Friends of Israel Content With Clinton, Wary of Dole, Powell

By Lucille Barnes

Writers in the Jewish weekly press never tire of repeating that exit polls showed some 85 percent of American Jews voted for Bill Clinton in the 1992 presidential election. In terms of U.S. economic and military support for Israel, assistance to Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union, or just plain political patronage, most of those same writers feel Jewish voters made the right choice.

Guarded though such media reactions may be, Avinoam Bar-Yusef, Washington correspondent for the mass circulation Israeli daily Ma'ariv, expressed the general elation. In a Sept. 24, 1994 article entitled "The Jews Who Run Clinton's Court," he described his awe at the extraordinary Jewish presence in the White House (see "Other Voices," page 108, in the Nov./Dec. 1994 Washington Report). Outside the White House, President Clinton has appointed a second Jewish justice to the nine-member Supreme Court, a Jewish CIA director, John Deutch, with family ties to Israel, and Deutch in turn has installed Jews in all but one of the top echelon CIA positions.

"Czar" of Middle East policy in the State Department is Assistant Secretary of State Dennis Ross, a Jewish former fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. That's the "think tank" established some 15 years ago by directors and officials of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the Israeli government's principal Washington, DC lobby. That think tank's founding director, Martin Indyk, a former AIPAC official, now is U.S. ambassador to Israel, the first practicing Jew to hold the position.

Further, the odds are very good that the next secretary of state, if Clinton is re-elected, also will be Jewish. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Madeline Albright, who is Jewish, has made no secret that she is dying for the job if and when Warren Christopher resigns. She may have competition from Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke, who has been telling colleagues for years that he covets the position. Jewish weeklies report that although it is not clear whether Holbrooke is a "practicing Jew," he is of Jewish heritage.

Holbrooke, many of whose associates have been part of the pro-Israel "establishment" such as Richard Perle (see "People Watch," page 48 in this issue), is riding high in adminstration esteem after pulling off his nearly miraculous Bosnia peace agreement last November. Although Holbrooke has said he will leave the State Department early in 1996 to return to a Wall Street investment firm, he will remain available to undertake diplomatic missions on behalf of the president, and also to help with the Clinton campaign if called upon.

Some of the 1992 Jewish votes for Clinton in 1992 were really votes against George Bush's Mideast policies. However, given the return on organized Jewry's heavy investment in Clinton's campaign to unseat George Bush in 1992, it is likely that the rank-and-file "Jewish vote" and, more important to the Democrats, Jewish campaign contributors, will stick with Clinton in 1996, and perhaps in even higher numbers.

Nevertheless, there is unease at the Clinton family's growing legal problems. In 1992 syndicated columnist William Safire put his devotion to Israel above his career as a Republican speechwriter-turned-columnist, to announce in a 1992 column that because he objected to the pressures being applied to Israel by George Bush and then-Secretary of State James Baker, he was voting for Clinton. Now he has joined the Clinton bashers, suggesting in a column that Hillary Rodham Clinton is "a congenital liar."

What's going on? Is it possible that like-minded media figures feel that the tide of sleeze gradually rising around Clinton will doom his campaign? In that case, they may feel it would be prudent to start positioning Vice President Al Gore to take over. If possible, Gore has a more pro-Israel outlook than either Bill or Hillary Clinton.

For that matter, Gore might make a better president overall, and not just for friends of Israel. But Clinton's demonstrated weaknesses as a president are more than offset by his proven strengths as a campaigner.

Gore would be just as good for Israel, but can he win? It's a dilemma for Israel's legion of supporters in the media who, this writer believes, had an even larger role in Bush's defeat in the 1992 campaign than did the diversion of votes from Bush to Ross Perot.

A Hard-Eyed Israel-Lobby Look at Republican Candidates

If most Jewish "tycoons" traditionally raise money for Democrats, there always have been a few who go the other way. Led by the redoubtable Max Fisher of Detroit, a prominent FOI for two generations, they help bankroll Republican candidates. For example, one leader of national Republican Party outreach to the Jewish community in the 1992 campaign now directs a pro-Israel PAC. Obviously which way individual FOIs vote is a matter of personal choice. The end result, however, is that no matter who wins, there will be someone around to suggest pro-Israel candidates for the dozen key positions in the foreign affairs establishment, and for membership on the even fewer key congressional committees.

For this reason it's enlightening to follow what the Washington columnists in the weekly Jewish community newspapers have to say. They are guarded because they know that people like the writer of this column read them carefully. But their mainstream Jewish readers expect guidance and, ever so gingerly, James David Besser and former AIPAC legislative director Douglas Bloomfield provide it in their syndicated columns which are reprinted, in whole or in part, in many of the nation's Jewish weeklies.

So far Besser has been very cagy. In his Jan. 12 column in the Jewish Week of Queens, NY, he tersely noted that "the presidential campaign of Sen. Bob Dole (R-KS) has benefited handsomely from the recent budget standoff. And that's good news for Jewish Republicans, who have lined up strongly behind the GOP front-runner."

Besser goes on to quote Prof. Allan J. Lichtman of American University in Washington, DC, who cites rising polls for Dole as undercutting "the argument by his opponents that Dole isn't able to beat Clinton." Citing evidence that "support for both Clinton and Dole is very soft [and] the polls are likely to bounce up and down," Lichtman told Besser that is good news for Jewish Republicans who "don't have any other attractive choices in this race."

Does this mean that Dole's giant pander for Jewish votes in the upcoming New York primary by co-sponsoring legislation to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem by the end of 1999 worked, or just that traditional Jewish Republican donors like Fisher are holding their noses and going with the virtually sure winner of the Republican nomination? Besser doesn't say, but Bloomfield's writing leads to the latter conclusion. He calls Dole's "Israel record...friendly to frigid," and also quotes a number of reservations about the attitude on Israel of Dole's likely running mate, Colin Powell.

In a column headed "Republican front runner and the Jewish vote" in the Jan. 12 issue of the Washington Jewish Week, Bloomfield writes:

"While his rivals are attacking him with increasing ferocity, Dole is looking ahead to the autumn battle with President Clinton. And that means that after a hard turn to the right over the past year, he is trying to steer back to the center again, a move that could enhance his lead among Jewish Republicans...

"With the far right on the ascendancy in the House and Senate and with the goal of Republicans retaking the White House in sight, it is unlikely the right wing would stay home or join an independent campaign with a guaranteed loser like Pat Buchanan if faced with what they might see as a flawed Dole-Powell ticket. They also would know that if Dole picks a moderate running mate, he will have to compensate them in some way.

"Powell...would certainly help the GOP in the Jewish community where, notwithstanding the endorsements of a few wealthy Jewish fund-raisers, Dole's standing is shaky at best. His Israel record seems to go from friendly to frigid depending on his presidential ambitions, and his domestic social record, particularly in his recent leap to the right, has further distanced him, as has his party, from the mainstream Jewish voters...

"Where does Powell stand on issues of importance to the Jewish community? His memoir, recent interviews and speeches suggest he is close to mainstream Jewish voters on many domestic fiscal and social issues, but there is scant evidence of his thinking about relations with Israel.

"Interviews with Powell colleagues and associates in the Reagan and Bush administrations fail to provide a clear picture, but some outlines emerge.

"Powell was military assistant to Defense Secretary Caspar 'Cap' Weinberger, widely regarded as the leading anti-Israel voice in the Reagan cabinet. He later served as Ronald Reagan's national security adviser and George Bush appointed him chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

"'I did not perceive him as friendly to Israel in those posts. He did not perceive the strategic relationship with Israel as important or valuable at that time, but it's hard to tell whether that was him or his bosses,' said a former Pentagon colleague.

"'I never got a sense that, like some of the others who served with him at the Pentagon or the NSC, he wanted to push the strategic relationship as hard as they did,' he added.

"'He has evolved on the subject,' said one who served closely with him in both the Reagan and Bush administrations. 'When he worked for Cap, one did not see much evidence he saw it the right way. He was better at the NSC and pretty good at the JCS. He looked at Israel in a more favorable way then.'

"Said another: 'When he was with Weinberger, he was very faithful to Weinberger. As chief of staff, he seemed impressed and sympathetic towards Israel'...

"'Powell likes Jews, grew up with Jews and even speaks passable Yiddish,' said one of the former colleagues. The son of immigrants, Powell, 58, was raised in which he described as a 'strongly Jewish' neighborhood of the Bronx..."

Having offered the opinions of Friends of Israel who worked closely with Powell in the White House and Pentagon, Bloomfield offered some observations of his own: "Powell's best-selling memoir, My American Journey, has amazingly little to say about Israel. There are fewer than a dozen references in 643 pages, most merely in passing...Although some felt Powell would not go out of his way to help Israel, no one suggested he was in any way hostile. Former colleagues say he has no particularly attachment to Israel but would be openminded. After leaving Weinberger's staff, he showed greater interest and an appreciation of Israel's predicament. He has spoken frequently to Jewish groups of Israel's value as an American strategic asset...

"As a military officer and servant of people he worked for—Weinberger, Reagan, Bush—he had no political identity of his own. Now he must define his own view. He could be the next vice president of the United States."

Whether Powell will be, and whether Dole will be president, may depend to a very large extent on the media, where nuance becomes particularly important in a close race, as polls indicate a Clinton-Dole matchup might be. Writers in the Jewish weeklies seem guardedly hostile to Dole, skeptical but hopeful about Powell, and uninterested in any of the other Republicans, whom they perceive as unlikely to win.

The journalists to watch, however, are those in the mainstream who took the lead in destroying Bush, starting from the day he "went public" with his objections to granting loan guarantees to Israel without linking them to Israeli cooperation in the peace process. That was the day a poll indicated 86 percent of the American public supported him on the issue. It also was the day that laid the groundwork for the 85 percent Jewish support of his opponent.

Most Washington journalism is "pack journalism," with participants easily diverted from one quarry to the next in search of a headline or a soundbite. Prominent in the pack, however, are media personalities with personal agendas that seldom stray far from the agendas of Israel's Labor or Likud parties. Many of these media FOIs, it appears, have been in full cry for many months to destroy Dole—if not in time for the Republican primaries, at least by November. They have longer memories than followers in the pack, and recall clearly that in the past Dole has been one of the extremely rare senators who dared question the level of aid to Israel, spoke against moving the Embassy to Jerusalem in a previous election year, and from time to time turned his caustic wit on Israel.

They will seize on any Dole misstep and dwell on it. In the 1992 election they were able to divert the campaign from the theme of American leadership in the world to "the economy, stupid" and downplay the fact that the economy was in fact recovering from the tailspin into which it had fallen after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.

Challenged by Dole to take an active role in Bosnia, Clinton accepted the challenge and to date the gamble has paid off. A more daring Clinton gamble, in Haiti, also has paid off, enabling the president to neutralize the Senate leader's initial advantage in the foreign affairs field. What's left, barring some sensational Whitewater revelation or a major Dole blunder, are the issues of character, core beliefs and experience on which Dole has the obvious advantage, and the issues of youth, vision and energy, which so far favor Clinton.

Which trail the media pack tries to follow will tell voters a lot about which candidate most friends of Israel favor. So far, the answer is obvious.

Lucille Barnes covers political affairs in Washington for domestic and foreign publications.