attempt to help put us on the political offensive, after I was asked to record on of

/ BARAK /5 attempt to help put us on the political offensive, after I was asked to record on of Labor’s TV campaign messages. I knew what I wanted to say. I’d talked it over with the small group of campaign experts Peres had asked me to assemble alongside Ramon’s main team. Rather than ignore Bibi, I was going to use my position as his former commander in Sayeret Matkal, someone who knew him well, to explain why Peres should lead Israel. “How many of us can really understand what it means to be a Prime Minister?” I began. “As head of intelligence, and chief of staff, I have seen, close-up, what it takes to be a Prime Minister. It is not a game. We’ve had good Prime Ministers: Ben-Gurion, Peres, Rabin, Begin... Bibi, we know each other well, from the days when you were an officer under my command. A young officer, and a good one. Prime Minister is the most important and serious role in this country. Bibi, it’s not yet you. We need an experienced leader, who will know how to guide us with wisdom, strength and sensitivity. Shimon Peres is that man.” Yet we were never going to be able to avoid engaging with Bibi altogether. The face-to-face television debate between the two candidates was set for May 27, two days before the election. By American standards, the format was fairly tame. No direct exchanges were permitted, only a series of questions directed at each candidate by a leading political journalist, Dan Margalit. Still, it would place Shimon and Bibi side by side. We spent two days prepping Peres, with Avraham Burg — an early Peace Now supporter, former Peres aide and Knesset member — standing in for Bibi. Avraham played the role well, anticipating the lines of attack Shimon would face. But as I watched, I worried that even he couldn’t replicate one of Bibi’s key advantages. During his time at the embassy in Washington, and especially as UN ambassador, Bibi had become a frequent presence on American television interview shows. Always articulate, he was now also an experienced, and completely comfortable, television performer. In our debate rehearsals, Peres sounded well versed on all the issues. Yet I sensed his problem wasn’t going to be the message, but the medium. He sounded a bit distant, unengaged, almost as if the TV debate was something he knew he had to go through, but which he thought slightly sullied the proper purpose of politics. In the real debate, Shimon seemed to convey the sense that merely being in the same studio with a pretender as raw and untested as Bibi was offensive. When each of the candidates was given the opportunity at the end to ask a single question of the other, Peres didn’t even bother. He did come over as the man with much more 291 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_011762