NIXON GO TO CHINA?

NIXON GO TO CHINA?

NETANYAHU GO ??

OBAMA CHIMES IN

Picture this: The cliché heard 'round the media echo chamber.

If Richard Nixon can go to China, perhaps Bibi Netanyahu can -- Fill in your chief wish for an Israeli prime minister.

For a recent example: "Just as it took a Richard Nixon to go to China, it will take a Netanyahu to enforce a peace settlement that will require a withdrawal from most of the West Bank settlements." -- Kishore Mahbubani, Japan Times, Sunday, May 10, 2009

But Benjamin ("Bibi") Netanyahu has been here before, and so have we.

He was Prime Minister the first time from 1996-99. "He wants to be Nixon going to China and still be honored by the John Birch Society," we were told. By Thomas L. Friedman, in the May 19, 1998, New York Times. Friedman was asking, "Who Is Bibi?"

We might ask, why do we keep falling back on this cliché?

Today we learn that Barack Obama is now also on record with the Nixon-Goes-To-China analogy for "Bibi":

"Israeli analysts said Mr Obama had effectively given Mr Netanyahu the choice of alienating his Right-wing coalition allies and imperilling his fragile government or alienating Israel's most powerful ally.

"But Mr Obama, in an interview with regional newspapers, said Mr Netanyahu's Right-wing stance was an advantage. He compared him to the former President Richard Nixon whose impeccable Right-wing credentials made possible his outreach to Chairman Mao's China in the early 1970s."