A Hope for America, from Israel

A dear friend here in Israel, is also an American immigrant to Israel but has been in Israel for many years.  He in turn has a friend, another long-time American oleh, who some years back went home to the US to take a visiting faculty position at Norwich University in Vermont.  Now this man was not young and, being unused to the harshness of the Vermont winter after so many years in Israel, he spent much of his time at Norwich indoors, and he ended up watching a lot of American news and commentary TV.  This was during the years of the George W. Bush Administration.  When he returned to Israel, he told my friend:  the level of discourse was terrible...people shouting one another down, talking past one another, saying nasty things...it was just like Israel!

Many years ago, the American-Jewish commentator, Dennis Prager, contrasted American and Israeli politics.  Observing that the level of noise and rancor was considerably higher in Israel, he attributed it at the time to the effect of the two different systems.  Israel's, which was and still is fractured into many small parties, grants a large amount of power and influence to tiny parties that can only win one or two seats in the 120-seat unicameral Knesset.  As a result, small populations can sway policies on large issues that affect the entire country.  (We saw an unfortunate example of that last week, when PM Netanyahu overturned a previous agreement in order to keep two Ultra-Orthodox parties in his coalition and in so doing, caused considerable damage to Israel-Diaspora relations.)  In America, as Prager observed back then, almost the entire base of political power is in the hands of the two major parties, Democrats and Republicans, which both straddle the center.  In Israel, the power rests at the fringes.

I'm sure that now, over a quarter-century later, Dennis Prager would no longer hold to that assessment.  Whereas back then, one used to frequently hear frustrated Americans opine that there was little to no difference between the Democrats and the Republicans, today there is far more air between the platforms and policies advocated by the two parties, and in the amount of rancor each expresses towards the other.  So, what changed?  Well, for one thing newer laws on campaign financing make it much more difficult for candidates to raise money on their own, and since they are far more dependent upon their parties' apparatus to fund their campaigns, the parties require much stricter discipline in their legislative behavior.  It sounds noble to declare that one is voting for the candidate, not the candidate's party.  But in the reality of today's party politics the character of the candidate is far less relevant.  And we're poorer because of it.  Gone are the days when the Tip O'Neill-led House of Representatives (Democrat) could work together with the Reagan White House (Republican) for the good of the country.  Instead one sees, at least in the current Administration and Congress, a hatred so deep that one wonders if anything, short of a national emergency of the proportions of World War II (G-d forbid!) could get the two parties to work together.  It's that bad!

BTW, I don't attribute the entire phenomenon of the fracturing of American political dialog on campaign finance reform.  There's far more to it, including a lack of public expectation that discourse will be civilized and perhaps even, a reward from the electorate to the candidate or party who can out-nasty the other.

So, when I hear what this American-Israeli said about the American political scene a decade or so ago, and realize that things are probably far worse today, it pains me.  Whatever could be said about the dysfunction of the political system in Israel, which also pains me, the more-mature and more deliberately-designed American system should compare positively as a point of national pride.  But today it is hard to say, with a straight face, that it does.

I know that it is bad form to accentuate the negative on America's Independence Day, the Fourth of July.  Believe me, I agree that we have much of which to be proud considering our nation's achievements, how it has and still does add to the goodness of the world.  But right now, I also wish that the tenor of our national discourse would also be something, of which to be proud.

May all Americans, whether they live within the borders of the USA or choose, for whatever reason to live elsewhere, resolve on this 241th Anniversary of the founding of the American Republic, to do all we can to restore her image to one that other nations should consider worthy of emulation.