Many American presidents were greeted with a measure of suspicion by Israeli leaders when they were elected to office. Some because of their affiliations, because of ties that they had with bodies hostile to Israel, some because of tendencies incompatible with Israel’s reading of world realities. When Bill Clinton was elected President, his inexperience was worrisome. When George W. Bush was elected, it was the shadow of his father’s administration. When John Kennedy was elected, David Ben Gurion looked at him with the weary eyes of an accomplished statesman and assessed him somewhat harshly – “to me, he looks like a politician.”
Barack Obama fell victim to the same suspicions. He also seemed inexperienced, and had ties to unfriendly elements, and had tendencies that seemed worrisome. So Israel treated Obama in a manner similar to the one with which it had treated other new presidents. But Obama is going to be different from many of them when Israel gets to the farewell stage. It is going to be different because Obama is one of very few presidents to which Israel will be happy to say goodbye. God bless America and its twenty second, two-term-limit, amendment to the constitution.
Thus, the 2016 election, as seen from Jerusalem, is different from most other election cycles. It is different in the sense that Israel’s usual tendency is to prefer the familiarity of the old and tried over the risks of the unknown. But in 2016 Israel is going to vote for change: for changing parties – because Israel is suspicious of the Democratic party and its support of the Obama policies; for changing personalities – because Israel looks at the most familiar, Hillary Clinton, with weary eyes; for changing trends – because something is inherently problematic for Israel if the Obama era continues into the next term.
Ask the average Israeli, and his preference for the next term will be one of two: Hillary Clinton or Jeb Bush. In fact, when pollster Menachem Lazar posed the Bush-Clinton question to Israelis a few months ago, she got 42% of the support, and Bush was at 37% (21% had “no opinion”). In the same poll, Bill Clinton got the highest mark as “best President for Israel” in the last couple of decades (since the Carter years), and George W. Bush came second. So you could say that all Israel wants now is a return to the Clinton years or to the Bush years (depending on one’s political tendencies), recognizing that, in fact, both Presidents were good for Israel, better than most other alternatives.
Of course, the problem is that no one can identify for Israel, at this early stage, the next Clinton and the next Bush. The Clinton and Bush currently in the race are not the same Clinton and Bush. They come with baggage. Clinton’s relations with Israel’s current leadership, especially so with Prime Minister Netanyahu, are no more than cordial. She is hardly a Netanyahu fan, and he was hardly impressed by her tenure as State Secretary. Bush is surely better than her – if officials in Jerusalem were to determine election outcomes – but he might want to prove that he is not like his brother, that he is more like his father.
So official Israel would probably vote for neither of these two. It would probably vote for someone else from the long list of candidates.
It would not vote for any of the Democratic candidates – neither Clinton nor for the other, less likely, candidates. It would vote for a Republican President, who would be backed by Republican voters, who have proved time and again in recent years that they support Israel more enthusiastically than Democratic voters. It would vote for a Republican president whose language is more in line with the language of Israel’s current government.
Naturally, Israel – official and unofficial – would also vote for a candidate that it deems good for America and for the world. When Kennedy met Ben Gurion he said, “I was elected by the Jews of New York. I have to do something for them. I will do something for you.” Ben Gurion, unimpressed by the blunt political undertone, responded, “you must do whatever is good for the free world.”
But one has to be honest: from an Israeli standpoint, “whatever is good for the free world” is often just a polite way of saying “whatever is good for Israel.” Israeli leaders, and citizens, generally believe – not without good reason – that what’s good for Israel is usually also good for the world. So Israel relies on an America that is engaged with the world, involved in Middle East affairs, projects authority and power. It wants America’s next president to be one that believes in such engagement – a Lyndsey Graham, not a Rand Paul. It wants America’s next president to be one that believes that what’s good for Israel is, generally speaking, good for the world – a Marco Rubio, or a Ted Cruz. And it also wants an American president that is serious, responsible, well grounded in reality. Not a hack, not a clown, not a radical, not a lightweight.
Hey – some voters would surely say – there is no such candidate. Hey – many Democratic voters would say – there is no such candidate on the Republican side. But the truth of the matter is that Israel, and the voters, do not know for sure. They did not know that Clinton would be such a good friend to Israel (and could easily suspect him of being lightweight; some still do). They did not know that Reagan would be transformational and significant in world affairs (and could easily suspect him of being a clown; some still do). They did not know that Bush the son would be so different from Bush the father (and they can easily make the opposite mistake with his brother Jeb). They did not know that Carter would become so vehemently hostile towards Israel. They did not know that Ford would become so tough with Israel’s first Rabin government.
The American system of government is a box full of surprises for a country so distant from America and yet so dependent on it. And that box will not be unwrapped in the coming weeks, it will not be unwrapped during the many months of primaries, and it will not even be unwrapped when the new president is elected. It will be unwrapped much later, when the new president appoints his or her team and devises his or her policies. It will be unwrapped when the constant noise of campaign rhetoric, when the happy days of campaign rallies, when the ridiculous days of campaign mishaps, when the pitiful days of campaign sloganeering – when these days are long gone.
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