A few months back, President Barack Obama told an interviewer that he would rather be a great one-term president than a mediocre two-term president. As a glimpse into the President's mind, that remark is entirely credible, and it should be very frightening to anyone who cares about the future of Israel.
Obama has always viewed himself as a world historical figure. Even the job of president of the United States does not fully comport with his ambitions, and many observers have remarked that he often seems bored by the humdrum demands of the job. The aspect of the presidency that has always appealed to him most is the adulation of large crowds, and that adulation has almost certainly peaked.
At a March 2009 meeting, White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel told the ADL's Abe Foxman that Israel's moment of truth had come. "This president is determined to make peace between Israel and the Arabs," he said.
Though the President has never said so, there is good reason to believe that he largely accepts the Palestinian view that Jews are usurpers of the land. He has repeatedly referred to the post-1967 occupation, and thereby implicitly accepted the 1949 armistice lines as sacrosanct.
Are the Palestinians the victims of a massive historical injustice in President Obama's view? Well, at a farewell party for former PLO spokesman Rashid Khalid, when the latter left the University of Chicago to assume the Edward Said Chair at Columbia University, Obama told his friend that if he ever attained high office, he would seek to redress American foreign policy towards the Palestinians. Ali Abunimah, the Chicago-based founder of the Electronic Intifada and a leader in the boycott and sanctions movement against Israel, has detailed Obama's early expressions of deep aversion for Israeli policies towards Palestinians, but says that Obama later told him during his 2004 senatorial primary campaign that he would have to suppress any talk about Palestinian rights during the campaign. He assured Abunimah that when the campaign was behind him he would be more "up front" about his true feelings.
The greatest worry for Israel, then, is that President Obama might decide that his re-election chances are so poor that he need not be constrained by electoral politics or that he acts upon the determination to be a "great" one-term president.
Daniel 9: 27
27And he shall make a strong covenant with many for one week.
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