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1964, 1968, and 1972, it seemed additionally essential to add Vietnam to these two
clusters. On the one hand, Vietnam as a policy focus suggested elements of both other
sub-dimensions of foreign policy, thereby conflating their operation. On the other,
Vietnam was arguably the most disruptive issue of foreign policy in the entire postwar
era. We explore these years in more detail in the next section of this paper.
For now, note that no single element within the realm of international relations—
not national security, not foreign engagement, not Vietnam—had anywhere near the
consistent impact of social welfare across the full half-century. Yet when these three
elements are considered as a whole, that is, when we look at the leading influence within
these three clusters on the presidential vote year by year, they too show a strong and
continuing relationship to it. One or another of these sub-clusters has a greater influence
than social welfare in three of the presidential elections before the end of the Cold War:
1952, 1980, and 1984. One or another is second to social welfare in every other year but
one in this extended period: 1948, 1960, 1964, 1968, 1972, 1976, and 1988. Only in
1956 was foreign affairs truly put to sleep as an influence on general public voting for
president.
As a result, international relations was the great alternative to social welfare
among policy realms influencing presidential voting in all the elections of the Cold War
era, from 1948 through 1988. That said, it is also true that the distinctive elements of
foreign policy worked very differently in exerting this influence. National security rose
to prominence as a concern while the Vietnam War gradually escalated. It yielded this
background influence to a more direct expression of Vietnam in 1972, and it fell
temporarily into abeyance after the liquidation of the Vietnam conflict. It rose again,
Convention