Public opinion, the President, and foreign policy: four case studies form the formative years

The complexities of political behavior on best be explored by using the vantage points of many social sciences History supplies the patterns and perspectives of the past. Political science analyzes these patterns and distills principles of political interaction from them. Sociology furnishes insights into the cultural settings that shape the minds and personalities of political actors. Psychology traces the why's and wherefore's of indi vidual reaction patterns. A rounded view of political reality requires the perspectives of all these disciplines. Hence data for this book have been collected and combined from all the relevant social sciences.

Unfortunately, in a study of long-dead individuals from the pre-Gallup age, polling data and depth interviews are unobtainable. Although the unavailability of these prized modern research tools is regrettable, there is a weighty compensation for their lack-the rich historical record, re searched and analyzed by many different scholars, whose approaches complement each other and whose prejudices, hopefully, cancel each other out. Perceptive analysis of this wealth of data avoids some of the shortcomings of findings that are based on polls and interviews. The his torical record reveals a political actor's reactions over a long time span, diminishing the distortions of fleeting moods and of particularized re actions to the personality of the interviewer. Contemporary historical data are voluminous enough for the formative years of American politics, especially in an age of prolific correspondence, to disclose which ideas were typical of each President and which were passing fancies, politically motivated adaptations, or responses to atypical circumstances.