Biden’s DNC speech: A strategic echo of Reagan's 1988 PLO move? - opinion

The speech given last Monday night by US President Joe Biden at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) was reminiscent of another occasion on which an American president, about to leave office, tried to help his vice president appear “even-handed” on the Arab-Israeli conflict – while at the same time hoping not to alienate supporters of Israel.

The time was late 1988. It was historic because that November the vice president, George H.W. Bush, had been elected president of the United States. It was the first time in well over 100 years that a sitting vice president had been elected president.

In January 1989, the Reagan administration would be leaving office, and the Bush administration would be taking over. Even though there would be continuity of the party in the White House, every administration brings with it changes, and January 1989 would be no exception.

The Reagan years had generally been characterized as a period of good relations with Israel. For the last six and a half years of that administration, Reagan’s secretary of state had been George Shultz, and he was universally thought of as a strong supporter of Israel.

But not everyone in the Reagan administration – or in the “foreign policy establishment” – approved of the status quo. Since the mid-1970s, many American allies had recognized the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) as a “legitimate player” in the Arab-Israeli conflict, and the foreign policy establishment – including many in the State Department – thought that the US was behind the times on that issue.

IT HAD been the policy of every American administration through Reagan to treat the PLO as a terrorist organization and not to have any contact with it. In the last years of the Reagan administration, there was no indication that any senior officials were advocating a change in policy as to the PLO. So it was a shock to Israel in mid-December 1988 (only about a month before the Bush administration would take over), that secretary Shultz announced that the US would begin a “substantive dialogue” with PLO representatives. 

The secretary stopped short of speaking in terms of “recognition” of the PLO, but that nuance did not stop the announcement from causing a political earthquake in Israel.  

Israel too had recently held elections, and the two large parties – Labor and Likud – were about even in the number of seats they garnered in that election. Prior to the Shultz announcement, there had been little talk in Israel of a national unity government; after the announcement, Likud leader Yitzhak Shamir and Labor leader Shimon Peres agreed to a national unity government, with a rotation of the premiership.

Even though the Shultz announcement came as a shock, once it was made, everyone understood its timing. The Reagan people together with the Bush people were looking eight years down the road.

For better or for worse, they did not expect any American administration – Republican or Democratic – to be able to withstand eight years of likely pressure to begin some type of dialogue with the PLO. Since both Reagan and Bush supporters expected Bush to be reelected in 1992 (the year he was defeated by Bill Clinton), this indicated they expected that sometime during an eight-year Bush Administration, the pressure to recognize the PLO would become significant.

Reagan pushed for Bush

So, Ronald Reagan decided to do Bush a favor – the type of favor a departing administration would never do for a successor from another political party. Rather than force his friend George Bush to have to withstand criticism from supporters of Israel for the eventual decision to begin a dialogue with the PLO, Reagan decided to “take the bullet.”

He was completing his second term in office with high approval ratings and a reputation for having a good relationship with Israel. He figured he had little to lose by a switch in diplomatic norms.

In the dying days of his administration, Reagan allowed his secretary of state to announce a dialogue with the PLO. By having his administration do “the dirty work” that many expected Bush would have to do sometime over the next few years, Reagan increased the chances that the “blame” would not fall upon Bush. 

To Bush’s credit, months later, after the PLO admitted to being involved in an attack on an Israeli bus, his administration broke off its channel of communications with the PLO.

FAST-FORWARD TO August 2024. One of the biggest concerns of the Democrats heading into the November elections is that the actions of the Biden administration in rearming Israel after October 7 will alienate voters in the large Arab community in the swing state of Michigan.

When Joe Biden took to the stage on the first night of the DNC, he could have spoken about his trip to Israel after the October 7 massacre. He could have spoken about being touched by his meetings with the many family members of Israeli and non-Israeli hostages in captivity in Gaza since October 7.

However, the president decided to address the conflict in a different manner. He told his audience that the protesters outside the convention center “have a point.”  In fact, those protesters have many points – they believe that Zionism is evil, many of them support the massacre of October 7, and many of them shout (“From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”) for the genocide of the Jews.

With very few exceptions (perhaps none), those protesters were not making any “point” in favor of a two-state solution.

To many, the decision by the president to use his time in front of a national audience to say that those protesters “have a point” was very strange. However, the phenomenon is not as strange when looked at through the Reagan-Bush-December-1988 lens. A president who will soon leave office knows that he has very little to lose by taking an action that a mere few months (or maybe even just weeks) earlier would have violated political orthodoxy. And if he can help his successor – from his own party – it might be worth breaking from political orthodoxy.

In the case of Reagan, opening a dialogue with the PLO was intended to remove an eventual “headache” for the president who Reagan knew with certainty was going to succeed him. In the case of Biden, extending a hand to the pro-Hamas protesters was intended to help the candidate who Biden hopes will succeed him.

For the State of Israel, the big concern is not what Biden said from the podium at the DNC – but rather what it foreshadows for other moves Biden might make between election day, November 5, 2024, and January 20, 2025, to remove any possible “headache” for Kamala Harris.

The writer is an American-Israeli lawyer based in Ramat Gan. He serves as vice chair of the American Bar Association’s International Litigation Committee and has held other positions with the ABA.