Democrats and republicans agree on the need to engage with the world. They differ on how to do that.

[pampango]

Politics Never Really Stopped at Water's Edge

Majorities in both parties favor an active U.S. role in world affairs, according to a new poll from the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, and they mostly agree on top goals and threats. Yet voters diverge on the way to meet those challenges. Republicans emphasize military force; Democrats favor diplomacy. Moreover, the gap on immigration, climate change, and Israel has widened.

Roosevelt's chief differences with Republican policies (of the 1920's) mirrored, in two important respects, the differences between Democrats and Republicans shown in the Chicago Council's study: the GOP's aversion to multilateralism, and its preference for military force -- in this case, sending U.S. Marines to Latin America as debt collectors.

You can see that divergence in the 1928 election party platforms, with the Democrats pledging "non-interference" in Latin America, and "restoration" of the U.S. as a leader in building international institutions. And I'm sure most of today's Republican candidates for president today would echo Harding's 1921 inaugural speech, when he said America "can enter into no political commitments, nor assume any economic obligations which will subject our decisions to any other than our own authority."

Not only is there ideological continuity, but a more granular look at polarization over time suggests the U.S. is experiencing just a more severe recrudescence of earlier conditions. The period surrounding the Second World War was more exception than norm -- in fact, levels of political polarization in the 1920s were similar to those in the 1980s and '90s.

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-09-17/political-polarization-in-u-s-foreign-policy-isn-t-new

It figures that to republicans 'international engagement' equates to using military force. To Democrats it means diplomacy, working out multilaterally agreed upon agreements to resolve problems.

From the poll itself:



http://www.thechicagocouncil.org/publication/america-divided-political-partisanship-and-us-foreign-policy