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                                                                                THE POLITICAL INTEREST, Page 44 

Bush's Reward For Courage


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.