The more I watch the soap opera that surrounds Chuck Hagel's nomination for defense secretary -- and there are more episodes to come -- the more I wonder if he's really the main event.
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Sure, the former senator is an outspoken maverick who has angered fellow Republicans, said some things that upset the pro-Israel community, taken positions on Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran that were out of sync with U.S. policy, and driven the neocons crazy in general.
But my sense is that the real subtext in this melodrama is about more than the questions Hagel's detractors have raised: Is he qualified for the job? Is he endemically hostile to Israel? Is he going to emasculate the U.S. military, in which he proudly served, and willfully weaken the defenses of a country he deeply loves?
These are questions to which the answers are already clear: yes, no, and no. The hearings before the Armed Services Committee will give Hagel an important opportunity to defend himself and explain his beliefs about U.S. national security. And unless he makes some self-inflicted gaffe, he's likely to make it through the confirmation process.
That's why I think that the Hagel affair really isn't about Chuck Hagel.
This is really a fight about Barack Obama. It is being driven by three somewhat overlapping constituencies -- a pro-Israel community that doesn't trust the president, a Republican party and a neoconservative elite struggling unsuccessfully to define its own foreign policy identity, and finally, a party in opposition that is determined to remind Obama that, reelected or not, he doesn't have a free hand.
Obama, Israel, and American Jews
Hagel's support for a special relationship with Israel -- but not an exclusive one, where Israeli policies are above scrutiny and criticism -- is really how Obama feels too. Hagel articulates on Israel what Obama cannot -- a frustration with some of Israel's policies and a belief that the United States needs to exhibit more balance and show greater sensitivity to Palestinian and Arab concerns.
Like Obama, Hagel isn't an enemy of a Jewish state, let alone, as some of his detractors have charged, a hater of Jews. But he's clearly not emotional or emotive when it comes to Israel either.
Obama is the first U.S. president who doesn't think the Israelis are cowboys and the Palestinians are Indians. He was only six at the time of Israel’s stunning victory during the six day war and likely internalized little of the David vs. Goliath tropes relating to Israel and the Arabs. (If anything, he emerged with the opposite image of Israel as the mighty power occupying the West Bank and Gaza and the Palestinians as David.) And unlike Hagel, Obama didn't grow up in a political environment where being "strong on Israel" mattered much for most of his political career.
All of this is reflected and exacerbated by the ongoing melodrama of his relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Rightly or wrongly, the mutual impressions have been fixed: Netanyahu believes the president is insensitive -- even bloodless -- about Israel's fears and concerns, and the president thinks the prime minister is a con man who operates with a wanton disregard for American interests.
Four years in with another four to go, it's clear to all but the interminably obtuse that these two just don't get along. And there's growing unease in the Jewish community and in Israel that tensions may rise further, as Obama looks toward his legacy and Netanyahu is pulled rightward by even more hardline members of a new coalition.
So much of the opposition to Hagel flows from this dynamic. If the relationship between Obama and Netanyahu weren't so dysfunctional, I bet the concern about this would-be defense secretary wouldn't be nearly as acute.
Republicans in Search of a Foreign Policy
I'm betting too that a good part of the opposition to Hagel comes from Republicans who are frustrated that they can't identify a new foreign policy approach for their party, and who are very unhappy about the one the president is following. This malaise is orchestrated by neoconservatives who wax nostalgic for the good old days of Ronald Reagan's principled but practical approach to foreign policy. (They can't be pining away for the Bush 43 years, can they?)
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