I was starting to get depressed.
It seems that everyone I speak to in the Jewish community is worried. Obama is pressuring Israel, but not the Palestinians, they say. He’s naïve about Iran. And why did he go to Cairo and say that Israel’s founding was rooted in the tragic history of the Holocaust?
These, by the way, are the folks who voted for him in the last election.
I had breakfast in the Senate dining room this morning. After, in an ornate hallway, I picked up copies of three of the best newspapers covering DC politics.
The Hill newspaper had this four column lead: “Dems reel on healthcare.”
Congressional Democrats and the White House are scrambling to regain their footing after a series of setbacks has stalled political momentum to reform the nation’s healthcare system … The Democratic roll-out on health care has encountered significant bumps in the road.
Roll Call blared: “Health Care Bipartisanship Fades.”
As Senate health care negotiations enter the final phase at the committee level, Democrats are emphasizing their own policy preferences and conceding the unlikelihood of attracting significant Republican support for the legislation.
Obama’s top domestic priority, down the chutes, before anyone’s even seen a bill.
But, wait. There’s more.
Politico decreed: “Obama Draws Rural Dem Ire.”
Angered by White House decisions on everything from greenhouse gases to car dealerships, congressional Democrats from rural districts are threatening to revolt against parts of President Barack Obama’s ambitious first-year agenda.
The gay community is angry at him. Pesticide manufacturers are upset about the organic garden on the White House lawn. Doctors booed him this week for refusing to cap malpractice law suits. On Israel, my best friend’s mother feels personally betrayed.
And then I did something that everyone inside the Beltway, and everyone active in the Jewish subset of that world, should do – at least once.
On the way from the Capitol to my hotel, I stopped off at the Newseum on Pennsylvania Ave. I didn’t go inside. I just perused the exhibit they have along the sidewalk: morning front pages from around the country and the world. More than 50 in all, posted, neatly, in handsome window boxes.
Are you sitting? Brace yourself.
Exactly three front pages had stories on health care. One of those was the USA Today, and the other two — The Alabama Gadsen Times and the Mississippi Hattiesburg American – actually ran an AP article with favorable headlines, about how the Dems were trimming the cost of the health care bill.
The Wyoming Star Tribune had a story about health care, too – Medicaid, focusing on cuts in the Wyoming department of health.
Only nine of fifty newspapers had front page articles about the uprising in Iran – and that includes the NY Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal. The Anchorage Daily news had the story, but it gave more prominence to a story about Gov. Palin’s pick for attorney general.
The Kentucky Enquirer did run a piece about concerns over nuclear power – but not in Tehran. A new facility is planned for Piketon, Ohio.
In Montana, the Billings Gazette gave huge play to an animal cruelty case. The Morgantown, West Virginia Dominion Post had unsettling pictures of emergency workers trying to extricate a teenager from his overturned car. The news in Kenosha, Wisconsin, was about a bus that nearly tumbled down a city staircase. The Home News Tribune – my former hometown paper in Central Jersey – trumpeted: “Jeweler’s Death Still a Mystery.”
The stories about Iraq had a local angle. (The Telegraph, in Nashua, N.H., gave prominent play to a 23-year-old Salem High grad killed in Iraq over the weekend.) The scandals had a local flavor. (The Detroit News had a story about Conyers – not Michigan Congressman John – but city councilwoman Monica, facing bribery charges.) “’Magical Season’ ends for Cinderella Team” had nothing to do with the Magic of Orlando, and everything to do with the Southern Mississippi Golden Eagles, whose baseball team lost in the College World Series.
There were front page stories about swine flu and fires, gas leaks and calorie counting, floods, misbehaving teachers, and great hamburgers.
Sure, you could sit down and google all of these local papers, and view them one at a time. But walking along the row of windows, looking at one after another, had a downright cathartic effect, all its own. It was as if, all at once, the inside-the-Beltway-Jewish-world bubble I’m living in burst, and a burden lifted. Not a single story about how President Obama is dragging the country over a cliff while simultaneously destroying the special relationship between the United States and Israel!
Here’s the thing: Obama knows what’s on the front pages of all those newspapers. He has a long view. He knows that even people who disagree with him are giving him a lot of leeway right now. (The Times has his approval rating at 63 percent today.)
He understands that most people – including most Jews – aren’t paying that close attention to Israel at this point; they are not parsing every word of his Cairo speech or waiting to hear Bibi Netanyahu’s response. They are, first and foremost, worried about their jobs and their health and their communities; they want their kids to come home safe from prom.
Yet at the same time, Obama knows Israel is critically important, not only to the United States, but to a broad swath of American Jews. That’s why he goes so far to affirm and reaffirm the special relationship between the U.S. and Israel; he knows full well that the Jewish claim to Israel is first and foremost about the land; he has filled his White House with pro-Israel Jews who send their kids to Jewish day school, like Dan Shapiro and Rahm Emanuel. Dennis Ross, the Middle East negotiator and staunch friend of Israel, just moved from the State Department to the White House, where he will have the president’s ear.
Obama is pressing a peace process that most Jews support, because he believes it is ultimately in Israel’s best interest, the only way for the Jewish state to achieve true security. My sense is that by and large, Jews — from Nashua to Hattiesburg to Kenosha — understand this, and hope fervently that he succeeds.