Smart diplomacy?
John Podhoretz tries to find a rationale for the Obama administration's attack on Israel. And here's where we get to the bewildering part. The Obama administration had made its point. Op-eds bloomed all over, well before Hillary's phone call, denouncing Israel for its maltreatment of Biden. Israel was on the defensive. But let's say the secretary of state really needed to emphasize the point, so she called Bibi to yell. The substance and tone of that call did not have to be made public; most of her communications, even with recalcitrant allies, aren't. Why would the Obama administration choose now of all times to make a moment of tension into a diplomatic crisis?
Well, you can say it's because of its general ideological presumptions about Israel, which I explored last year in this piece. Or because the diplomatic crisis with Israel can be used to America's advantage — because in an administration whose governing doctrine is that you can't let a good crisis go to waste, you would think it had some game plan for what would follow the release of the news of Hillary's phone call.
I don't think it did. By intensifying the crisis, the administration has essentially put paid to its own "proximity talks" between Israel and the Palestinians, which weren't going to work in any case, but don't tell them that — after all, those talks were George Mitchell's idea. And I don't think they appreciated just how direct and unvarnished the response from Jewish leaders was going to be.
So this was a diplomatic mistake. But what about the politics of it? The word we keep hearing from Washington is that in the upcoming congressional elections there is an "enthusiasm gap" developing between resurgent Republicans and somewhat dispirited Democrats in the run-up to the 2010 midterms. That "enthusiasm gap" is not just anecdotal; it's also about organization, which means it's about money. It's no secret that a wildly disproportionate part of the Democratic donor base is Jewish. While Jews are almost certain to continue to vote lopsidedly for Democrats, that doesn't mean Jewish donors are going to open their checkbooks as widely as they have in the past three election cycles. A diminution in Jewish enthusiasm for Obama and the Democrats is a problem for them. This is not a good moment to be picking fights on an issue of major emotional concern to a key Democratic constituency, even if you know that many of its members are not disposed to support the building program.
The key is the word used by Hillary on Friday and echoed on Sunday by David Axelrod. The word is "insulting." What Israel did, they say, was insulting. They're not wrong; Biden was indeed subjected to an insult. But they know Netanyahu wasn't responsible for it; they know coalition governments are unruly beasts. I suspect they're not the ones who feel the insult but rather it was the president himself who decided the insult required his slapping Israel in the face with a white glove and threatening pistols at dawn.
This was an emotional response, in other words, in which the president felt free to indulge. And he was free to indulge it. But in doing so, he either didn't think about what the reaction would be, or was misguided by his advisers about the nature of the reaction, or didn't care about the reaction. And he will be the one to shoulder the political and diplomatic consequences from this specific event.
What could go wrong?
Israel Matzav: Smart diplomacy?
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