Why Are Americans So Confused on Foreign Policy?

One of the more challenging aspects of writing a column about the politics of U.S. foreign policy is trying to fully understand the views of average voters on national security and foreign-policy issues. In this regard, Benjamin Valentino, associate professor of government at Dartmouth College, has only made life more difficult. Last month he released a fascinating poll examining public attitudes on America's role in the world, the country's current alliance structure, and its foreign-policy preferences -- and it provided a somewhat schizophrenic and at times irreconcilable perspective on how Americans view the world and America's place in it. So rather than try to makes heads or tails of the results, I went to the source and sat down for an email interview with Valentino in which we discussed what he believes the poll tells us about current foreign-policy attitudes.