Navigate to News section

With Romney Visit, Bibi Places His Bet

Israeli prime minister risks relationship with U.S president into 2017

by
Marc Tracy
July 03, 2012
Prime Minister Netanyahu Sunday.(Abir Sultan/AFP/GettyImages)
Prime Minister Netanyahu Sunday.(Abir Sultan/AFP/GettyImages)

Some may try to argue that Mitt Romney’s planned trip to Israel is a mistake, or will backfire: that he could be seen as out-of-touch to what voters care about; that he might make a gaffe. They will be wrong. Romney is inoculated from charges that he is focusing on the wrong issue at the wrong time, because President Obama visited Israel as a candidate at almost the exact same point in the election cycle four years ago. Any gaffe he makes, like his earlier “do the opposite” gaffe—an honest-to-God gaffe, to be sure—is going to have a short shelf life in an election dominated by domestic issues. This is a smart move for Romney, allowing him to portray himself as strong on the token foreign policy/values issue of the campaign and highlight the fact that Obama didn’t visit Israel as president despite giving a big speech to the Muslim world in Cairo. (Here is Romney adviser Dan Senor on television explaining the rationale behind the trip. It’s quite persuasive.)

… But what about for Prime Minister Netanyahu? Here is where things get slightly more interesting. Netanyahu can cast himself as a benign party here, simply the leader of Israel looking for good relations with both sides of the American partisan aisle. But this jibes against Romney’s own narrative of a beef between Netanyahu and Obama. And it jibes also against what we know to be reality—that there is a beef between Netanyahu and Obama; that Netanyahu is a conservative who actually frequently calls to mind nothing so much as the world’s most talented and effective Republican politician; that Netanyahu would almost certainly prefer President Romney to President Obama.

Chemi Shalev goes through the potential problems for the prime minister: “Netanyahu will be hard pressed to convince anyone that his statements are benign and his intentions only honorable,” he notes. And he highlights the stakes:

If Romney goes on to win the elections, of course, Netanyahu’s gamble will pay handsome dividends, especially in a close contest in which Jewish voters in battleground states are perceived to have made all the difference. But if Obama wins—and the current odds are 50-50, no more and no less—Romney’s summer visit will add to the significant reservoirs of ill will that have already accumulated on both sides of the Israeli-American divide. Of course, people in Jerusalem might believe that things can’t get any worse, but in such situations, they usually do.

He’s overstating the importance of Jewish voters; it also isn’t exactly 50-50 (Nate Silver puts it at 68.6-31.4, and I imagine most Republicans would give Obama a slight edge right now). But Shalev is absolutely right to call this a gamble. And what’s remarkable is that it’s a gamble Netanyahu appears to be deliberately making. News of Romney’s trip came not from Team Romney but from Team Bibi—specifically Ron Dermer, Bibi’s aide-de-camp, whom Allison Hoffman profiled last year.

Florida-born, Frank Luntz-trained, Dermer comes out of American politics and has never taken his fingers off its pulse. He and his boss have every right to make this gamble; it’s still the U.S. voters who get to pick the next president. But is it wise? I’d hate to be Netanyahu—or Dermer—the day after Obama is re-elected.

Marc Tracy is a staff writer at The New Republic, and was previously a staff writer at Tablet. He tweets @marcatracy.