Last night on Hardball, Pat Buchanan said that from a foreign-policy standpoint, the presidential election was about whether the neoconservatives were right or not, in their response to 9/11, two wars and an unending war on terror. The country said they were wrong. Chris Matthews seemed to agree with this analysis.
I agree with it too, but what amazes me is that That Discussion Never Took Place in the Campaign. I don't think there was one question about neoconservatism, per se, in any of the debates. I kept looking for the front page piece on Neoconservatives versus Realists in the Times. Never saw it. The Republican Jewish Coalition and I were all for that debate happening, but who else was? I bet J Street never mentioned neoconservatism, as it was quietly pushing Obama. Certainly the National Jewish Democratic Council did not. Obama's foreign policy gurus never said a word against the neocons, though Obama might have once or twice. The American Conservative pushed the issue repeatedly, but did the Nation? I don't remember it doing so, frontally. If you reflect that any American in 1960 knew the words Quemoy and Matsu, because anti-communism and foreign-policy were being actively debated in that election, how much did anyone talk about Iran?
And the reason they didn't discuss this stuff is because neoconservatism is at bottom (though yes it has several stems) a harsh form of Zionism, and we all know that, and milder forms of Zionist adherence are prevalent throughout the Democratic Party. Obama supporters like Marty Peretz and Mel Levine and Chuck Schumer are not that far off from Joe Lieberman, and any attack on neoconservatism would have threatened Obama's own establishment Jewish base.
In retrospect, in years to come, especially after Barack Hussein Obama separates our country from Israel's war, I think many people will come to agree with Pat Buchanan. But the reason it was never discussed is because, as my father always says, adjustments in Jewish status in American society are going to be made "without fireworks." And so the great educational process that a political campaign offers the American people–the way, say, that Lincoln-Douglas debates about slavery were published and marketed to the country in 1858 and led the way to a Republican presidential victory on that issue in 1860–it didn't happen.
