Four pictures depicting the Middle East peace process hung next to the door of the Oval Office during Bill Clinton’s presidency.
And in the former president’s personal library, the only photograph not of family members shows Clinton teaching former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin to tie a necktie.
The pictures represent Clinton’s commitment to the Middle East peace process and his “deep psychological connection” to the region, Rahm Emanuel, a senior adviser to Clinton and Northwestern alumnus, said Wednesday.
“I worked for a president who had a deep feeling for the state of Israel,” Emanuel told about 100 people at the Fiedler Hillel Center. “Everyone talks about the relationship between the American president and Israel, but outside Harry Truman, Bill Clinton was the single most popular president ever in Israel.”
Emanuel’s one-and-a-half hour speech touched on a variety of political issues, including instability in the Middle East and former Vice President Al Gore’s failed run for the presidency.
In dealing with Israel, Emanuel said, the Clinton administration’s biggest error was assuming that making a deal with Palestinian leader Yassir Arafat would bring stability to the region.
“We made a bet on a person and that has turned out to be the wrong bet,” said Emanuel, Speech ’85. “He has been a total mistake.”
Although Clinton took more of an interest in the Middle East peace process than any president in recent history, Emanuel said, Clinton’s diplomatic skills were not enough to prevent the region from disintegrating into violence last year. And President George W. Bush is less interested than Clinton in staking a personal presence in the region, he said.
“For Bush, the needle is more golf-focused,” he said. “(Clinton) was more Arab-Israeli focused. To the American Jewish community, I say, ‘We’ve got our work cut out for us.'”
Emanuel said he decided to “throw in the dice” with Clinton’s campaign in 1991, shortly before the then-Arkansas governor decided to run for president. He stayed with Clinton through the Monica Lewinsky scandal, even though he said he was burned out on Washington long before.
“One of the best things about (Clinton) is that people always think you can knock him down,” he said. “I’ve been around him 10 years and I’ve never seen him hit the canvas.”
Emanuel saved his harshest remarks of the evening for Gore, coming out from behind the podium and waving his hands in the air for emphasis. The former vice president ran a “crappy, horrible race,” he said, and failed to capitalize on eight years of national prosperity.
“He couldn’t even get his own biography right in the debate,” Emanuel said. “If there was malpractice in our profession, he’d be sued for it. It wasn’t Bill Clinton. It wasn’t Monica Lewinsky. You can whine and kvetch, or you can come up with a strategy to win.”
David-Jacques Farahi, a Weinberg sophomore who attended the speech, said Emanuel gave the audience a window into the role of Jews in the White House.
“The experience and insight on a personal level is something you could never get from the media,” he said. “When he started talking about Clinton’s relationship with Rabin – there weren’t many people who can give you insight on that. That’s really special.”
