Pandering to special interest groups is a time-honored American political
tradition, especially in an election year. The practice is hard-wired into the
U.S. system of government, which gives interest groups many different ways to
pressure politicians into doing their bidding. Whether we are talking about the
farm lobby, the NRA, the AARP, Big Pharma, Wall Street, or various ethnic
lobbies, it's inevitable that politicians running for office will say and do
lots of stupid things to try to win influential groups over. Especially in a
close election.
Which of course explains why Mitt Romney flew to Israel over the weekend, and
proceeded to
say a lot of silly things designed to show everyone what a
good friend to Israel he will be if he is elected. He wasn't trying to win over
Israelis or make up for his various gaffes in London; his goal was to convince
Israel's supporters in America to vote for him and not for Barack Obama. Most
American Jews lean left and will vote for Obama, but Romney would like to keep
the percentage as low as he can, because it just might tip the balance in a
critical swing state like Florida. Pandering on Israel might also alleviate
evangelical Christian concerns about Romney's Mormon faith and make stalwart
"Christian Zionists" more inclined to turn out for him. Of course, Romney also
wants to convince wealthy supporters of Israel to give lots of money to his
campaign (and not Obama's), which is why a flock of big U.S. donors, including
gazillionaire casino mogul
Sheldon Adelson, accompanied Romney on his trip.
Once in Israel, Romney followed the script to the letter. He referred to
Jerusalem as Israel's capital (something the U.S. government doesn't do, because
Jerusalem's status is still supposed to be resolved via negotiation). He said
that stopping Iran's nuclear program was "America's highest national security
priority," which tells you that Romney has no idea how to rank-order national
security threats. One of his aides, neoconservative Dan Senor, even gave Israel
a green light to attack Iran, telling reporters that "If Israel has to take
action on its own, the governor would respect that decision."
But this sort of pandering is a bipartisan activity, and it's not like Barack
Obama isn't keeping up. The administration has been sending a steady stream of
top advisors to Israel of late, including Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, and
last week Obama signed a $
70 million military aid deal for Israel, in a public signing
ceremony. His message: "Romney can fly around and give speeches, but I'm
delivering real, tangible support."
The good news, such as it is, is that both Romney and Obama are probably
lying. No matter how many times each of them talks about the "unshakeable
commitment" to Israel, or even of their "love" for the country, they don't
really mean it. They are simply pandering to domestic politics, which is
something that all American politicians do on a host of different issues. Of
course, they will still have to shape their policies with the lobby's clout in
mind (as Obama's humiliating retreat on the settlement issue demonstrates), but
nobody should be under the illusion that they genuinely believe all the
flattering stuff that they are forced to say.
Why do I say that? Well, consider what former Secretary of Defense Robert
Gates said
in a July 2000 interview, conducted as part of an oral history
project conducted by the University of Virginia's Miller Center.
"...Every president I worked for, at some point in his presidency,
would get so pissed off at the Israelis that he couldn't speak. It didn't matter
whether it was Jimmy Carter or Gerry Ford or Ronald Reagan or George Bush.
Something would happen and they would just absolutely go screw themselves right
into the ceiling they were so angry and they'd sort of rant and rave around the
Oval Office. I think it was their frustration about knowing that there was so
little they could do about it because of domestic politics and everything else
that was so frustrating to them."
What was true of these presidents was also true of George W. Bush and Barack
Obama, and if Romney ends up getting elected, I'll bet the same thing will
happen to him too. He just won't admit it publicly.
The obvious danger in this conspiracy of silence is that it prevents the
foreign policy community from having an honest discussion about the whole Middle
East situation, including the "special relationship." Although public discourse
on this topic is more open and wide-ranging than it used to be, mostly because
some journalists and academics are freer to write honestly about this topic, it
is still nearly impossible for politicians or ambitious policy wonks to say what
they really think. If you want to get elected, or if you want to work on a
campaign and maybe serve in the U.S. government, you have to either 1) be fully
committed to the "special relationship," 2) pretend to be committed by mouthing
all the usual platitudes or 3) remain studiously silent about the whole subject.
And I can't think of any other diplomatic relationship that is such a minefield.
This situation wouldn't be a problem if U.S. Middle East policy was filled
with success stories or if Israel's own actions were beyond reproach. But no
country is perfect and all governments make mistakes. The problem is that
politicians and policymakers can't really have a completely open discussion of
these issues here in the Land of the Free.
There's also a tragic irony in all this. In his book
Scars of War, Wounds of Peace, former Israeli foreign
minister Shlomo Ben-Ami wrote that the two presidents who did the most to
advance Arab-Israeli peace were Jimmy Carter and George H. W. Bush. Carter
negotiated the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty, and Bush 41 led the 1991 Gulf War
coalition and assembled the 1992 Madrid Peace Conference. According to Ben-Ami,
Carter and Bush made progress on this difficult issue because each was willing
"to confront Israel head one and overlook the sensibilities of her friends in
America."
In other words, each was willing to do precisely what Romney is now telling
you he won't.
But what thanks did they get? In 1976, Carter received 71 percent of the
Jewish vote and Gerald Ford got 27 percent, a typical result given the tendency
for American Jews to favor the Democrats. In 1980, however, Carter got only 45
percent,
the lowest percentage ever recorded for a Democratic candidate
since World War II. Similarly, George H. W. Bush got 35 percent of the Jewish
vote in 1988 (compared with 64 percent for Dukakis), but his share plummeted to
only 11 percent in 1992. Their Middle East policies are not the only reason for
these shifts, but these two elections are the main outliers over the past fifty
years and the (false) perception that Carter and Bush were insufficiently
supportive of Israel clearly cost both of them some support.
Which is what Romney is hoping for. The losers will be the American people,
whose Middle East policy will continue to be dysfunctional, and Israel, which
will continue down its present course towards becoming an apartheid state. And
of course the Palestinians will continue to suffer the direct costs of this
unhappy situation. But that's democracy at work. If you don't like it, then
you'll need to convince politicians that they will pay a price at the ballot box
for this sort of mindless pandering. Until they do, it would be unrealistic to
expect them to behave any differently.
Monday, July 30, 2012 - 11:41 AM 
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