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Paul R. Hollrah
Israel’s October Surprise?
September 29, 2008
On
September 17, Tzipora "Tzipi" Livni was elected to head Israel’s
ruling Kadima Party, succeeding Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Olmert
resigned as party leader after an official investigative ccommission accused him of "serious failure in exercising
judgment, responsibility and prudence" during Israel’s war with
Hezbollah in 2006.
If Livni
is able to establish a ruling coalition in the Knesset within 42 days…
the deadline being October 29, just six days before the U.S. elections…
she will become Israel’s first female prime minister since Golda Meir
led Israel from March 1969 until June 1974.
What is
significant from the American perspective is that Livni’s resume very
much resembles that of Governor Sarah Palin. At 50, she is just six
years older than Palin. However, while Palin has served sixteen years in
public office, Livni has served just nine years. Livni also served from
1976 to 1979 as a
lieutenant
in the
Israel Defense
Forces (IDF) and later worked for the Israeli
Mossad,
stationed in Paris. In 1983, she returned to Israel and enrolled at
Bar Ilan
University. After completing her legal studies she worked in
private practice for ten years. She is married to an accountant, Naftali
Spitzer, and has two children, Omri and Yuval.
In 1999,
at age 41, Livni was elected to her first term in the Israeli Knesset as
a member of the Likud Party. Two years later, in 2001, she was appointed
Minister of Regional Cooperation. In the following four years she served
as Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Minister of Immigrant
Absorption, Minister of Housing and Construction, and as Minister of
Justice. A highly popular figure in Israel, Livni received the Abirat
Ha-Shilton (“Quality of Governance”) award for 2004.
In
November 2005, Livni followed Prime Minister Sharon and his chief
deputy, Ehud Olmert, as they left the Likud Party and formed the Kadima
Party. She was subsequently named Foreign Minister in March 2006.
Like Sarah
Palin, Livni earned a reputation as a reformer. On May 2, 2007,
following the publication of the
Winograd
Commission's interim report, which was highly critical of her
Kadima ally, Ehud Olmert, she called on him to resign as party leader
and Prime Minister. Olmert agreed not to stand for re-election as
Kadima's leader, and Livni won the subsequent
Kadima leadership
election.
In 1992,
at age 28, Palin was elected to the Wasilla city council, and one year
after winning a second term in 1996 she left the council to run for
mayor of Wasilla. In that campaign she ran on a platform of eliminating
wasteful spending and cutting taxes, defeating a three-term incumbent
mayor. Palin quickly established a reputation as a reformer and a
cost-cutter. She eliminated the position of museum director, moved the
media relations function to the mayor’s office, hired a professional
city administrator, cut property taxes by 75%, eliminated personal
property and business inventory taxes, and reduced her own salary by six
percent.
In 2002,
Palin ran unsuccessfully for the Republican nomination for
lieutenant
governor, finishing second in a five-way GOP primary. The
following year Governor Frank Murkowski appointed Palin to the
Alaska Oil and
Gas Conservation Commission. Palin chaired the Commission
beginning in 2003, and served as Ethics Supervisor.
She
resigned from the Commission in January 2004, protesting what she called
the "lack of ethics" of fellow
Republican
members. After resigning, she filed a formal complaint against
Commission member
Randy Ruedrich,
the chairman of the Alaska Republican Party, accusing him of
doing work for the party on public time and of working closely with a
company he was supposed to be regulating. She also filed a complaint
against former Alaska
Attorney General
Gregg Renkes, accusing him of having a financial conflict of interest.
Ruedrich and Renkes both resigned and Ruedrich paid a record $12,000
fine.
In 2006,
running on a clean-government platform, Palin defeated incumbent
Republican Governor Frank Murkowski in the GOP
primary.
In the General Election, despite being outspent by her Democratic
opponent, former governor
Tony Knowles,
she became Alaska's first
female governor…
at age 42, the youngest governor in Alaska history.
In March
2007, Palin proposed the Alaska Gasline Inducement Act (AGIA) to
encourage the construction of a
natural gas
pipeline from the Alaska
North Slope,
through Canada, to the Lower 48 states. In August 2008, Palin signed a
bill awarding
TransCanada
Pipelines, Ltd. $500 million in seed money and a license to
build and operate the $26 billion pipeline.
In 2007,
Palin visited
Alaska National
Guard troops at bases on the Kuwait–Iraq
border. Then, on her return trip to the U.S., she did what Barack Obama
refused to do following his 2008 fact-finding trip to Iraq… she visited
injured wounded U.S. soldiers in a hospital in Germany.
Some may
think of Tzipi Livni as Israel’s Sarah Palin, while others may see Sarah
Palin as America’s Tzipi Livni. Either way, it is clear that the
Israelis, living as they do under constant threat of annihilation by
radical Arab neighbors, have no fear of placing their security in the
hands of a capable woman with a strong record of accomplishment. With
just six weeks to go before the U.S. presidential elections, the
American people have an opportunity to demonstrate that they too are
willing to entrust a talented and immensely capable women with great
responsibility.
Livni’s
election as leader of Israel’s Kadima Party, and her subsequent
elevation to the post of Prime Minister, just days before the U.S.
General Election, should serve to remove any lingering doubts among some
American voters that Sarah Palin is qualified to serve as Vice President
of the United States. If Livni is able to form a ruling coalition by
October 29, it will be Israel’s “October surprise” for the American
electorate. |
