The Political Interest

By Michael Kramer

Israel is to foreign policy as entitlement programs are to domestic affairs. Getting tough on either is considered politically suicidal, especially in a presidential-election year. Cowardice continues to dominate discussions about cutting Social Security and Medicare. Everyone knows the deficit will remain unmanageable until those programs are trimmed, but only Ross Perot has seriously proposed whacking them -- and Perot, on the sidelines, is the ultimate coward.

Israel is another matter. When the Bush Administration took office, it faced two choices. It could have made the usual noises with predictable results: no real progress toward peace in the Middle East but no roiling of American Jewish attitudes, a nonpolicy virtually guaranteed to deliver a normal 30% of the Jewish vote to the G.O.P. But George Bush and Jim Baker were eager to succeed where their predecessors failed, and that meant confrontation -- with U.S. Jews and with Yitzhak Shamir, the intransigent Israeli Prime Minister whose life's mission was retaining the occupied territories. As Bush and Baker fought and beat the Israeli lobby in Washington, they were reviled for encouraging anti-Semitism and were called anti-Semites themselves. They took the heat and prevailed. Today Israel's new government is scaling back the West Bank settlements, the peace negotiations may finally yield autonomy for the Palestinians Jerusalem rules, and the $10 billion in loan guarantees to help resettle Soviet Jews will probably be approved when Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin meets with Bush in mid-August.

For all this, the Administration deserves considerable credit. "Shamir was the roadblock, and the loan guarantees were Bush's stick," says Ze'ev Chafets, an Israeli journalist who served as Menachem Begin's spokesman. "Had Bush caved in to American Jewish pressures, Shamir would have been strengthened immeasurably. He would probably still be in power, and we'd still be stalemated."

How will the current state of play effect Bush in November? "A lot depends on whether the peace process is perceived as actually moving," says Rabbi Daniel Syme of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations. "In Bush's favor is the fact that for the first time, speedy progress is in everyone's interest. Israel's economy desperately needs the loan guarantees, so Rabin will do what he must to get them. The Arabs, as the saying goes, have never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity, but they clearly want to help Bush too." That's right, says a Saudi Cabinet minister who was present when Baker met with King Fahd last week. "We didn't need to be told that we Arabs can help Bush by showing some flexibility. We owe him for the gulf war, and in any event we see the Democrats as Zionists. Even ((Syrian President)) Assad understands that four more years of Bush would be better for him, which is why we don't expect Damascus to object too loudly when the loan guarantees are granted, even if Israel's settlement freeze is less than total."

For the moment, Bill Clinton is in the cold, as he deserves to be. For months, as he has pandered to Jewish voters, Clinton's logic has been tortured. He has routinely praised Bush and Baker for "getting the peace talks started," but he has just as regularly shot at the Administration for its loan guarantee stance, which was the key element in getting the players to the table in the first place. "It ain't complicated," concedes a Clinton aide. "We needed Jewish votes in the primaries. We played it one step at a time, and we can't waffle now. We're stuck. We can only hope there's enough residual bitterness about Bush's hardball tactics to depress his part of the Jewish vote in November."

While every vote counts, the power of Jewish ballots in a general election for President has been historically overstated. "For Jews, voting Democratic is like being circumcised," says William Helmreich, a City College of New York sociologist. "Neither is easily reversed. The Democrat gets 70% without blinking an eye. Barry Goldwater's 10% share in 1964 represents the G.O.P'S low point, and no one expects Bush to do that poorly." But assume he does. Look at California, Illinois, Pennsylvania and Maryland, four states with significant Jewish populations (and 109 electoral votes in 1992) that Bush carried by less than 2 points four years ago -- while capturing approximately 30% of the Jewish vote in each. Bush would have carried those states even if his share of the Jewish vote had sunk to Goldwater's 10%.

But this year's election in those states may be even closer, and thus the Jewish vote may achieve unprecedented significance. No one will know that until Nov. 3. Meanwhile, as most observers believe that Bush will recapture the G.O.P.'s traditional share of the Jewish vote, it is enough to say that the Administration's good policy may prove to be good politics -- and that if it doesn't, and Bush loses, President Clinton will be left with a more peaceful Middle East, for which he too will owe George Bush a great deal.