Rosner’s Domain Blog

With the race over, and with a new president taking office soon, it’s time to look to the future. We did it the other day with the panel’s expectations from the next president, and today we have an answer to a more personal question: whom does the panel wants as Secretary of State?

In short: Joe Lieberman. But that’s no longer relevant. On the Democratic side - and not for the first time - Bill Richardson is the person this panel would vote for. Richardson, as far as the Israel Factor goes, is a good candidate both for Mideast peace envoy, and as Secreatry of State.

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I’m spending election day in the land of last chance - namely Pennsylvania. It’s hard to imagine a scenario under which McCain can win this election without a positive outcome (for him) in Pennsylvania. Do I think such surprise is coming? It’s not happening in the polling places I visited this morning (Pittsburgh), but this can be a misleading impression. Maybe in Murtha-land it’s happening for McCain. In the last 24 hours I saw the Obama-Wright TV ad at least 10 times - and I didn’t even spend much time in front of the television.

Anyway, a couple of notes for this election morning:

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They expect a President Obama to have a dialogue, on a presidential level, with Iran. And you know what? More than half of them are fine with it. Let Obama try this dialogue, they say. Problem is, they also believe that the chances to stop Iran’s nuclear program diplomatically are not great, and that it is John McCain, not Obama, who’s more capable of doing such thing without the use of force. And what if all efforts fails? Obama is very unlikely to act forcefully against Iran, McCain is more likely to do such thing - but still not very likely.

Three days before the US election, and Israelis have different expectations from the two candidates. The Israel Factor panel of experts - a group of eight former officials and scholars who’ve been ranking the presidential race for the last two years – was asked to answer a difficult question: what do they expect from the next president?

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I’ve just received the responses for the last survey of The Israel Factor - a project in which a group of eight Israeli professors and former officials was following the US election and ranking the candidates and their positions. After more than two years since we started the Factor, this will be the last survey before the election, and it included many questions that I will post in the coming days. This first post is dedicated to the question: who’d be a good choice for “special envoy” to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. The panel got and ranked a list of names - not all of them are actually candidates to occupy this position. Bottom line: The panel thinks that Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico is a candidate worthy of serving as such “special envoy”. Condi Rice? not so much.

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This last Israel Factor survey for Haaretz compares the two near-certain nominees - Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama - on a number of issues that are all important to Israelis to some extent.

But a word of caution is due before the numbers: what you see in the table is the average mark given by eight panelists. This, as I will explain later, hardly tells the whole story of the survey. While McCain has the edge - as the numbers clearly show - it is not as clear-cut as one might think without factoring in other information.

However, let’s start with the average scores. The marks range from 1-5 - the higher the number the better the panel believes the candidate to be (for Israel) on a specific topic.

So, McCain has the edge, but is it by consensus?

Looking at the data more closely (I can do that, you can’t, because we promised the panelists we would not reveal the specific marks given by each panelist), one learns that the picture is more nuanced.

This is not the case for every topic. Iran is one issue on which the panel always agreed, quite harmoniously. that McCain is the right candidate as far as Israel is concerned. This hasn’t changed much. Even panelists more receptive to Obama’s candidacy still mostly prefer McCain when it comes to Iran.

But this advantage becomes more nuanced when dealing with other issues. Case in point: Iraq. Three panelists think that Obama is the one with a better plan for Iraq. Similarly, three panelists believe that Obama will strive no less than McCain to maintain the good relations between the U.S. and Israel.

But on U.S.-UN relations - a thorny topic for Israelis as they rely on American support at the UN - the panel is basically split. Four experts want McCain to take on the problematic world body, but four believe that Obama is either as good as (two panelists) or better than (another two) McCain. This can hardly be viewed as the total support for McCain that one might surmise from the (average) results of the survey - 3 for Obama, 3.5 for McCain.

However, the most interesting case is the one dealing with the president as peace-maker, both on the Israel-Palestine and the Israel-Syria fronts.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict in particular is an issue with which Obama has been struggling for many months now, explaining, calming, and promising not to be the candidate of “pressure.”

His success with the panel is remarkable. Three panelists believe he will deal with this issue as well as McCain, another two think he would actually be better. This means that only three panelists, a minority, prefer McCain due to fears that an Obama administration would be problematic for Israel vis-a-vis the conflict with the Palestinians. With Syria it’s a little different: three panelists prefer Obama while five prefer McCain.

And of course, the panelists have different motives for such assessments. Some think that neither Obama nor McCain will be able to achieve anything, and believe that Obama is smart enough not to try when failure is guaranteed. That’s why they see no reason for real worry.

Others, however, favor Obama because they think it is in Israel’s best interests to feel some American pressure, and think that Obama might try to nudge Israel in areas in which it has difficulties making its own decisions.

Whatever the reason, the bottom line is clear, at least on the more troublesome Palestinian front: the panel does not fear Obama, and does not see him as someone ready to make Israel make unacceptable concessions.

For a candidate that is still under constant attack and suspicion regarding this issue, this is something to highlight. Most Israeli experts on this panel do not see any reason to fear any “pro-Palestinian” tendency on the part of Barack Obama.

1.

On the eve of the second Super Tuesday, the Israel Factor panel was left with three candidates only to choose from - Republican John McCain, and Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Tomorrow, or very shortly, we might need to eliminate Clinton - or not. But in the meantime, these are the three left in the field who we are ranking. For those with short memories: we started this project ranking 24 candidates and added two along the way.

As we saw last month, the panel prefers McCain as the next president rather than Obama, but is split on the question of Clinton vs. McCain. As has been its habit since we started the Factor, the panel still ranks Obama at the bottom.

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McCain is ranked higher than Clinton, because unlike last month, when we asked the panelists to pick their nominee, this time all we asked is for a 1-10 mark to each of the candidates, and not to choose between them. Two panelists whom we know prefer a Clinton president over a McCain president still gave them the same mark.

2.

But here is the question whose answer we most to know: What’s wrong with Obama? Why is it that the panel keeps his ranking fairly low?

We asked, and got an answer. Presenting the panel with 16 possible reasons for ranking him lower than others, we now know a lot more about the considerations leading the experts to think that Obama will not be as good as Clinton and McCain, as far as Israel’s interests go.

Here is the table, followed by few remarks of analysis:

1. This is fairly self-explanatory. The good news for Obama: It’s not that they think he is bad as much as they think the others are better. The bad news: most of the things working against him in this survey are things he can’t change, such as his record and experience.

2. Two policy-related matters were marked with an average of higher than 3, and, interestingly, these were not matters specifically concerning Israel but rather issues related to Obama’s overall strategy: Iran and terror.

3. Many of the issues on which there was a lot of discussion here in America regarding Obama and Israel (whether he is Muslim or not, his pastor, and Malley and Brzezinski) are generally dismissed by the panel as almost insignificant. On the other hand, the panel does recognize the fact that Obama made a lot of statements that can only be considered as friendly and accommodating toward Israel. Of the eight panelists, only one is really concerned about statements Obama made (giving a mark of 4 for this issue), and only one seems to think (also a 4) that he did not emphasize U.S.-Israel relations enough (what counts as enough, is another question).

3.

Here’s one more interesting nugget:

Using the method I employed last month, here is how the different panelists were ranking Obama on Iran. Panelists in blue are those who said last month that they prefer Clinton to McCain, and in red are those who want McCain as president.

Clearly, for those preferring McCain, Iran is an overwhelming issue, and all of them ranked Obama low on this question. Those preferring Clinton (except one) were not terribly concerned by Obama’s intention to negotiate with the Iranian president. This is especially interesting considering the fact that on the issue of Iran it seems as if Clinton is closer to McCain than she is to Obama (she doesn’t want such meeting and voted for the Kyl-Lieberman amendment designating Iranian forces as terrorists).

To be continued…

Our Israel Factor panel was toying this week with something that Hillary Clinton would definitely call a hypothetical question (and refuse to address): Which American candidate can work best with which Israeli leader?

Knowing that Americans go to the polls in a few months, and reasonably assuming that Israel will also hold elections sometime next year (it could happen earlier, if Ehud Barak meant business when he said this week that the Labor Party will leave the coalition sooner than people think), determining the nature of relations between the leaders of the two countries for years to come could be an important issue.

Predicting the nature of such future personal relations between leaders is, of course, more a game than it is a serious analytical forecast. However, at this point in the race we have gotten to know the three American candidates, and we are familiar with the policies and the personalities of the possible Israeli candidates ? so why not play?

The task was simple: rank from 1-5 each of the possible matches. A score of 1 means a not-so-hot relationship, 5 is a perfect match. We asked the panel to rank the three Americans in the race against four possible Israeli candidates: current prime minister and not very popular Ehud Olmert; the fairly popular foreign minister, Tzipi Livni; the not-so-popular, but still defense minister and leader of the Labor Party, Ehud Barak; the leading-in-the-polls Likud leader and former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

These were the results. Comments to follow:

A. Two of the Israeli leaders in this poll have a history of relations with the Clinton family. Barak got along very well with President Bill Clinton in the short time he was prime minister. No wonder the panel predicts he will get along quite well with the other Clinton now in the race. Netanyahu, on the other hand, didn’t have such good relations with Bill Clinton or the Clinton administration (senior U.S. officials celebrated when he was defeated by Barak in 1999), and the panel does not expect him to get along with Hillary Clinton.

B. Barak is McCain’s favorite Israeli politician. In every conversation I have had in Washington regarding McCain and Israel, and in every instance when I asked people which Israeli is McCain’s friend, Barak’s name was mentioned first ? and in many cases last. The two have met many times in the past, both when Barak was in office, and during his years as a businessman. They share a military background, and their outlook on world affairs ? hawkish but realistic - is in many ways similar too.

The downside with this couple: Barak does not appear at present to be capable of winning the Israeli election.

C. All in all, Netanyahu is the Israeli leader less likely to get along with an American counterpart; Obama is the American less likely to get along with the Israeli. This is quite reasonable, given this panel perceives Obama to be the least favorable candidate from an Israeli standpoint, and that previous Likud governments (Netanyahu, but also his predecessors, Shamir and Begin), did not always get along with U.S. administrations). The fact the combination of Obama-Netanyahu ranked last was almost obvious, considering Obama’s anti-Likud comments not so long ago.

D. Livni is the only woman is the Israeli field, so I think it’s no wonder the panel assumes she will do well with the American woman, and not as well with the man from an older (and more chauvinistic?) generation.

E. I asked some of the panelists to explain the score they gave to the different couples. Here is some of what I heard:

* Clinton KNOWS Netanyahu, and will NOT get along with him no matter what. She knows Barak and thinks she can handle him, although he is NOT her cup of tea

* Obama is a mystery, so the marks he got reflect more a fear of unpredictability

* Olmert has the potential to be the White House’s preferred PM, but in 2009 he will be too weak to help any president make any progress, whatever the issue

* McCain does not have the patience for Livni

* Barak gets the best marks by default, not for his personal qualities

1.

Analyzing data for The Israel Factor has become a habit in the weeks of every important vote.

Just before the Iowa caucuses our panel concluded that “On just three questions is there something close to a consensus: The panel feels that it doesn’t yet know enough about Huckabee, and it also feels that it is familiar enough with Clinton. They are also certain that Clinton is the better Democratic candidate for Israel.”

A week later, just after the New Hampshire primaries, the panel responded to our question regarding the Republican candidates and Iran thus:

“McCain, with his relatively measured response [’don’t think that this wasn’t a serious situation of the utmost seriousness in one of the most important waterways in the world’], was acceptable to all panelists. He got a score of 4 from all of the panelists save two (who gave him a 3 and a 5), showing that they all liked what he said, but weren’t completely bowled over.”

2.

Before Florida voted, when we realized that Giuliani would probably not be able to stay in the race for long, we indulged in some guess work, to try to understand how the panel would react to a two-way race between Clinton and McCain: “This month, there are three panelists who rank McCain higher than Clinton, two who rank Clinton higher, and three who give them the same mark.”

So who would the panel prefer - a President Clinton or a President McCain? Here is your answer, for now:

3.

Understanding how and why the panel is tied regarding such race requires some explaining.

Here are two other questions we asked this week:

The differences are minor, and more importantly, the panel is in agreement: All the panelists but one gave McCain a 4 or a 5 on both questions. All the panelists but two on the first question and one on the second gave Clinton a 4 or a 5 on both.

If you want to see a difference you’d have to turn to the issue of Iran. Clinton got a 3.875 for her policy regarding Iran, McCain a little more, with 4.375. But what’s really interesting here is to see the way the panelists who favored each of these candidates differed on the question of Iran.

The figures above in blue are the members of the panel who support Clinton for president and the figures in red represent McCain supporters. As you can see, Clinton supporters scored McCain almost as highly on Iran (two scores of 5, one of 4 and one of 3), while three out of four supporters of McCain for president gave Clinton lower marks (two scores of 4 and two of 3), dragging down her average.

As we argued time and again, for the Israel Factor, Iran has been a very good predictor in this presidential race.

4.

And here is another example. We asked the panel to judge to what extent they trust the candidate not to change their policy positions after the elections. McCain, again, fares better (4.25 to Clinton’s 3.75), but look who’s dragging her down.

Three out of the four panelists who’d rather have her as president don’t see much difference between the two on the question of reliability. But of the four who think McCain is the better candidate for Israel, it’s a mirror image: three rank him higher, and only one thinks they are they same.

5.

And there are also things on which Clinton fares better. For example: The question of “emotional attachment”. Here, Clinton is definitely the favorite (she gets a 4, McCain a 2.125).

And even more so, as you can see, here even the panelists who generally prefer McCain see Clinton as the one more attached to the Jewish state.

What does it mean?

As we’ve seen in the past, this panel never thought of McCain as an emotionally attached friend of Israel. Some panel members think such attachment is critically important. Those are the panelists who’d rather have Clinton as president.

6.

And here is another good predictor of the Clinton-McCain race - but also a confusing one. A couple of months ago we asked the panel what kind of American involvement it wants in the peace process. Five said “like Bill Clinton or more,” three said “like George Bush or less.” Now look how these panelists voted, taking into account their answers on the current question of whether they prefer Clinton (blue) or McCain (red):

Apparently, the panel thinks Clinton would be more heavily involved in the peace process and don’t always like that. Here’s proof: When we asked more than a year ago how involved a President Clinton would be, three out of the four who thought she’d be heavily involved now prefer McCain. (The results below show a breakdown of how the panel scored Clinton when we asked this question last year, with those who now prefer McCain shown in red and those who support Clinton in blue).

Does this mean that the panel does not want a peace process? Not at all. As we saw a couple of months ago, it certainly does.

7.

Plenty of new panel data this week.

Yesterday we started with the more entertaining, easy, questions (True or false: Obama is pro-Palestinian, McCain will appoint James Baker).

Today we have Clinton vs. McCain, and later in the week we’ll examine Obama vs. McCain.

1.

Earlier this week, the Israel Factor panel compared McCain and Clinton and was asked to choose between the two. The result: a tie. Four of the panelists said they’d prefer a President Clinton, the other four thought a President McCain was better from an Israeli point of view.

Today we will deal with other two-way races - one still possible, the other maybe in 2012: McCain vs. Obama and Clinton vs. the no-longer-a-candidate-but-still-loves-America Romney (when we asked, he still was a candidate). Unlike the Clinton-McCain race, in both these cases the verdict was clear and the panel was unanimous or near unanimous.

2.

Let’s start with the still viable McCain and Obama.

The panel, as expected from the marks these two candidates have been getting month in and month out for a year and a half now, prefer McCain.

Here’s a table comparing their marks from the panel on Iran:

As we have done before, the panelists who supported Clinton over McCain in our previous analysis are in blue, those who want McCain in red. As you can see, even two of the four “Clinton blue” panelists - and we are talking about experts who clearly don’t have a problem with a Democrat in the White House - trust McCain on a nuclear Iran better than they trust Obama.

3.

But the panel’s real problem with Obama is that despite all the effort and all the statements that he made in past weeks and months, they are still unconvinced that Obama cares enough about Israel.

Earlier in the week we explained that “this panel never thought of McCain as an emotionally attached friend of Israel.” This is true when one compares McCain to Clinton. But look what happens when McCain is compared to Obama on this same question (blue still represents pro-Clinton panelists and red pro-McCain):

4.

Now let’s look at the Clinton-Romney race. Romney is no longer in the race, but one learns something here about the preferences of the panel.

Take a look at this table: The panel trust Clinton on a whole range of issues important to Israel.

5.

Now look at this table. It’s complicated, but even more revealing. In the upper row are the marks Romney got from the eight panelists on his position regarding Iraq. In the second row are the marks Clinton got on the same questions.

And here comes the tricky part: in red are those panelists who prefer McCain over Clinton, in blue those supporting Clinton over McCain. What you see here is remarkable: Even two of the panelists who support McCain over Clinton gave Clinton higher marks on Iraq than the marks they gave Romney.

Wouldn’t you think Romney’s policy in Iraq would be more similar to the one McCain prescribes than to the one Clinton supports?

Apparently, some members of the panel don’t see it like that. Either they did not believe that Romney would actually follow the policy he swore he supported - or they thought that the identity of the candidate is more important than the policy s/he vows to pursue, prior to the election.

6.

And what about a race between Obama and Romney? We asked the panel about such race too, but will not bother you with the specifics. Bottom line: Five preferred Romney, three thought Obama was the better candidate

A couple of days before Super Tuesday, we sent The Israel Factor panel another set of questions dealing with just four candidates: Democrats Clinton and Obama, and Republicans McCain and Romney. We will publish and analyze the panel’s responses in two or three installments over the coming days.

In our first of the series, the panel rates 12 statements that we took from different publications, interviews and other sources - not all of them high quality sources. Selecting these statements does not mean that we endorse or believe any of them is correct (or incorrect). We selected them only because we thought they would provide us with some keys to better understand how the panel sees this race and the candidates’ approach to Israel and the Middle East. Each statement was scored from 1 (untrue) to 5(true).

1.

Let’s start with the statements about which the group is more or less unanimous:

The panel believes the role of president is most important, and not that of secretary of state. Six of the eight panelists gave the statement claiming otherwise a score of less than 3. And by the way, six panelists also believe that Condi Rice as McCain’s vice president would mean some trouble for Israel (we didn’t ask if they believe he will try to nominate her).

Also in relative agreement:

The panel does not think Hillary Clinton will be willing to “trade” Lebanon in order to make it easier for the U.S. - or Israel - to deal with Syria. On the other hand, most of the panel does believe that Clinton is not the most determined of candidates when it comes to stopping Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Not one of the panelists gave this statement a top score 5, while all but one gave it a score of 3 or a 4.

The panel does not think Obama is hiding more pro-Palestinian tendencies for political reasons, but rather takes him at his word. They also do not believe that he is “the only candidate” who can bring peace to Israel and Palestine (this is tricky: some think he is not the only one with a chance, whereas some believe none of the candidates has a chance).

2.

We asked the panelists if they believe that there’s a “constant virulent campaign” against Obama regarding his positions on Israel, as the candidate himself implied last week.

The answer is yes, albeit not a resounding one. Six of the panelists believe this statement to be true, but not all of them strongly. Of the two who gave this statement a score of 1 or 2 - meaning they do not at all believe it - one of them believes Obama is overstating the degree to which there is such campaign. The other one told me that he found many of the allegations against Obama to have a kernel of truth in them.

Still, I think the verdict was a yes. The panel does believe Obama has been mistreated by some of those making the allegations against him.

3.

The question about McCain, and whether he will appoint members of the more “realist” branch of the Republican Party to key positions in his administration was meant to test the way this panel understands the “real” McCain. All in all, the panel believes McCain will not be choosing Baker or Scowcroft as his Middle East envoys. However, this is not a unanimous view. The panel is basically split: three think he will, three think he won’t, and the others can’t quite make up their minds (they gave this statement a score of 3).

By the way, Senator Joe Lieberman talked about this question in the interview I conducted with him last week in Florida. This brings me to another question: Does the panel see Lieberman as a reassuring sign that McCain will be friendly toward Israel?

The answer: They do view this positively, but not to the extent that I thought they would. I don’t think they question Lieberman, but they know that a President McCain would have his own policies, and not Lieberman’s.

4.

If you want to know how murky this campaign has been regarding questions of Middle East policy, check out the marks for the statement, “All the candidates have very similar views on the Israeli Palestinian conflict.”

Four panelists do not believe this statement to be true. Four do.

And by the way, the same goes for the statement, “All the candidates will get America out of Iraq within a year.” A third of the panel believes this to be basically true, third doesn’t, the rest don’t even try to pretend they have the answer.