Lessons in the Limits of Politics

I stood in the Rose Garden contemplating President Barack Obama as he gave a statement about the resumption of the “peace process” between Palestinians and Israelis. I could not help but think that the man standing before us was completely changed from last year at his press conference with President Mubarak. Unlike the man I observed at that press conference, this one had gray hairs spreading on his head and wore a haggard face. Yet more importantly his verbal expressions lacked that quality of certainty and deep excitement that he once used to captivate his listeners, kindling their hopes and dreams. Truthfully, Obama is not the only one who appears lackluster these days. Indeed, his Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has lost the quality of brightness that was on display during the days of her campaign to become the first woman president of the United States.

It is the diplomat George Mitchell who alone remains in much the same state as he has for many years, which may be because he practices diplomacy rather than politics. Or perhaps it is because he is an employee who knows that the world has its ups and downs and rarely stays as it is for long. In a way he knows better than most the limits of people to change history, yet changing history is exactly the mission to which politicians devote themselves.

The change that has happened to Barack Obama is nothing new. We saw it take place before with George Bush. Whoever compares the state of Bush’s administration during his first term as president to his second will find a big difference: the spontaneity of his first term gave way to deliberative and careful study in the second. Bush paid a great price by pursuing politics characterized by the former quality: he had to make up ground later by resorting to the latter characteristics. As regards the Arab-Israeli conflict, Bush’s initial conviction was to completely and necessarily disregard this conflict because it seemed unsolvable. In time, this attitude changed. Bush made an effort to hold direct talks at Annapolis in November of 2007, enabling negotiators to dot the i's and cross the t's of an understanding in principle that a two-state solution is the final goal of the peace process.

Obama is currently passing through an analogous stage, but the difference between Obama and his predecessor is that the “limits” of Obama’s brand of politics have appeared even before the end of his first year — it took Bush more than an entire presidential term until his approach showed itself to be in need of review. Obama’s view of the Arab-Israeli conflict — quite the opposite of Bush’s view — is that the conflict is not merely historically important, but rather that its continuation represents a threat to U.S. national security. Still, talk is one thing and action quite another. As heads of state all over the world have learned time and time again, when one enters the corridors of political intrigue the bullets start flying one’s direction — both metaphorically and literally. Even in the best of conditions one will be afflicted by enormous political pressure. If one reads the memoirs of U.S. presidents who have served in the past few decades, one will discover that despite the many crises and wars that they have confronted around the world, the most intense situation is the conflict between the Arabs and the Israelis.

In a way, an examination of Obama’s path shows that he is heading in the opposite direction of George Bush. The latter believed in an American role to shape the world and in employing the military power and prowess enjoyed by the U.S. in order to reap political, economic and strategic spoils on a global level. By the end of his first term it appeared that such an approach was completely detached from reality. The tragic drama of Iraq and Afghanistan was followed by an economic crisis caused in part by those wars. There was no doubt that a dose of “realism” was necessary in order for Bush to more effectively cope with a complex international environment.

Barack Obama comes from a different world, as one who comprehends the difference between Texas in the south and Massachusetts in the northeast would know. His vision of liberalism is a result of his perspective as a graduate of Harvard and Columbia. For him, the world ought to be administered as though countries are corporations that can reach understandings and compromise to reach mutually beneficial agreements that ensure everyone’s happiness. In such a vision, no problem is impossible to solve. People simply need to be rational enough to fathom the origins of problems and patient enough to find solutions to them.

However, reality has never been kind to U.S. presidents, seeing as it is never as they imagine it to be. As midterm congressional elections approach, Obama does not have much to show for himself. Even the new health care law is so divisive that it has led to factionalism within the Democratic party. The U.S. is withdrawing from Iraq just as the president had promised, but the U.S. is leaving Iraq without the formation of a government despite six months of political wrangling among Iraqis themselves and between Iraqis and Americans. The practice of democracy in Iraq has left the people of the country with the impression that it is a frightfully destructive and divisive system that has yet to build the institutions necessary for capable governance.

In Afghanistan it does not appear that the American strategy has made much progress either. Rather, the war against the Taliban has continued so that threats from Pakistan can be effectively contained. After months of believing that the U.S. was on its way to leaving the economic crisis behind, indicators are once again pointing to another contraction. On the Arab-Israeli front, despite the serious effort applied by the Obama administration, they were unable to put a stop to the construction of new Israeli settlements in the West Bank, an issue of dire concern to the Palestinians. That was followed by the failure of indirect consultations to plant the seeds of confidence on each side. Now Obama’s only recourse is for the two sides to jump into direct talks under murky pretenses so that perhaps a miracle of some kind or another can be accomplished.

Maybe the point at which George Bush began to change was his realization of the limits of military power. Moreover, he realized the limits of the power of the United States when working alone on the international stage. It is good that Obama has arrived at a similar point in his presidency, in that he realizes the limits of his politics as regards the building of international coalitions to administer a world troubled by crises, globalization and emotions stirred by nationalism and religious extremism. Obama said in his Rose Garden address that many countries affirm the importance of establishing a Palestinian state but are not doing anything to help in establishing it. Here he was referring to the Arab countries that are unwilling for speak with the Israelis about the state they are demanding. This also applies to the European countries and the other major countries of the world that incessantly blame the U.S. because they believe that the U.S. is moving unilaterally and wants to be the world’s police officer. Yet, if a U.S. president comes to them in a spirit of cooperation, he does not find any help from them.

The surprising thing about the situation is that Bush, with his extreme conservatism, and Obama, with his apparent liberalism, both reached the limits of the abilities of their different brands of ideologically-motivated politics. They continued to practice their own brand of politics even past the point at which there were any possibilities that their approaches could make any difference. Reality is always too complex for any one approach to politics to work in dealing with it. Obama, like Bush before him, is going through a moment of despair because he is realizing that the world has to be treated as it is and not how ideologues on the left (or the right) would like it to be.

But this begs the question: how can the world be understood as it is? Even if it could be, the confusion would not be any less deep than it is now. There will always be moments of test and trial, even when the dust clears. Obama is going through one such moment right now, entitled: “negotiations between Netanyahu and Abu Mazen [Mahmoud Abbas]”!