From Tragedy to Farce

In response to more than a dozen requests at the American Political Science Association annual meeting to blog about this, here's a link to Dana Millbank's Washington Post piece from last week that catches up with John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt's "Israel Lobby" road show: It was quite a boner. University of Chicago political scientist John Mearsheimer was in town yesterday to elaborate on his view that American Jewish groups are responsible for the war in Iraq, the destruction of Lebanon's infrastructure and many other bad things. As evidence, he cited the influence pro-Israel groups have on "John Boner, the House majority leader." Actually, Professor, it's "BAY-ner." But Mearsheimer quickly dispensed with Boehner (R-Ohio) and moved on to Jewish groups' nefarious sway over Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), who Mearsheimer called " Von Hollen." Such gaffes would be trivial -- if Mearsheimer weren't claiming to be an authority on Washington and how power is wielded here. But Mearsheimer, with co-author Stephen Walt of Harvard's Kennedy School, set off a furious debate this spring when they argued that "the Israel lobby" is exerting undue influence in Washington; opponents called them anti-Semitic. Yesterday, at the invitation of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), they held a forum at the National Press Club to expand on their allegations about the Israel lobby. Blurring the line between academics and activism, they accepted a button proclaiming "Fight the Israel Lobby" and won cheers from the Muslim group for their denunciation of Israel and its friends in the United States. Whatever motivated the performance, the result wasn't exactly scholarly. A few thoughts: 1) Millbank's opening is nothing more than a cheap shot -- for the record, I thought "Beohner" was pronounced "boner" as well. It's that kind of snottiness that undermines the more trenchant factual critiques Millbank makes later in the piece. 2) Millbank is a smart political reporter, and the fact that he and his editors opened the story in this way is indicative of the way the public debate over "The Israel Lobby" has transpired. Even though I think Mearsheimer and Walt had the kernel of a good idea in their original LRB essay, the essay was so riddled with slipshod rhetoric and historical inaccuracy that the idea was drowned out by claims of anti-Semitism and counterclaims of philo-Semitism. 3) Mearsheimer and Walt's tendency to present this argument only to friendly fora -- and to use increasingly sloppy rhetoric to characterize their argument -- suggests that they have no intention of modifying their tone or their thesis. I'm not surprised, given the crap they've had to deal with on this topic -- but I am disappointed (indeed, one wonders if Mearsheimer and Walt's CAIR presentation is an example of Cass Sunstein's "echo chamber" effect). 4) I think we're at the point where it is time to recognize that it will be impossible to have anything close to a high-minded debate on this topic when the starting point is "The Israel Lobby" essay. Don't get me wrong -- besides the fact that Mearsheimer and Walt badly defined their independent variable, miscoded one alternative explanation, omitted several other causal variables, poorly operationalized their dependent variable, and failed to fact-check some of their assertions, it's a bang-up essay. With this foundation, however, any debate is guaranteed to topple into the mire of anti-Semitic accusations, Godwin's Law, and typing in ALL CAPS. The hardworking staff here at danieldrezner.com will look forward, in a few months, to someone restarting this debate from a more reliable factual and conceptual base.