War dominates our screens, our politics, and our brains. For a while, it crowds out almost everything else. And, more than virtually any other issue, war polarizes.
For these reasons and others, presidents in political trouble often turn their gaze abroad, and demand that Americans get in line behind them. After all, politics stops at the water’s edge–a debate-killing maxim.
Historically, presidents have enjoyed a bump in public support when they send troops into combat, a “rally round the flag” effect. (I first learned this from John E. Mueller’s book, War, Presidents, and Public Opinion.) The surge of support erodes over time, as the costs and horrors of war become visible.
But Donald Trump’s leap into war with Iran didn’t produce any spike in public opinion, so the anticipated decline in support is from a smaller base from the start. Maybe it’s because Trump has done an abysmal job of building support for his effort; he doesn’t even seem to be trying. This, despite his shameless capacity to dissemble even more than his most egregious predecessors. (Pick any war mongering lying president for example.) And it’s hard to ignore that this war is particularly ill-conceived and badly planned.
One challenge is how to fit this awful war in the litany of grievances animating the resistance to the Trump administration. Offenses and provocations abound: ICE abuses, a war on science and American universities, restricted access to health insurance, environmental despoilation, evisceration of the federal government–and civil service protections, and and and. The list is far too long, and it includes so many lesser offenses: renaming or destroying buildings and putting the Trump visage on coins. And recall that the attacks on policy are all larded with corruption, Constitutional offenses, incompetence, racism, bad taste, and bad manners.
Issues and activists compete for attention. Thus far, the Iran war is just another one. The Bannon/Trump strategy of “filling the zone with shit” works to blur focus on anything but the Trump persona which provides a tight focus for Trump’s defenders. The conflict about climate policy becomes a battle about Trump, just the same as a debate about health care subsidies. This is just dandy for a target with a bottomless appetite for attention, but it’s paradoxically difficult to get political traction.
Still, Trump’s demonstrated incompetence in conducting the war undermines faith and fear of his efforts on other issues. Recognition of the Trump team’s damage to the Middle East and the global economy undermines faith among his strong supporters and fear among his more tentative acolytes; it will stiffen the spines of his opponents and offer them newly attentive audiences. Some challenges are a little less daunting: It’s an odd paradox that unfolding horrors in the Persian Gulf may end up saving some of the sight lines in the nation’s capital.
In this moment, everything dovetails into Congressional elections still nine months away. As the costs of war become more clear and dramatic, organizers face the challenge of forging connections among an increasingly diverse collection of groups and individuals with a wide range of grievances and mobilizing meaningful political action. This is no easy matter. At the moment, however, Trump seems determined to help them do it.
Politics Outdoors 
The observation that Trump’s war buildup didn’t trigger a typical rally-round-the-flag effect really stands out—especially given how past presidents have leaned on that temporary boost to distract from domestic trouble. It makes you wonder if the public’s trust in the messenger has finally become more important than the message of national unity. So many of us are just exhausted by the endless list of offenses, and that war feels like one more item on a pile that’s already too tall to sort through.
The point about the rally-round-the-flag effect failing to materialize for Trump is striking — it really shows how a lack of even the pretense of moral authority can short-circuit that historical reflex. Your mention of the endless “lesser offenses” competing for attention also rings true; it feels like the sheer volume of outrages has made it impossible for any single disaster, even an ill-conceived war, to fully land with the public.
The point about Trump not even trying to build public support for the Iran war is striking—it really does feel like a half-hearted diversion rather than a genuine national security push. The comparison to past presidents who at least performed the ritual of selling the conflict makes the absence more noticeable. Living through this constant barrage of crises, it’s exhausting to treat yet another war as just another item on an already overwhelming list.
The observation about Trump’s war failing to produce even a temporary rally-round-the-flag effect really stood out. It makes you wonder if the public has become too cynical about the administration’s motives to fall in line, or if the sheer noise of all those other grievances just drowns out any single crisis. Living through this era, the constant competition for attention feels exhausting—almost like we’re numb to one more disaster on the pile.