Meet the New Boss’s Coalition Partner

24Mar09

You often hear people complain that politician X doesn’t believe in anything, but it’s usually hyperbole. However, in the case of Ehud Barak I think we have a politician that really, genuinely seems to believe in nothing. Or at least he doesn’t believe in anything enough that we won’t go along for with anything if it keeps him in the government. Here’s Matthew Ygelsias on Barak coming to an agreement to be the Israeli Defense Minister:

Kadima Leader Tzipi Livni has spent weeks resisting Benjamin Netanyahu’s pleas that she enter his cabinet, citing the fact that she has no desire to be moderate window-dressing for a hard-right administration that’s overtly opposed to a two-state resolution of the Israel-Palestine conflict. Ehud Barak, though, is eager to provide such window-dressing and now he’s got his party’s approval to enter into a coalition in which he’ll play third fiddle to Netanyahu and Yisrael Beiteinu leader Avigdor Lieberman.

It’s hard to imagine this being anything other than the end for the remnants of the Labor Party. This behavior will give voters no reason whatsoever to back Labor in subsequent elections irrespective of their ideological proclivities. It’s hard to think of other examples of individuals whose leadership has had such a calamitous impact on the political party they headed. One case that comes to mind is Canada’s Brian Mulroney who basically destroyed the Progressive Conservative Party. But the PCP’s collapse was something of a big bang, where the Barak-era Labor Party has been a long slow bleed.

It’s certainly weird, because the Israeli electoral process rewards people for staking out non-conformist and even down right crazy positions (See Lieberman, or perhaps wait for his next state visit). In America we have Norm Coleman and like, but nobody put’s the party in their hands.

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Tags: Ehud Barak, Israel