The invisible hand

Time is apparently doing something to the way we take in the spin parties deliver during this season of sycophancy. The campaign broadcasts suddenly appear terrible, a mixture of lies, videotape and middling-quality actors in pancake makeup, getting up to say how wonderful they are and how awful are all the rest. The reason is not only a new maturity on the part of the TV audience, much more particular and spoiled at investigating the truth. The broadcasts also look absurd because the media is breaking records every week with exposes about the politicians' real behavior. Against those reports, these ads look helplessly ridiculous.

As time passes and the evidence mounts that politics is the next big disappointment, Israelis are taking the task of choosing a party more soberly than ever before. They were prepared for it in a year that turned everything upside down. The current ruling party, soon expected to remain in power, is a sudden invention unprecedented in Israeli politics. Its founding father left in a morbid spectacle. Aside from the lessons learned about the fragility of life, the tragic case of Ariel Sharon demonstrated just how much the parties are no longer the immune structures that more innocent generations believed them to be.

The masses flowed to Kadima because their unending anxiety in a country living dangerously made them support what seemed to be a relatively stable political solution. But time was a deceiver. The party's leader and king of Israel suddenly disappeared and was replaced by an ambitious prince, while the other parties deteriorated (Likud), were smashed to smithereens (Shinui), continued their decline (Labor) or went through a sex change (the historic National Religious Party).

Precisely due to this new Israeli sobriety, Kadima is now observing the street as it makes market corrections. Navigated by some collective feeling, it is bringing the Sharon-Olmert party to a more realistic valuation in the political bourse. The street is transferring some investment to Likud, Labor and the radical right, which have been trading below their realistic worth. If there's a positive upgrade Israelis have undergone in their attitude toward politics, it is their growing tendency toward an acute political criticism. Nearly no party in recent years has escaped sweet and clean from the churning mechanisms of investigations and prosecutions: There is no more blind faith among the traditional voters of any party about its promises, except perhaps in the ultra-Orthodox parties.

Thus, as if by an invisible hand, a healthy skepticism now pervades the street. The sense of it seems to be that no good will come of it for the voters if Olmert and his party are too dominant in the next government. Kadima needs an undiluted coalition partner. The proper choice is Labor.

An opposition bloc of some weight is also required. The coming year will see fierce battle over territorial decisions, and the opposition most appropriate for this purpose is the Likud and those to the right of it. Splits and fragmentations always happened within the rival camps. Now, with Kadima moving to the center, a political earthquake is changing the borders between the historic blocs. That is the kind of change that has rarely happened in Israeli political history.

Behind the scenes of this feeble campaign therefore is an innovation that the Kadima campaign ads are trying to hide. But from what Olmert says, somewhat daringly in these days of blurring before the ballot box, it's clear enough that he intends to go for additional disengagements. The Likud reminds us that Sharon swore once not to continue with them. So he swore. He himself would have taken the pullouts from Gaza and the illegal outposts even further. Yet, these moves can only be made fully clear only after the elections. Olmert is no Shi'ite suicidalist who will talk about sweeping withdrawals before Election Day. What he has said so far is enough as a convertible guarantee. Even without a single jingle, the voters now have sufficient data for that invisible hand to lead them to a balanced decision: a not too large and haughty ruling party accompanied by a strengthened Labor, which will energize Kadima forward in the right direction.