There are red lines that a politician can’t afford to cross

And then there were none. Back in 2019, the political right was having a moment. In America, Israel, and the UK — the three countries whose politics dominate these pages — the BBD (Boris, Bibi, Donald) ruled supreme.

On the back of a strong economy, Trump had a good chance of being reelected to a second term; Johnson had just delivered the biggest Conservative majority since Thatcher; and Netanyahu had overtaken Ben-Gurion’s tenure as prime minister.

Johnson’s recent downfall calls time on that era.

So where did it all go wrong, and how did the right implode?

In Trump’s and Bibi’s cases, the pandemic is part of the explanation. Voters reacted to the chaos and misery of Covid by demanding that heads roll. A biased media also did their best to hound them from office.

But there’s another way to think about what happened to the three charismatic leaders who found themselves dumped.

Call it the Marvelous Middos theory of politics: What Dr. Doomstein and his fellow silly-voiced characters teach is that even in an age of political extremes, there are red lines that a politician can’t afford to cross.

We’re used to thinking that at the heart of politics is a combination of strategy and interest. Pollsters poll, strategists strategize, politicians craft a message and then get elected.

That’s only part of the story. The lesson of the BBD is that politics is often as much about character — what we’d call middos — as it is about focus groups.

Take Trump. Many voters could see through the Russiagate saga, and would have given him credit for the good he achieved with the economy and foreign policies.

What brought him down were his own flaws. The ad hominem attacks, the uncontrolled tweeting, the inability to be presidential in the early stages of the pandemic — all added up to a sense of instability. Hyper-partisans loved the circus, but many centrists found him too mercurial to hold high office.

His behavior on January 6 and since has only confirmed that impression; hence the donor interest in a Trumpian with fewer character flaws, such as Ron DeSantis.

Middos also caught up with Bibi. Naftali Bennett may have taken right-wing votes over to the left, but what brought down Netanyahu was the drip-drip accumulation of political enemies that he’d actively turned against him. From Bennett to Lieberman, Saar to Shaked, all had one thing in common: Bibi had turned on them once they got too powerful.

Politics is a rough business, but stabbing allies in the back is lethal when the spurned go on to ally against you.

That brings us to Boris. His downfall — played out over the course of six months — was about multiple things. There were tax-and-spend policies, which many party members didn’t like; “Partygate,” the saga of the Downing Street work events when Britain was tightly locked down; misjudgments like backing troubled allies who were then forced to resign.

Johnson’s constant evasions and half-admissions created the sense that he couldn’t be trusted. There were simply too many times that senior ministers had defended Boris, only for the official line to change shortly after.

Politics isn’t croquet, and no one expects the holders of high office to be the Alter of Kelm.

But as the right scrambles for its footing in America, Britain, and Israel, it would do well to remember that character counts.

Sometimes it’s a case of less spin doctor, and more Dr. Middos.

Merits of Meritocracy

By the time you read this, the race to replace Boris Johnson as prime minister will be down to two candidates, likely ex-chancellor and current front runner Rishi Sunak, and possibly Foreign Secretary Liz Truss.

Campaign themes have centered on the economy and culture wars, Britain having developed a US-style taste for the latter.

The final choice will be up to the Conservative Party membership, and a new leader will take office by early September.

One thing is worth noting so far: the Conservatives — branded racist and intolerant by Labour — are about to elect either an ethnic minority candidate (Indian-origin Sunak), a woman (for the third time), or both (Kemi Badenoch’s parents are Nigerian).

The Labour Party, by comparison, remains male and pale when it comes to the top spot.

Surprising? Not so much. The modern left talks a good game about diversity, but equality by diktat often backfires.

History Desk

When President Yitzchak Herzog met President Joe Biden last week, the predictable happened: They talked about Herzog’s grandfather, Rav Yitzchak Eizik HaLevi Herzog, who was chief rabbi of Ireland before becoming chief rabbi of Israel.

Biden likes to talk about his Irish roots, and Herzog has been known to remark on his rabbinical forebears, so the topic was a natural one.

But it threw up a historical oddity: Rav Herzog’s support for both Menachem Begin’s Irgun and the Irish Sinn Fein liberation movement.

At the time, that would have been consistent: Both were militant anti-British independence movements.

But in recent years, that symmetry has been destroyed, as the Irish nationalist cause has become associated with Palestinian independence.

Sinn Fein-voting Republicans fly the Palestinian flag in Belfast, and Northern Ireland’s British-allied Unionists fly the Israeli flag.

All of which proves the truth of an old Soviet joke: “The future is certain; it’s the past that’s unpredictable.”

Time for Music

A disclaimer: I don’t know very much about black holes and have no idea where the Perseus galaxy is.

But ignorance shouldn’t stop any of us appreciating the ethereal beauty of a recording released by NASA recently that transforms waves released by the hot gases at the center of the black hole into notes.

The waves, picked up by a space telescope, emerge from millions of light years away. NASA scales them up quadrillions of times higher than their original frequencies, within the range of human hearing.

The results — which sound eerily like a mix of sci-fi and classical music — are well worth listening to.

They’re a reminder to keep things — especially human beings — in proportion. Most of the material things we see as important are insignificant; the major events of the day are really small dramas and tiny tempests on an anthill called Earth.

In the vastness of the universe, from every galaxy and black hole, emerges a symphony of unbelievable grandeur that speaks of a Creator Who waited until 5782 to let us hear it — if we only take the time to listen.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 920)