Ally by Michael B. Oren

Author:Michael B. Oren [Oren, Michael B.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2015-06-23T00:00:00+00:00

Through the Dust Darkly

On January 5, 2011, Republican legislator John Boehner took the oath as Congress’s sixty-first Speaker of the House of Representatives. Renowned for smoking filterless Camels and retaining a year-round tan, the quiet Ohioan was also noted for crying in public. “That’s not a tan,” Obama once said, roasting him, “it’s rust.” Boehner indeed wept as he assumed America’s third-most-powerful office. But for all those tears, the moment capped the Republicans’ retaking of the House in the largest midterm election victory since the 1940s. The Tea Party, initially dismissed as insignificant by my congressional liaisons, proved to be a potent component in the GOP’s victory, which also swept most state and gubernatorial contests.

One Democrat who nevertheless retained her seat was Gabrielle Giffords, an engaging representative from Arizona. Three days after Boehner’s swearing-in, a crazed gunman burst into a rally she was holding near Tuscon, killed six people, and wounded twelve, including Giffords. Shot point-blank in the head, she survived in part thanks to an Israeli-made high-tech bandage applied by medics on the scene. Even then her recovery required many excruciating months and would never be complete. A shattered America listened as the president, quoting from the book of Job, gleaned meaning from meaningless pain and urged divided politicians to begin a “national conversation…in a way that heals, not in a way that wounds.” Commentators from both parties deemed the speech worthy of Dr. Martin Luther King.

Keeping up with this whirlwind, analytically and emotionally, would be trying for any ambassador. As Israel’s envoy, though, I had to gauge the impact of the Republicans’ victory on vital issues such as the peace process and Tehran’s nuclear program. Though foreign-policy making is a presidential prerogative, the House could exert its influence by, for example, suspending aid to a recalcitrant Palestinian Authority or by intensifying sanctions on Iran. There were dozens of freshman congressmen to meet and new Foreign Affairs, Armed Services, and Appropriations Committee chairmen to engage. And, at the height of this hustling, there was the need to stop and grapple with tragedy. I knew Gabby Giffords, a Jewish woman firmly committed to Israel, as well as her husband, astronaut Mark Kelly, who attended my high school. The Tucson shooting—perhaps more than any of the arbitrary massacres that sporadically traumatize Americans—stunned me.

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The relentless march of such events raises a kind of dust that can blind even the most observant ambassador. The task is to somehow anticipate long-term trends—to see through the soot—and chart the road ahead. Squinting, as it were, in early February, I discerned the future path of the peace process. President Obama, I wrote to Netanyahu, would soon unveil a major diplomatic initiative and set out his vision of peace.

My case, logically at least, was weak. After suffering such a stinging midterm defeat, while wrestling with the Arab Spring, why would the president risk alienating more Americans and churning up what had become—paradoxically—the Middle East’s calmest corner? What, moreover, were the chances for success? I once heard Obama

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