actually achieving some of his goals especially in regards to foreign policy and how it affects domestic policy, global opinion and cooperation matters.

Where the problems lay and where it appears more likely our democratic values and government are faulting are the underlying purpose of the president in a foreign role. He is supposed to represent all Americans abroad. While a president can represent their constituency a little more domestically, especially in order to be effective abroad, they must have a unified agenda and stance, which is severely lacking under the Trump administration. Even among Republicans, the view of Trump, specifically regarding his conduct, is heavily divided as shown by a recent Pew Research Survey. Presidential behavior means a lot, especially to the internally community, since the president does represent what the United States is about in terms of values, beliefs, and goals. This disunity domestically reverberates internationally whether it be what the world sees coming from the United States or how the Trump administration acts in the international sphere. As a result, the disunity affects our ability to pursue our international interests.

As the trend continues to be globalization, global cooperation is necessary and an American president must follow with this trend. It is one of the crucial points that impacts a president and their presidency. A president must be globally conscious and accept globalization in order to successful abroad. Part of that has to do with conduct of the president and part of that has to do with having a unified appearance, even if internally that is what the state of the United States. Representing a polarized and divisive United States abroad will not work if the United States want and a president should follow that. While representing the American people as divisive abroad would follow and illustrate that the government and our democratic values are working, it means that other values that are just as important, including parts of representation, would be lost.

Kendall Crispin says:

November 26, 2017 at 9:23 pm

At the beginning of our country, the framers would have never imagined that this amount of foreign policy would dictate the way the government is seen. It is very unfortunate that our country is in trouble as a nation, because of our leader, but I believe that is representative of democracy. After all, we did elect him as our president. It is unfortunate that now that we have so many unhappy people, because that is not democracy, and he is not falling under the responsible party and being the president we voted in with possibly using the prospective voting model. The lack of popularity with our president makes our congress look bad, which can cause a change at the midterm elections. With this lack of credibility, he will struggle to make executive agreements and treaties, which help keep the peace and safety of our nation. We are losing freedom if countries don’t trust us.
In addition, although our president has made many questionable calls, there are a lot of people to advise him. The book states a lot about his support system. He relies on his Chief of Staff, Priebus, Economic Advisors, and National Security Council. Either he isn’t listening, or his advisors are just as bad.

Grant Golden says:

November 28, 2017 at 3:47 pm

There is no doubt that because of President Trump’s questionable decisions and actions that countries across the world are disapproving of the United States and the man himself. This is unfortunate as Kendall said in the above comment as we are going to have so many unhappy people and our ability to negotiate with countries when need be will be limited. I commented on another post that talked about the presidents power in foreign policy and I think this post and my opinions are very similar. Even though I think Trump is totally unqualified to be the president of the United States and have not agreed with anything that he has said or done, I do not think he is totally crazy in terms of foreign policy and globalization. I think there is an extreme amount of political attention in todays world and like you said in your post, the United States is not well liked due to our leader as of now. I do not think some form of isolationism is such a bad thing. We need to protect our American people and more importantly we need to take care of our people. This has changed and evolved over time and because of that their are many varying views on this issue. But I truly think that the idea of more globalization is not something unfortunately that the United States need to think/ worry about right now.