Three weeks ago I wrote about the natural human tendency to avoid exposure to ideas or facts that will challenge one’s own world view. Not every refusal to expose oneself to threatening ideas signifies intellectual cowardice or sloth. In the case of kefirah it is even required. But most disconcerting evidence does not fall into that category and intellectual honesty requires that we test our ideas in the marketplace of ideas.
In that spirit when I heard that my friend Dr. David Luchins chairman of the political science department atTouroCollegeand a former senior advisor to the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan would be debating Marc Zell the head of Republicans inIsrael on the upcoming presidential election I decided to attend. Dr. Luchins is very smart and original. I figured if anyone could persuade me to be more enthusiastic about the prospect of President Obama being re-elected it would be Dr. Luchins.
It is far from clear to me that Dr. Luchins himself intends to vote for Barack Obama. He began by saying that he never votes for an incumbent president because second-term presidents have so much more freedom to stick it toIsrael. Richard Nixon in 1972 was the only exception to his rule. If that rule applies even to presidents who sought to maintain an impression of closeness toIsraelin their first terms how much more so to one who came into office determined to place “daylight” between theUnited StatesandIsrael.
To avoid the implications of his own principle Dr. Luchins offered another which he claimed trumps the first: One-party control of all three branches is dangerous. Since Republicans already control the Supreme Court the House of Representatives and are likely to gain control of the Senate he argued theUnited Stateswould be better served by a Democratic president who would be forced to negotiate with Congress.
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