Sublime

the years of 2000 to 2004 turned Israelis into centrists. They agreed with the Left that creating a Palestinian state was critical for Israel, so that Israel would not continue to rule over millions of Palestinians. Yet they also agreed with the Right that creating a Palestinian state would put Israel in grave danger.21 They were stuck. ON NOVEMBER

As an adult, Wilson shared none of Roosevelt’s lust for violent conquest. For his secretary of state he chose William Jennings…

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AND LYNDON JOHNSON, looking for power over the Senate, had found another instrument with which power could be created. It wasn’t a new instrument. First employed in 1845, it had been formally embodied in the Senate Rules (Rule 12, Paragraph 3) since 1914, and previous Senate Leaders had used it in a number of different ways. Never, however, had it

THIS BOOK is in part the story of that man, Lyndon Baines Johnson. He is not yet the thirty-sixth President of the United States, but a senator—at the beginning of the book, in 1949, the newly elected junior senator from Texas; then the Democratic Party’s Assistant Leader, then its Leader, and finally, in 1955, when the Democrats became the majorit

The very symbol and heart of that sovereignty was, to Lodge, the Senate’s power over treaties. “War can be declared without the assent of the Executive, and peace can be made without the assent of the House,” he had once pointed out. “But neither war nor peace can be made without the assent of the Senate.”

the last day of his presidency, Clinton warned George Bush and Colin Powell not to trust a word Arafat would say to them.

When, in 2006, the Palestinians went to the polls, a majority voted for Hamas, the terrorist group that the Bush administration insisted on including on the ballot.

WITH THE GAZA EVACUATION complete, getting Israel disentangled from Palestinians on the West Bank was next on Sharon’s docket. To smooth his political path, he left the Likud and in November 2005 formed his own party, Kadima Yisrael (“Forward, Israel!”), recruiting centrists from both Labor and Likud. But four months after the Gaza disengagement, S