THE MOTHER OF ALL MEETINGS, NOT - AT 7:30 A.M. ET:  The president meets today with new Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.  The press is building this up as a clash of titans.  Netanyahu clearly does not share Obama's almost adolescent belief in negotiations, whereas Obama believes that a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict is a key to solving almost everything in the Mideast, including obesity and a shortage of sunscreen.

This will be a day of leaks, and spin, but I don't anticipate any real fireworks.  Obama is shrewd enough to know that he gains nothing by public ugliness with a close ally, and smart enough to realize the damage he did to himself by his cold treatment of British Prime Minister Brown a few months back.  When people start saying that a president treats friends worse than enemies, that president is due for a revision.

Netanyahu was prime minister during part of the Clinton years, in the 1990s.  Despite his American background and his flawless English, he is not a popular figure in Washington.  I recall the feelings about Abba Eban, the revered late foreign minister of Israel, who was described as a man impossible to like, but impossible not to respect.  The same may apply here.  Netanyahu is tough, and conniving, but it is impossible not to respect his deep deep concerns about a nuclear Iran, an issue not taken seriously enough among the newly exalted sophisticates of the age of Obama.

May 18, 2009