The Mid-Term Elections and US-Israeli Relations

Israel, like other foreign countries, has always been careful not to be seen to interfere directly in American electoral politics. In 2010, as in all previous elections, the Israeli government studiously refrained from making any statement or gesture that could be interpreted as reflecting a partisan preference. Nevertheless, given the rather rocky relations between Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and President Barack Obama, it was widely suspected that Netanyahu would welcome a Republican victory that would devalue the President's political capital and make it more difficult for him to exert pressure on Israel in the context of his efforts to promote a peace agreement. If that suspicion is correct, then Netanyahu may well be encouraged by the outcome of the mid-term elections, which delivered a stinging rebuke to Obama. However, further reflection suggests that any expectation that Obama will be too weak and too scarred to pursue an activist policy vis-à-vis the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is likely to be confounded.

It is undeniable that voters did deliver a major defeat to the Democratic Party and a negative verdict on Obama's first two years in office. Initial results indicate that the Republicans narrowed the Democratic majority in the Senate following a gain of at least five seats and picked up more than sixty seats in the House of Representatives, thereby gaining outright control of that chamber. In addition, the Democrats lost about ten governorships, which are important because state governors will influence the redistricting of Congressional seats following the 2011 census. All in all, the mid-term elections undoubtedly leave Obama politically wounded.

But how badly wounded he is remains an open question. First of all, the loss needs to be put into perspective. Americans have a well-established tradition of punishing incumbent presidents. In fact, in the last sixty years, every single president but one has suffered a serious setback in the first mid-term election following his inauguration. The average loss over that period has been thirty-three House seats and three seats in the Senate. The only exception to this rule was George W. Bush in 2002, and that is almost certainly explained by the aftereffects of 9/11. Nevertheless, although Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton suffered embarrassing mid-term defeats (the Clinton-led Democrats lost fifty-four House seats in 1994), they were all re-elected two years later. There is therefore no basis for concluding that the 2010 mid-terms have made Barack Obama a lame duck president.

Secondly, Obama's defeat, however much mitigated by historical comparisons, means that he will now have to reach out to Republicans and fashion workable compromises on issues of domestic governance. Otherwise, he will find himself presiding over a paralyzed administration. But on foreign policy in general and US-Israel relations in particular, the relevance of the electoral setback is far less obvious. These elections may have constituted a vote of no-confidence in Obama's overall performance but there were definitely not a referendum on his foreign policy. That scarcely figured in the campaign. Not only was the Israeli-Palestinian issue hardly mentioned (apart from a few throwaway comments by Republican candidates); even Iraq and Afghanistan were largely ignored.

Thirdly, even if foreign policy had been a campaign issue, that portfolio remains essentially a preserve of the executive branch. Congress has some residual prerogatives (approval of declarations of war and of foreign treaties, the pro forma –and widely ignored – right of oversight on the use of force under the War Powers Act), and it does need to approve the funding of foreign and defense policy (along with the rest of the budget). But controversies over the use of American force or money have not taken pride of place on the US-Israel agenda over the last two years, and as Commander-in-Chief, the President is still the ultimate decision maker in foreign and national security policy. So unless he becomes radically out of touch with broader American opinion, Congress tends to defer to him. Besides, the ideological engine of this latest Republican revival is the so-called Tea Party movement. Unlike the neoconservatives who played that role in the 1990s and were intensely, almost obsessively interested in foreign affairs – and with whom Netanyahu found so much common ground before and during his first term as prime minister – the Tea Party movement is almost totally preoccupied with domestic economic matters and has (thus far) paid little attention to foreign policy. Unless that changes, Congress can be expected to leave Obama with considerable leeway in this area of acknowledged presidential primacy.

All in all, then, Obama is likely to retain considerable capacity to formulate and conduct foreign policy as he sees fit, and there is even some chance that he will redouble his efforts in this area if the Republicans choose to frustrate all his domestic programs. Of course, Obama never had unlimited room to maneuver vis-à-vis Israel even during his first two years in office, and in anticipation of the challenges in 2012, the new political environment in Washington may make him even less eager to risk a frontal confrontation during the next two years. Nevertheless, the fact that Obama will not have a completely free hand to push his initiatives does not mean that Netanyahu will have a completely free ride.