The internal Democratic Party debate over whether or not to support the Obama administration’s Iran nuclear deal has been one of the most fascinating U.S. foreign policy debates in recent memory.
The Iran nuclear deal was unofficially sealed on Sept. 8 with all 41 U.S. Senate Democrats declaring support, when only 34 were needed to carry the day if U.S. President Barack Obama and Congress disagreed.
When the deal was signed in July, the politics of whether the Democratic president could carry enough of his own party to move the deal forward were fraught with doubt. A clear majority of Americans were against the deal, and an even clearer majority of a range of members of Jewish organizations, led by AIPAC (the American Israel Public Affairs Committee), campaigned hard against the deal, reportedly spending tens of millions of dollars to pressure many “on the fence” Democrats.
Yet at this point, the party, except for a statistically insignificant number, has lined up behind Obama – including many Jewish Democratic congressmen.
Given the high level of opposition to the deal, and putting substance aside, why has Obama succeeded politically? Understanding the answer requires recognizing a key nuance in electoral psychology and threat perception.
Most obviously, those doubting the deal underestimated the fact that congressmen historically support their own party’s president on signature landmark issues almost unanimously.
Many Democrats voted for Obama’s landmark health-care bill despite near certainty that such a vote would finish them politically, and the Iran deal was no less a test of party loyalty.
Second, the wider American Jewish population has supported Obama’s policies on Israel and the Middle East, as a function of being heavily Democratic, even as Jewish organizations have sometimes not.
But what about the wider American public’s disapproval?
Right or wrong (and probably right), the political bet for supporting the deal is likely that in 14 months, in November 2016, there will be no decisive consequences and the deal will not be a decisive issue in the American presidential election, even if foreign policy unexpectedly supplants the economy and personality as decisive.
The reason goes to the psychological perception of the Iranian nuclear threat, which most of the warnings have emphasized gets more serious in eight, 10 or 15 years. In the past, the nuclear threat of the Soviet Union impacted people psychologically, maybe even more than was warranted.
More recently, some psychologists have found that many nuclear weapons threats are now “out of sight, out of mind.” The average citizen’s relationship with the nuclear weapons threat, from Iran or anyone else, is characterized by ignorance, denial and apathy. For some, the science of nuclear weapons, the complexity of the deal and of the two sides’ arguments over it were simply too complex to follow for them to continue to care about the issue.
An interesting analogy is the American climate change debate.
For several election cycles, most Americans have believed in climate change and theoretically backed policies to push back greenhouse gases connected with climate change. But that has not forced Congress to act, largely since environmental “judgment day,” like a theoretical Iran nuclear judgment day, is vague and seems years away.
When people worry about nuclear terror, it is far more connected to a variety of closer-to-home terror issues: a “dirty” suitcase bomb, biological or chemical weapons or another 9/11-style attack.
In short, even many who expect an escalated nuclear threat from the deal see it as a 2020, 2024 or 2028 election issue, certainly not 2016.
By then, many current U.S. congressmen may be gone, and for others, it may be old news.
Understanding the psychology of how far Iran’s nuclear threat likely is from impacting 2016 voter behaviour, it suddenly appears surprising that there was such doubt about the vote.
Yonah Jeremy Bob is a foreign affairs lecturer and a correspondent for the Jerusalem Post.