A brutal US presidential campaign: Israelis should avoid replicating it - opinion

As America’s presidential campaign staggers to a depressing finish, Israelis should learn from America how not to play politics. Admittedly, just a few years ago, many of us wanted Israel’s democracy to become more like America’s. Today, that seems to be more of a curse than a blessing.

It starts with a politics of trash-talking opponents not sweet-talking about your own. Since Donald Trump flummoxed nine Republicans during the 2016 primaries, Democrats have become addicted to Trump-bashing.

Whether he deserves it is a separate question. Just consider what happened when Kamala Harris’s joyous campaign went venomous. Trump attacked “the enemy within.” She and her supporters called him “fascist.” Her negative ratings rose and his momentum returned. USA Today’s Ingrid Jacques complained: “We already know she’s not Trump. But we still don’t know who she is.” 

By constantly demonizing opponents, anger hijacks your campaign. It generates a politics of “all-or-nothing” fights, not “and-and-but” debates. Over decades, Americans developed a consensus on abortion – despite the politicians, activists, and judges. Most wanted abortions safe, legal, and rare – echoing Hillary Clinton. 

Many Americans were pro-life enough to believe that something precious begins at conception – and pro-choice enough to protect women’s freedom to decide about their own bodies and potential babies. Today, abortion – like most issues – polarizes, triggering all-or-nothing stances.

That escalation creates a politics of culture wars not political campaigns. True, politics always had a military streak. The word “campaign,” from the French campagne, means open country, or battlefield. But democratic politics also valued the art of compromise. Today, when most issues exacerbate the national culture war, compromise becomes betrayal. People obsess about validating or invalidating identities rather than rooting good policies in the common ground.

That spawns a politics of inflaming extremes not expanding the center. Too many woke progressives rule today’s Democratic Party. From calls to defund the police in 2020, to imposing DEI – Diversity-Equity-Inclusion – regimes throughout the government, to wooing pro-Hamas hooligans, Democrats keep stoking extremists while neglecting centrists. 

That distortion parallels MAGA’s angry, paranoid politics. The Make America Great Again crowd minimizes the January 6 riots and denies Joe Biden’s electoral victory in 2020, while vulgarizing and racializing political rhetoric.

Unleashed, these extremists encourage a politics of mobilizing tribes not building coalitions. If Trump ranted less about Haitians eating pets during his one debate with Harris, and didn’t keep reminding undecided voters why so many people loathe him, he’d triumph. Similarly, if Kamala Harris and her surrogates stopped scolding men to vote for her, while deeming masculinity “toxic” and every Trump voter deplorable, she might have sustained her earlier momentum.

Self-destructive fanaticism

TRAGICALLY, AMERICA’S 2024 election once again showcases a politics of self-destructive fanatics not constructive democrats.

Yet, even with two highly-flawed candidates running awful campaigns, most liberal friends won’t criticize Harris, paralleling the Trump-bros who never criticize Trump.

Even in the Jewish community, Harristas resist saying: “How dare Kamala call Israel’s actions ‘unconscionable’ on the CNN Town Hall last week, and I worry that she and the Democrats are too soft on Iran and have been consistently wrong every time they tried restraining Israel since October 7.” Instead, many pro-Israel Democrats reason backward. Liking Harris – and detesting Trump – they justify her positions and her rhetoric regarding Israel, Iran, and other issues – no matter how flawed.

Similarly, pro-Trump Jews pooh-pooh Trump’s intolerance for so many while tolerating right-wing Jew-haters and antisemites. And Trumpistas are too worried about Harris breaking the world and abandoning Israel to address genuine fears about Trump breaking America.

Tragically, such undemocratic aggression distorts Israeli politics too. The tribalist venom, the demonization, and the rhetorical escalation oversimplify complex issues – and make simple issues complex. That’s how knotty dilemmas about managing the Palestinian question, defining our war aims, or freeing the hostages become all-or-nothing contests pitting “good” – me and my allies – against “evil” – anyone who dares to disagree with us.

Before you know it, riled-up zealots are spending their Friday mornings and free evenings shrieking outside ministers’ homes for a deal “now” – with no deal on the table and the living hostages not identified. Similarly, what could be a simple administrative matter, phasing in more ultra-Orthodox to do national service and defend the state we all share as citizens, becomes a tribal flashpoint.

Ultimately, as we the people lose – the extremists lose too. During this ein breira – no choice – war, with so many of our kids serving 270, 290, or 310 days in reserves, patience for haredi draft dodging has plummeted and anger is growing. The rigid ultra-Orthodox leadership will soon pay the price – they have no idea how much goodwill they’ve squandered.

Similarly, intertwining the broad national desire for evil Hamasniks and Gazans to free the hostages with a specific, longstanding, anti-Bibi agenda was doubly destructive. It delighted Hamas – and probably prolonged the hostages’ agony by raising the price the Palestinian kidnappers are demanding.

“Democracy begins in conversation,” the progressive philosopher John Dewey taught. Let’s hope it doesn’t die of discord.

Defying this darkness, during this agonizing week in Jerusalem when many of us know one or two or three of the holy soldiers recently killed, let’s learn from the family of the late Rabbi Avi Goldberg, the 43-year-old father of eight. Honoring his and his wife Rachel’s lifelong mission to unite Israelis, politicians are only welcome to Goldberg’s shiva in pairs, one coalition member, with an opposition member.

Bless them! Once again, our reservists and their families take the lead, offering the tikkun, healing, we need. 

The writer, a senior fellow in Zionist thought at the Jewish People Policy Institute, is an American presidential historian. His latest book, To Resist the Academic Intifada: Letters to My Students on Defending the Zionist Dream was recently published.