Why Strongmen Win on Foreign Policy with Jeff Friedman
We are sharing a conversation with author Jeffrey Friedman about why American voters so often are drawn in by strong, hawk-ish foreign policy.
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EPISODE RESOURCES
The Commander-in-Chief Test by Jeffrey A. Friedman (Cornell University Press)
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TRANSCRIPT
Sarah [00:00:07] This is Sarah Stewart Holland.
Beth [00:00:09] This is Beth Silvers.
Sarah [00:00:10] You're listening to Pantsuit Politics.
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[00:00:14] Music Interlude.
Alise [00:00:29] Hi, friends. It's Alise, the managing director of the show. I am recording this at 3:30 Eastern on Monday afternoon. It feels important to timestamp that because it has already been a whirlwind of a week. From the attempted assassination of Donald Trump on Saturday, to Judge Eileen Cannon throwing out the classified documents case, to the announcement of JD Vance as Trump's vice-presidential candidate. And now, by the time you are hearing this, we are in the thick of RNC convention week. Sarah and Beth are both overseas, as you know from our episode earlier this week that they recorded in their respective hotel bathrooms in the middle of the night for us here in the States. Normally, when we do our summer break knowing they'll be gone, we record in advance a variety of conversations we hope will be relevant and interesting for you during that break.
[00:01:22] Even though we already brought you a regular episode earlier this week, and we'll bring you another one on Friday, we did not want to wait any longer to bring you today's conversation. Oftentimes, we would put a conversation like this on our premium channel, but it feels so relevant and so right for this moment that we wanted everyone to have it today. So, if you do enjoy it, I hope that it will inspire you to join our premium community if you're not there already. And also, to check out the massive archive of great content that we already have there, and the new stuff that we're releasing every week.
[00:01:53] Today, we're bringing you a conversation with Jeff Friedman, associate professor of government at Dartmouth College and author of The Commander-in-Chief Test: Public Opinion and the Politics of Image-Making in U.S. Foreign Policy. Beth spoke with Professor Friedman back in the spring, and a variety of current events meant we held on to it longer than we had originally intended. But I think you will concur that this is the moment the conversation was meant for. It feels so right for this week. In his book, Professor Friedman makes the case that voters say one thing and mean another when it comes to presidents and foreign policy. They say they want presidents who keep us out of conflicts and play it safe. But what they really mean is they want a president who looks strong and independent and will passionately pursue American interests abroad.
[00:02:38] We find that that rings very true as the Republican Party this week nominates Donald Trump for a third consecutive time. Before we share that conversation, I wanted to remind you that we are booking speaking events for the fall. We are coming down to the wire for any final bookings for the fall. I happen to know that our inquiries have jumped up in the last few weeks, so if you have any interest in getting Sarah and Beth to come speak in person or virtually, please reach out to us ASAP via our website or by emailing us at hello@pantsuitpoliticsshow.com. I am confident you will be very glad you did, just like the folks at Abilene Christian University. They've had them on campus twice in the past few years, and after their most recent visit, they said, "The way that Sarah and Beth were able to articulate conversation was unlike anything I have ever witnessed before. They were asked some very direct questions, but with no hesitation responded with grace and peace while providing a perspective I had not even considered. We needed an event like this and they exceeded my expectations."
[00:03:35] We love getting those ringing endorsements, and would love to have Sarah and Beth come be with your group, your school, your company, your institution, whatever it may be. So please do reach out if you want to have Sarah and Beth join you yet this fall, or to snag a 2025 spot while their schedules are still relatively open. Although, we are in conversations about 2025 already as well. Thank you so much for listening. We hope this conversation with Jeff Friedman feels helpful to you, feels relevant to you, and that you feel like I do, that it's just right for this moment. Sarah and Beth will be back in your ears on Friday with another brand-new episode of our Nuanced Life revival. Until then, have the very best week available to you.
Beth [00:04:26] Jeff, thank you so much for talking with me about the Commander-in-Chief Test. I did not pick up this book expecting to come away thinking, well, here is what Donald Trump has in common with John F Kennedy. So, it's very illuminating in that way.
Jeff Friedman [00:04:39] I appreciate that. Thanks for having me.
Beth [00:04:41] Can you tell us a little bit about your central thesis here, this issue image trade off that exists around foreign policy for presidents?
Jeff Friedman [00:04:49] Sure. So, the book asks how voters decide who's fit to be commander-in-chief and how those choices shape the politics of U.S. foreign policy. And the basic idea of the book is that when voters think about which presidential candidates are best suited to lead the country in international affairs, they care partly about whether those leaders have policy platforms that appeal to them on the merits. But they're much more interested in making sure that they elect a president who's got the right personal attributes to be a competent commander-in-chief, and in particular, someone who seems like a strong leader, who will stand up to America's adversaries and advocate for the country's interests.
[00:05:33] And the book also explains how voters often have to make tradeoffs between candidates who seem to have appealing policy platforms, and those who seem to have the right stuff to be commander-in-chief. And the book essentially argues that when faced with their choice, voters will generally gravitate towards electing leaders based on their personal images, particularly leaders who seem strong and tough and decisive. And I argue that trade off steers U.S. foreign policy in a direction that tends to be more hawkish than what voters actually want.
Beth [00:06:05] So my husband saw me reading your book and asked what it was about, and I said, well, I think the thesis here is that you would say to a voter, should we invade Iraq? The voter would say, absolutely not. And then you would say, would you like to vote for someone who says we absolutely should not invade Iraq? And they would say, no, I would not. So even though we tend to be a more peace-loving people, we like leaders who talk the tough talk, and that creates this kind of perverse incentive. Am I getting it?
Jeff Friedman [00:06:35] Yeah, that's exactly it. And so, one good recent example of that is that when President Biden decided to withdraw from Afghanistan, polls showed that the majority of voters agreed with him, or at the very least, voters seemed to be divided evenly on the merits of that choice. But after Biden went through that plan and the Taliban took control of Afghanistan, Biden's approval ratings really tanked. And so, that's a place in which I think the cost that that policy had to Biden's image went way beyond what voters thought about that action on its merits. And to give you another example, you mentioned John F Kennedy. When John F Kennedy ran for president in 1960, the centerpiece of his foreign policy platform was proposing to raise defense spending by a substantial amount.
[00:07:21] That was the origins of his inaugural address; promised to pay any price, bear any burden to advance liberal internationalism. At the time, less than a quarter of Americans said they thought the defense budget was too small. But they really liked the way Kennedy sounded when he talked about raising the defense budget. Made him seem strong and vigorous. It allowed him to portray the incumbent Eisenhower administration as being weak and complacent. And so, it's exactly the examples of these tradeoffs between policies that voters are skeptical of on their merits, and versus leaders who sound strong and tough and decisive and give voters the image that they want from a commander-in-chief.
Beth [00:08:02] I was really preoccupied while reading with this question of how rational this is.
Jeff Friedman [00:08:07] Yeah.
Beth [00:08:07] I think it's fair for voters to feel like we don't really know what the substance of foreign policy decisions should be, and we can evaluate toughness or strength in our leaders. So, what do you think about that?
Jeff Friedman [00:08:20] That's a good question. I'd actually be interested to hear your views, but I think this comes from a reasonable instinct. The substance of foreign policy is really complicated. We can't expect voters to develop firm views about the merits of every form policy choice. And in principle, you'd think it would be much easier for voters to intuitively assess the personal attributes of their leaders. Every one of us, every day evaluates the character and the traits of people around us. So, I think at some level it seems like voters should do a better job evaluating these traits. But I think in practice, we have to recall that presidential candidates are experts in image crafting, and they have really large teams of professionals who are designed to help them convey the personal image that will resonate with American voters.
[00:09:11] And leaders can be really, really cynical about crafting those images, even if that steers U.S. foreign policy away from what voters want on the merits. And so, I think [inaudible] what the book is trying to do is cause us to question our gut instincts that we feel like we know these presidential candidates, we feel like we can assess whether they have the right stuff to be commander-in-chief. And we might be placing perhaps much too much emphasis on that element of their candidacy. That's not to say that their personal attributes don't matter at all. Just that I think we exaggerate how much we can assess them, and we underestimate the costs that has for U.S. foreign policy.
Beth [00:09:49] The piece that I am kind of struggling with when I think about whether we're behaving rationally as voters is something that we talked to Hillary Clinton about back in December. So, we had Secretary Clinton on to talk about Israel and Gaza, and we were discussing with her how diplomacy is greatly undervalued by the American public because it is largely unseen, and it mostly acts in a preventative way. It's hard for voters to think, wow, I'm really grateful for what didn't happen. For good reasons, we don't know all of the horribles that are being prevented out there in the world. And I wonder how that fits into your thesis about strength demonstrated by hawkish foreign policy versus good judgment demonstrated by a more dovish foreign policy, that we simply cannot appreciate the dovish foreign policy because we don't see all of it.
Jeff Friedman [00:10:43] I think that's a big part of it. But part of what I talk about in the book is that even if voters care about attributes besides strong leadership, particularly they want leaders who have good judgment for evaluating foreign policy decisions. Good judgment is just so complicated, and it is context dependent and it's nuanced and it's really hard for candidates to convey that sort of thing directly. If you look at public opinion polls, they show that voters generally support taking multilateral approaches to international affairs. They want the United States to be sharing the burden of global leadership with allies. They'd say they don't like unilateral approaches to the world. But the problem is when you actually conduct diplomacy, it's complicated and involves making concessions. And these deals are difficult to evaluate. And it's really easy for critics to say that these are bad deals that represent the United States letting other countries walk all over them. So that's hard.
[00:11:38] Diplomacy is tough. It's complicated. Voters can't evaluate the merits of that easily. But by contrast, if you stand up to your adversaries, if you say I'm not going to back down, you confront them with force. If you reject deals, that is just a much easier way to communicate that you're a strong leader. And I think that's one reason why many presidents before Joe Biden made the political calculation not to withdraw from Afghanistan, and many presidents before Barack Obama made the calculation not to try to make deals with adversaries like Iran. Because even if voters kind of agree with the principle of what you're doing, once you get down to the brass tacks, it's really easy for critics to say that you're being weak. Whereas, candidates like Donald Trump, who are very brash about standing up to America's adversaries, have a much easier path to communicating that they're strong leaders in a way that voters will appreciate.
Beth [00:12:30] How much of this is just about drawing contrast? I'm talking to you a few minutes after Nikki Haley suspended her presidential campaign. And I noticed in her remarks it was kind of a confusing speech because she didn't endorse anyone. She just suspended her own campaign. But she talked about things that are important to her. And on foreign policy, she said that America must lead in the world. We will have more violence and more conflicts if America doesn't lead. And I don't know if that was supposed to be a contrast to Donald Trump or Joe Biden or both of them, but it made me think about the Vietnam case studies in your book where there were distinctions without much of a difference in how candidates really viewed what was happening. But it is just so tempting to contrast yourself with your opponents by saying, well, I would go harder at this.
Jeff Friedman [00:13:20] Yeah, I think that's a great analogy. So, the Vietnam cases in the book look at particularly the 1968/1972 elections. In 1968, Richard Nixon and Hubert Humphrey drew very few policy contrasts about what to do on Vietnam. And part of the reason for that was that because the country was so sick of Johnson's leadership on the war, and because Hubert Humphrey seemed at the time to be a relatively weak leader who was sort of tied to the Johnson administration, Richard Nixon had no incentive to say how he'd handle the war differently. Voters already trusted that he would handle the war better than Hubert Humphrey, so he didn't have any reason to draw a clear policy contrast because the image contrast already favored him. And then also another reason he sort of underplays the substantive side of how he's going to handle Vietnam is that it was not clear on the merits what he could do differently that voters would like.
[00:14:15] So I think that kind of sort of vague image posturing where you're saying, I'm going to be a better leader without providing the details of what that better leadership will entail, is a really consistent pattern throughout U.S. foreign policy. And it's part of the reason why I think voters get undersupplied with diplomatic solutions that they say they want. The leaders are quite intelligently making this calculation that if they get into the weeds, they start talking about the compromises that they're going to have to make. They're going to expose themselves to challenges, for being weak, for giving in. That's going to harm the image that they want to project of being a competent commander-in-chief.
Beth [00:14:52] You can tell me if this is an unfair question, because your book is very meticulous about this is the way that I am analyzing the data. This is what counts as good research methods. So, tell me if this is unfair because it's so recent. But if you were writing now a study of Biden and Trump on Ukraine, I wonder what you would pull out of their campaigns in this situation that we find ourselves in.
Jeff Friedman [00:15:15] It's a great question. Donald Trump is unusual in the sense that he's able to maintain a reputation for being this tough, aggressive leader. Despite arguing that we need to retrench many aspects of US interventions and engagements around the world, Ukraine is a clear one. Republicans would normally take a much more hawkish position on Ukraine, whereas Trump wants to back down. So, the question is how is it that Trump is able to do that? And I think part of the way he's able to get away with this and avoid being criticized for backing down to Russia or being a weak leader, is that he's couching the reasons why we need to pull out of Ukraine as under this America First rubric, that Biden is sort of not being sufficiently vigorous about sticking up for American interests in devoting all these resources to Ukraine; whereas, instead, in Trump's view, we need to devote those towards protecting the southern border.
[00:16:12] And so, I think because Trump is saying that the Ukraine investment is preventing the United States from standing up for its interests elsewhere, he's able to retain that notion of being hawkish and standing up for American interests. Whereas, I think, by contrast, when Biden withdrew from Afghanistan, that was more of a pure retrenchment. And he wasn't saying we need to do this in order to spend resources elsewhere. He was saying it's just a bad investment, per se. And I think that's part of why that was easy for his opponents to portray as backing down, as opposed to reinforcing an America First image. In general, I think that one of the underappreciated elements of Trump's political success is that Americans see this America First foreign policy as something that indicates that Trump is willing to stand up for America more than his predecessors.
[00:17:02] And even though Americans overwhelmingly say they don't like unilateral approaches to foreign policy, I think they really appreciate a commander-in-chief who seems like they're big, tough, strong and vigorous. So, Trump's America First foreign policy is like an archetypal example of these tradeoffs between images and issues. Voters aren't super thrilled with unilateralism, but they'll take it if it means they can get a commander-in-chief who's going to stick up for America's interests. And I think that's a big part of how Trump has convinced many voters that he belongs in the white House.
[00:17:33] Music Interlude.
Beth [00:17:43] You mentioned in your conclusion that areas to explore in other research might be how much this issue image trade off applies in issues like trade. And I would love to hear you talk more about that as to Trump's trade policy and to President Biden as well.
Jeff Friedman [00:18:00] Sure. So, trade is an example where deals that the United States tries to make with other countries are really complicated. I mean, they now involve innumerous kind of non-tariff barriers, environmental conditions, labor protections. These deals are just enormously difficult for anyone, let alone normal voters to understand. Even though voters actually say that on balance they think free trade is good for the United States, it's really easy for critics to say that various elements of these deals are making too many concessions to opponents, or that there are ways to make them better from the standpoint of the United States. It's hard for voters to know how to process that. By contrast, when someone like Donald Trump comes along and criticizes prior leaders for being too generous to other countries, that trade deals are harming Americans, that allows them to send very clear messages that they are on the side of American workers, and they're going to do more than prior presidents to stick up for ordinary Americans.
[00:19:03] And I think that's another clear example where voters have to choose between saying that in principle, they're proponents of a free trade regime; versus a leader who seems like they've got the sort of right stuff to promote American interests more vigorously than their predecessors. So, again, I think that's one reason why Trump's America First rhetoric really resonated with the public. It made it seem as though he was going to do more than President Obama, to stick up for ordinary Americans. And I suspect that's one reason why President Biden has not changed a whole lot of Trump's trade legacy. And I think he accurately perceives that rolling back some of the Trump restrictions would expose himself to attacks of abandoning the working class, of not sticking up for American interests. And so, I think, the convergence between Biden and Trump on trade is very much driven by their common need to be seen as strong leaders who are promoting the economic interests of ordinary Americans. And Biden's really explicit about that. His Bidennomics idea is all about demonstrating to Americans that his foreign policy is working for the middle class.
Beth [00:20:15] Do you think that gender would change any of this if we had two women running against each other for president? Would any part of this issue image tradeoff be different?
Jeff Friedman [00:20:25] It's a great question. It's what I talk about so briefly at the end of the book. Obviously, it's hard to say. We've had no female presidents. We've had only a few top presidential contenders. So, we have limited history to go on, but we can think about what that would look like. One of the messages of the book is that when voters think about who they want to be commander-in-chief, they have this ideal type image in mind. Strong, tough leaders who have all sorts of attributes that we typically think of as being male coded. So, you might think that's one reason why women would struggle in order to convince Americans that they'd be competent to be commander-in-chief. That also may be one reason why female leaders like Hillary Clinton or Margaret Thatcher or Indira Gandhi often go so far out of their way to demonstrate their hawkish credentials. So, you might think that implies that female leaders would just be even more likely to follow this kind of playbook.
[00:21:21] They would have even more incentive in order to steer U.S. foreign policy in hawkish directions, to demonstrate that they've got the right stuff to be commander-in-chief. But you could also imagine it going the other way, in which if voters are willing to elect female candidates, that would show that they're willing to step outside that kind of stereotypical commander-in-chief mindset, and perhaps a woman in office might then have more flexibility to behave in ways that are more consistent with what voters want on the merits. So, I would say, given what we've seen from presidential contenders in the past, there's lots of evidence that they are trying to adhere to this playbook. But again, it's just really hard to know. And I suspect that as we see more women running for president and getting closer and closer and hopefully one day soon winning the presidency, we'll just get a better sense of the degree to which they have more or less freedom to change the playbook for how one thinks presidents should operate as commander-in-chief.
Beth [00:22:22] I love the call to action in the book to step back from this personality assessment and think more about the substance of foreign policy as we are analyzing who would be a good commander-in-chief. It reminds me a little bit of how Sarah and I've been talking about this election where we have likely two candidates who are historically old and how it seems to be less about them and more about their administrations. When you're analyzing the potential for a president to serve all four years, it's almost helpful to think of the president as like the chief HR officer of the country. Because who are all of these people that are going to fill the cabinet and the administration to be making really critical decisions if the worst happens to the individual? So, I found that really empowering to think about the substance versus the personality. What I found depressing is how difficult it is to communicate a nuanced position. And all foreign policy is nuanced when you're being honest about it. So, you have some suggestions to break out of this. Can you talk about those suggestions?
Jeff Friedman [00:23:27] Yeah, I think there are a few things that parties and voters and candidates can do in order to break out of this ratchet effect that steers U.S. foreign policy in a hawkish direction, and all of them have to do with reassuring voters that candidates can be dovish or moderate on foreign policy without calling into question whether they're strong and tough and ready to be commander-in-chief. So, one thing that parties can do is nominate leaders who have high ranking military experience. I think one reason why Dwight Eisenhower was one of the more restrained presidents in post-Cold War history was that he could stay out of crises like the Suez crisis without having people call into question his military leadership. He could restrain the growth of the defense budget without having voters think that he didn't know what he was doing on military issues. And that was because he came into office with a secure reputation for knowing military issues.
[00:24:29] The fact of the matter is that virtually all presidential candidates since Eisenhower haven't had that kind of reputation, so they have to earn it. And in the process of earning it, they have all these incentives in order to act tough and show their hawkish credentials. And I think parties can sidestep that if they find people with credible military experience. One thing that candidates can do is articulate restrained foreign policy positions using tough language in ways that demonstrates that they're not just backing down or being weak. That's one lesson that I think we took from Donald Trump. One of the ways that Trump was able to justify his positions of, say, withdrawing troops from the Middle East, or at least nominally when he said we would get out of Afghanistan, was that he turned his ire on the foreign policy establishment and told voters that they had been hoodwinked by these establishment elites. And by showing that his foreign policies were confronting these elites, that then allowed him to portray his foreign policy of standing up to someone.
[00:25:35] Might not have been the Taliban, but he was standing up to other people that voters were skeptical of, and I think that allowed him to retain some of his reputation for being tough and strong and confrontational. And then there's a simple thing that voters can do here. If we are convinced that we're placing too much emphasis on leaders’ personal attributes in ways that are distracting from the substance of foreign policies that voters say they want, voters have perfect freedom to place more emphasis on the substance of foreign policy. And journalists and pundits have freedom to place more emphasis on describing the merits of candidate’s foreign policy platforms, rather than the personalized talks about who's got the right stuff to sit in the Oval Office. And so, I just think if we believe, as the book says, that we're exaggerating the personalized elements of this commander-in-chief test to our collective detriment, we can just change the way we talk about these issues and we can focus more on the substance. And I suspect we would all be better for that.
[00:26:42] Music Interlude.
Beth [00:26:52] I really enjoyed the book. It is such an interesting mix of scholarship and storytelling. I really liked reading about the case studies from our history. Is there one idea or question that lingers after you've hit send on publishing this book?
Jeff Friedman [00:27:10] That's a great question. I think the gender question that you raised was always lurking at the back of my mind. Again, it's just something that's hard to analyze with evidence, given that the historical record is what it is. I guess, building off the last question you asked about what we can do about this, I often thought a lot in writing this book about the immediate environment in which we live, and the degree to which it would be possible to hold more informed national conversations about the substance of foreign policy. My sense is part of the reason why these debates are so personalized, is because it makes for better television and makes for better podcasts. People love just talking about whether or not their political rivals or their favorite candidates have the right chops. It's just something that's much more intuitive for us to engage with.
[00:28:01] And so, I suspect that there are some pretty strong incentives in the media and in presidential debates to personalize these kinds of questions. So, figuring out what it would take to have discussions of foreign policy issues that are just more tangible, that is easy to engage with for ordinary voters as this interpersonal horse race of who's strong and who's weak, and is Biden too old to be a president? It's easy to understand why that takes up so much of our collective oxygen. And so, figuring out what's the alternative and how we can orient that more towards substance is something to which I really don't know the answer, but I think is a pretty pressing question given the content of the book's analysis.
Beth [00:28:47] I think that's really interesting. I'm thinking back to a debate question from 2016. I think Hugh Hewitt was a moderator, and he asked Donald Trump a question about the Quds Forces. And it was clearly a question built to measure competence, which is a big theme in the book. How do we recognize competence among potential commanders in chief? And so, I feel like the media occasionally will, like, dip its toes into trying to find a new path. The trouble is, the vast majority of voters don't know the Quds Forces. And so, I wonder how do we make foreign policy more interesting just as a matter of voter education between presidential cycles, so that we can have that more substance oriented foreign policy discussion when it's election time?
Jeff Friedman [00:29:35] I mean, another thing that you could imagine journalists and pundits doing is just asking candidates to explain the substance of their policies in more detail. I'll just give you one specific example. In the current GOP primary, virtually every well-polling GOP presidential candidate advocated attacking Mexico in order to deal with the drug cartels. And I think that is very clearly the kind of logic that's laid out in this book. It's a hawkish use of force that goes beyond what most voters say that they want on the merits. And it's presumably a way for candidates without military experience like Nikki Haley, or candidates with limited foreign policy experience, like Ron DeSantis, to show that they're big, tough and strong. And I just think a reasonable follow up question to that would be, what's that use of force going to look like? If you attack Mexico and the cartels don't surrender, are we going to stick around for a week, a month, years? Is this an open-ended military intervention? We're going to station troops in Mexico?
[00:30:40] And I think just sort of requiring the candidates by the details behind these policies is a way of reorienting conversations away from your sort of first impression about how tough and strong and decisive the policies seem at a 30,000-foot level, to figuring out what they actually look like and whether candidates have seriously thought them through. And I think the history of presidential campaigns is documented in the book as of littered with these ideas that sound nice at first, but don't really pan out the way that voters wanted. And I think we can at least chip away at that a bit by asking substantive follow up questions and making sure that these hawkish foreign policies have some real thought behind them.
Beth [00:31:27] We're reading Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America with some of our listeners, and he describes the almost king like powers that the president has over foreign policy, but doesn't worry about them too much because he says our geography will prevent America from having to become embroiled in foreign policy, that foreign policy won't really be that important. So, there wasn't such a need to check the executive in this way. And it is fascinating to read your book and to see how much foreign policy shapes our elections when maybe it didn't have to be that way.
Jeff Friedman [00:32:01] I appreciate that. It's really interesting to hear that you're reading that with your listeners. I'm jealous.
Beth [00:32:07] Yeah. It's fun. It's weirdly fun. Well, thank you so much for the book and for spending some time talking with me about it.
Jeff Friedman [00:32:12] Thanks, Beth. It was a pleasure.
[00:32:13] Music Interlude.
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