The great pleasure of the Harman-Saban story is that it suggests (I know, I'm repeating myself) that MSM journalists are finally getting on the Israel lobby story. Once you start pulling this out from under the carpet, who knows where it ends! A couple of points from Zachary Roth's fine summary of the Times story at TPM (who needs to read the Times!) are worth underlining:
–Harman reportedly told Haim Saban that she would have more pull with the White House than with the Justice Department visavis dropping the espionage case against the former AIPAC staffers. Bear in mind that this is the Bush White House she was speaking of, and that she had good connections to Alberto Gonzales, the Attorney General, for whom she was carrying water at the New York Times, getting them to postpone the wiretaps story.
I think this is an important point because routinely the critics dismissed Walt and Mearsheimer in '07 by saying, Oh we all know that the Israel lobby controls the Congress, but it doesn't affect the White House. I heard Dennis Ross and Martin Indyk argue as much at Cooper Union when they were debating Mearsheimer.
What the Harman comment hints at is just what Walt and Mearsheimer said, that the neoconservatives are part of the Israel lobby and they were all over the White House. (Their variant, liberal Democrat Israel-firsters such as Ross, is now semi-installed in the White House, competing, as Bruce Wolman has noted, with the realists).
Also it demonstrates that when it comes to ideological support for Israel, party is no bar. This is why neoconservatives have jumped from Democratic to Republican administrations, and why Norm Coleman and Al Franken, who disagreed on everything, could get together for a pro-Israel rally during the Gaza slaughter. I suspect that Harman's friends were other hawkish Jews. And yes, there's a Jewish identity piece to this puzzle.
–Haim Saban's reported offer to deprive Nancy Pelosi of financial support if she failed to play her part in the deal is consistent with other reports of his behavior. In this excellent profile in Portfolio, Saban comes off as a macho kingmaker. And remember this report on Huffpo a year back in which Saban offered Young Democrats of America $1 million to throw two superdelegates Hillary's way. (Saban denied the report.)
