RUTHFULLY YOURS

Donald Trump is a businessman, television star, and a newcomer to campaigning for public office. Running for president as your first elected office is highly unusual. A few have tried before, but in the last hundred plus years, only Dwight Eisenhower, a highly decorated World War II general, has succeeded. There were 17 Republican candidates who made it to the debate stage this year, and only Trump and Ben Carson had never run for office before. Carly Fiorina, despite having never held office, did run for the U.S. Senate in California.

Trump, with his victory in Indiana, appears at this point destined to be the winner of the GOP nominating process. His campaign over the past year has been an unusual one, to say the least, and could not have been more different than that of his all but certain opponent in the general election, Hillary Clinton. Clinton, a product of more than 40 years of obsessive political campaigning for herself and her husband on both the state and national level, is one of the most scripted candidates ever to run for president. Clinton holds morning conference calls with as many as dozens of campaign aides to review her talking points for the day. If there was ever a consensus candidate whose themes have been tested with her handlers, and poll tested by her large campaign staff, it is Clinton. Clinton spent most of her two years after leaving the State Department mapping out her future campaign, warehousing future campaign team members at the Clinton Foundation and speaking before likely future campaign contributors and supporters. The lives of both Clintons has been all about politics at every stage.

Clinton’s goal for both the primary and the fall campaign, which she has viewed as a sure victory, has been to stay on message. Despite this, her message has been impacted by the leftist populism of her primary opponent, Bernie Sanders, Vermont’s junior senator, who has proved profoundly resilient and therefore extremely annoying to Clinton. Sanders has pushed Clinton leftward, at times even to Sanders’ left (gun control), and she has on occasion made some unusually foolish remarks for someone so experienced in the business of politics. One of these remarks was her promise to put out of business a lot of coal companies and coal miners. Today, she was forced to eat crow and explain to some West Virginians that she can not really explain what prompted her to say something like that:

“I don’t know how to explain it other than what I said was totally out of context from what I meant, because I’ve been talking about helping coal country for a very long time,” Clinton said. “And it was a misstatement, because what I was saying is that the way things are going now, we will continue to lose jobs.”

There is, of course, an explanation. Sanders has argued that the biggest threat to America and the world is climate change, so Clinton had to show she could walk the walk on eliminating the use of fossil fuels.

Trump has made many remarks in his campaign that will inevitably show up in negative ads run by the Clinton campaign or super PACs backing her, characterizing Trump as a bigot, especially toward Mexicans, Muslims and women. In general, Trump has not moderated or restated his essential campaign themes — making America great again, building a wall on the southern border, temporarily stopping Muslim immigration, renegotiating trade deals so that American starts winning them, and reducing America’s footprint abroad unless its allies pay for its services and protection.

In one area, however, Trump seems to be open-minded and willing to shift his policy stance, and that is the issue of Israel. On Monday, Trump asserted that he now supports continued Israeli construction in the settlements. This position puts Trump at odds with previous presidents from both parties, and the mainstream foreign policy establishment consensus view that settlements are a provocation and largely responsible for the failure of Israel and the Palestinians to conclude successful peace negotiations.

Of course, there are dissenting views, and some other Republican candidates this year, most notably Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, were critical of the so-called push for a two-state solution, which has inevitably meant pressuring Israel into making concessions while ignoring Palestinian disinterest in negotiations, their incitement and celebration of terrorism, and their unwillingness to accept that at the end of any negotiation, Israel will be a Jewish majority state. The Palestinian Authority has never agreed to relinquish their demand for a right of return for Palestinian refugees, of whom they count many millions, even though the Arab survivors of the 1948 war who left what became the State of Israel likely number in the tens of thousands at this point — maybe 1% of the refugee number thrown out by Palestinian leaders. Unlike any other refugee community, Palestinians count descendants of refugees, generation after generation, as refugees themselves.

In his latest remarks, Trump reiterated that negotiating a deal to end the Israeli Palestinian conflict would be the greatest deal of all, and the most difficult to achieve, but he backed away from prior comments suggesting he would need to be neutral in such a negotiation. Pointing to missiles repeatedly fired at Israel, Trump argued that peace is not something that lasts two weeks, and then missiles start getting launched again.

“No, I don’t think there should be a pause [in settlement construction],” Trump said. “Look: Missiles were launched into Israel, and Israel, I think, never was properly treated by our country. I mean, do you know what that is, how devastating that is?”

Trump’s pullback on negotiating from a position of neutrality reflects criticism he received from those who argued that Israel is freer to negotiate and take risks when America is solidly in its corner, and not a neutral party. After all, why should America ever be neutral toward an ally such as Israel when it faces terror supporting entities like the PA and Hamas, which have killed Americans as well as Israelis?

It is also true that Trump’s initial comments on neutrality in Israeli-Palestinian talks represented a different kind of dealmaking than the kind he is familiar with. Trump’s “Art of the Deal” reflects his history of negotiating as a party to a transaction. Trump stood to gain or lose from these negotiations, many of which involved real estate transactions, or insolvencies of some of his companies or properties. In these types of negotiations, Trump considers himself an artist of sorts, and has written a book with guidance for others who participate in dealmaking.

However, dealmaking is vastly different when you are not one of the negotiating parties but rather an overseer, and when the deal does not involve issues related to money or business, but rather peace, war, land, refugees, terrorism, and existence. An outsider trying to be a neutral party and move along these kinds of complex, highly charged, political negotiations, with insights gained from his real estate business, will almost certainly be in over his head.

Trump likely thought he would be an attractive candidate for Jewish Americans. He hails from New York — an area where nearly a third of America’s Jews reside. His daughter Ivanka converted to Judaism since marrying Jared Kushner and is now an observant Jew. He has been involved with Jewish charities and pro-Israel activities, and has worked with Jewish politicians and Jewish businessman for decades. What Trump has learned during the campaign is that in the pro-Israel world, there is nuance and sophistication, and people listen very carefully to what you say in judging whether you are and will be a reliable Israel supporter. The fact that one has Jewish friends and business associates counts for a lot less. When Trump spoke to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, his speech was the first one in the campaign delivered with the help of a teleprompter, and it was prepared by his son-in-law and others who are more knowledgeable about the AIPAC world and what is expected.

If Trump pivots on other issues the same way he has done on Israel, it may be a test of how competitive he will be in the fall. After having won the nomination, a candidate needs to appeal to those who have not participated in either party’s primary campaign, and get them to vote. Clinton has a huge advantage in terms of the mechanics of state-by-state organizing, national fundraising and opposition research. She also has an advantage in that at the start of the general election, despite her own terrible approval scores, which in most years would make her easily defeatable, and despite the lack of enthusiasm for her among Sanders supporters, Trump has even higher negatives, sky high among certain groups. No one seems to think Trump can win, and many pundits predict a calamitous defeat for Republicans at every level.

But then again, no one thought that Trump would ultimately be the nominee. Statistical guru Nate Silver gave him a 2% chance at the nomination at a time he led national polls last fall. But Trump appears unfazed by being consistently underrated. Of late, his numbers have been improving as his nomination is becoming ever more likely. In this most unconventional election cycle, Trump may prove more agile than his opponent in pivoting when needed to expand his support. Clinton is, to some extent, a prisoner of liberal Democratic policy positions that she and her husband have espoused for decades. Trump on the other hand, is so new to the game, who can blame him for changing his mind about things? Of course, this also means, that if he were elected, he could change his mind again. He is the ultimate wild-card candidate.