My streamlined take from today’s White House meeting:
In politics as in diplomacy, there is spin and there are facts.
Prime Minister Netanyahu’s closed-door meeting with President Trump gave us plenty of the former and little of the latter.
You can always tell spin by the absence of anything concrete, when officials use words like “productive” and “positive.”
The fewer the facts, the greater the spin. When Netanyahu calls the meeting “one of the best we’ve ever had,” you know he’s in full spin mode.
Bibi’s problem is that the facts are going against his relationship with Trump.
Trump is an impatient, mercurial man with one hardwired trait: the man craves victories. Right now, with the midterms approaching, he doesn’t see too many victories when he looks at Bibi.
Whether or not this is Bibi’s fault is immaterial. What matters to Trump are the victories.
There is no victory to announce in Iran.
There is no victory to announce in Gaza.
There is no victory to announce in Lebanon.
That may be why Trump has been making noise about a possible deal with Saudi Arabia. He’s looking for a victory.
The point is, he’s not going to Bibi.
Trump is famously transactional. Unless you can give him something he wants, you’re not very useful. Notwithstanding the statements about how well their meeting went, Bibi simply can’t give him what he wants. That’s just reality.
Even something as fundamental as stopping Iran’s nuclear program, long a point of agreement between the two, is fading in the distance.
From Trump’s standpoint, the nuclear issue has been overtaken by the bedeviling problem of the Strait of Hormuz. And bombing Iran doesn’t seem to help. What Trump sees now in Iran is a mess, not a victory. Making things worse for Bibi, many Americans connect him to that mess.
Bibi has his own need for victories that he can tout ahead of the Oct. 27 elections. Unless something breaks before then (like the regime falling in Iran), we can expect some brilliant “look at my victories” spinning between now and the elections.
Same with Trump. In the absence of any real victories to promote, he’ll try to spin a “victory” narrative to prevail in the midterms.
Both men know that elections are when the spin stops and the facts rule– and the only fact that will matter is, once again, victory.
