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© Steve Pease

Politics, Law, & the Nobel Peace Prize©

The U.S. Congress and The Administration

The U.S. has yet to elect a Jewish President. One might say with forty-six Presidents elected since George Washington, that matches expectations. With roughly two percent of today's U.S. population being Jewish, one in fifty should be a good rule of thumb. The time is coming. In 2000, staunch democrats could argue that the popular vote did elect our first Jewish Vice President. Joe Lieberman almost became the man "a heart beat from the Presidency". A thousand votes in Florida would have made it so. Perhaps in 2008?

The story was completely different in the U.S. Senate (108th Congress) where one would have logically expected to find two Jews. There were 11.

To these, one might also consider adding half of John Kerry since, as he recently discovered, he is half Jewish, rather than one-forth as he had long suspected.

Eleven incumbent Jews in the Senate is almost six times what statistics would project.

To flesh things out, it is fair to note that the first Jew was not elected to the Senate till 1845 (David Levy Yulee) and Yulee had only Judah Benjamin as company for seven of the twelve years he served in the Congress. (For perspective, from 1790 to 1880 Jews were of 1 percent of the population, or less, only rising to 1 percent around the turn of the Century.) Between 1861 and 1879, no Jews served in the Senate. This was also true from 1913 to 1949 when anti-Semitism was a significant force in America, while at the same time, the U.S. Jewish population was approaching 4 percent. Nonetheless, until 1949, only six Jews had been elected to the Senate. After that, particularly in the mid-50s, as anti-Semitism waned, Jews began to be elected ever more frequently and many of them became prominent figures including: Jacob Javits, Abraham Ribicoff, Howard Metzenbaum, Warren Rudman and Paul Wellstone.

Jews do not fare as well in the House as they do in the Senate. There, they are only three times more likely to serve than one would expect. Again, using the 108th Congress, there were twenty-six (6 percent) elected Jews out of 435 seats. The Jews included:

Looking over these lists, one sees something that would not surprise an astute political observer. Of the 37 names on both lists, thirty-three (89 percent) are Democrats. Only three (8 percent) are Republicans and one (3 percent) is an Independent. In that makeup of the Senate, nine Jews represented nearly 20 percent of its Democrats, a large and important block. Conservative Republicans would like to do a better job of recruiting Jews, but since the Roosevelt administration, they have not. Instead, they often find themselves disagreeing with the strong liberal bent of many on the list. Barbara Boxer, Russ Feingold, Charles Schumer, Rahm Emanuel, Barney Frank, Jerrold Nadler, Henry Waxman and Robert Wexler are not likely to get high ratings from the Americans for Conservative Action, but they are most assuredly strong and articulate leaders for their point of view.

There is also an interesting recent contrast in Cabinet and Senior Administration posts between the Clinton and Bush (George W.) administrations, perhaps largely reflecting the strong tendency for Jews to be Democrats. While George W. is every bit as staunch in his support of Israel as Bill Clinton was, Bush has taken a different tack in his appointments. That is, in his first term, Bush appointed large numbers of women and minorities to senior posts including Colin Powell (Black), Condoleezza Rice (Black & female), Rod Paige (Black), Norman Mineta (Japanese-American), Spencer Abraham (Arab-American), Mel Martinez (Hispanic-American), Elaine Chao (Chinese-American & female) Gale Norton, Ann Veneman and Christine Todd Whitman (all female). The number of prominent Jews was dramatically lower than for Clinton. Bush retained George Tenant as head of the CIA until Tenant's resignation, and Paul Wolfowitz was visible as the number two man in the Defense Department, but compared with Clinton's team, this was small potatoes.

Clinton's cabinets included Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers as Secretaries of the Treasury, Robert Reich as Secretary of Labor, Dan Glickman as Secretary of Agriculture, Mickey Cantor as Secretary of Commerce. In addition, William Cohen, Secretary of Defense and Madeline Albright, Secretary of State have Jewish backgrounds or heritage. Sandy Berger served as National Security Advisor, Richard Holbrooke was U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, and Charlene Barshefsky was U.S. Trade Representative. And who can forget Ann Lewis, White House Communications Director and Rahm Emmanuel, Senior Advisor for Policy and Strategy (now in the House of Representatives) as outspoken supporters of Clinton in both the good and bad of that Presidency - some of which arose from Clinton's relationship with. . . . Monica Lewinsky.

While one can agree or disagree with the Democrat and liberal bent of many of the Jews that occupy (or have occupied) these important positions, it is undeniable that they have had an enormous impact. For a group that should be almost too small to matter (two percent), they have achieved and contributed much.

Political Contributions

If Jews have contributed much as elected and appointed holders of political office, their "contributions" of dollars to political campaigns is a virtual gusher. This is not exactly the sense in which the term Jewish "contributions" is generally used, but "contributions" they most certainly were.

Mother Jones magazine reviewed the Country's 400 largest political donors in a March 5, 2001 issue. (Exhibit 9a) And while the article began by noting the large number of dollars raised by the Bush campaign ($696 million) and the coincident question of what donors expected in exchange for their largess, Mother Jones seemed to miss the elephant in the room - namely, the large number of Jewish donors. Namely, forty-two of the top one hundred donors were Jewish. What are the odds? Four of the top five (S. Daniel Abraham, Bernard Schwartz, David Gilo and Chaim Saban) were Jewish Democrats and each donated more than $1 million.

Law and The U.S. Supreme Court

Nothing is more important in U.S. law than the Supreme Court. It is the ultimate arbiter of decisions made in all other courts and it alone can decide if a law passed by Congress or a decision made by the Administration is "unconstitutional". Its importance is ever more demonstrated by the constant fights in the U.S. Senate over the Senate's role to "advise and consent" on appointments to the Federal Bench, including the Appeals Courts, and ultimately, The Supreme Court.

As with the Senate, it took a long time for a Jew to be appointed to the Supreme Court. Louis Brandeis became the first Jewish Associate Justice when he was confirmed in 1916. This was 127 years after the first Supreme Court appointment (John Jay in 1789.) Since Brandeis was the sixty-seventh Supreme Court Justice named in the history of the Court, one might argue it was not really even overdue since, Jews did not represent 2.2 percent of the population until 1910.

Nonetheless, after Brandeis the pace changed dramatically. As of early 2005, seven of the 108 Justices (6.5 percent) have been Jewish. The 6.5 percent statistic exceeds the expected two percent but understates the magnitude of the change since Brandeis. That is, there have been forty-two appointments in the eighty-nine years since Brandeis. Seven of those forty-two (17 percent) were Jews. In the forty-three years since Arthur Goldberg was appointed in 1962, four of fifteen appointments (27 percent) were Jews. And, the last two appointments (Ruth Bader Ginsburg - 1993 and Stephen G. Breyer 1994) were both Jews. That two of our nine Supreme Court Justices (22 percent or eleven times their percentage of the U.S. population) are now Jews indicates just how remarkable their achievement has been. All of the Supreme Court Appointments are shown in Exhibit 9b

The Nobel Prize for Peace

No one can say for sure why the Nobel Prize for Peace is not selected by the Swedes, but it is clear that Alfred Nobel gave the job to the Norwegians. They make their announcement from Oslo at the same time the other Nobels are being announced from Stockholm. The Norwegian King awards the Nobel Prize for Peace in Oslo on December 10th at the same time that the Swedish King is awarding the other five prizes in Stockholm. One might think in the interests of peace between the Norwegians and the Swedes they would work out some kind of joint ceremony, but alas, the rupture between the Swedes and Norwegians that separated those two countries in 1905 remains.

If the Nobel Prizes for Physics, Chemistry and Physiology & Medicine are generally acknowledged to be excellent selections of the true greats in their respective fields, the Nobel Prize for Peace is more subjective and more controversial.

The 2003 Award for Jimmy Carter may have been long overdue for what he accomplished in the Camp David Accords between Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat, but the choice was not above criticism when the Chair of the Panel making the selection let it be known that he was influenced by Carter's position chiding the Bush White House stance on Iraq. At least he, as Chair, seemed as interested in "sending a message" as he was in selecting the person most deserving recognition in the cause of peace. In 2003, the selection of Shirin Ebadi, an Iranian dissident was considered well deserved. At the same time, ailing Pope John Paul II was 83 Years old. He was determined in the cause of peace and had an immense impact on history over the last 25 years, including the peaceful resolution of "The Cold War" and the critical changes in Poland which helped end it. Nonetheless, the Pope may have been deemed unsuitable by the Panel because of the Church's position on such matters as birth control, abortion, the priesthood and homosexuality.

This Nobel is also different in that 18 times in the 102 years between 1901 and 2004, no prize was awarded. One can understand some reluctance during the two world wars (though prizes were awarded in 1917, 1943 and 1945), but awards were also not made in 1923, 1924, 1928, 1932, 1948, 1955, 1956, 1966, 1967, and 1972. One wonders if so few were worthy or there was some difficulty in coming to a peaceful agreement among the Committee members. Unlike the other Prizes, the Peace Prize often goes to entire organizations or groups of people - sometimes with the group's leader singled out for special recognition. Fourteen times organizations such as the Red Cross or Doctors Without Borders have received the Award and three times an organization and its leader have been selected (The United Nations and Kofi Annan, International Campaign to Ban Landmines and Jody Williams, and Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs and Joseph Rotblat).

Including the leaders awarded prizes coincident with their organizations (Annan, Williams and Rothblat), ninety-two Peace Nobel Awards have been made to individuals in seventy-one of the 104 years since 1901. Unlike the Nobels for Chemistry, where few people would recognize more than a name or two, many recipients of the Peace Prize are easily recognizable. Jimmy Carter, Kim Dae-jung, Yasser Arafat, Ytzhak Rabin, Anwar Sadat, Cordell Hull, Linus Pauling (his second), Dag Hammarskjold and Lech Walesa to name but a few. The large number of laureates who have held significant political office is both logical, and the reason for including the Nobel for Peace in this chapter. All of the Laureates are shown in Exhibit 9c.

Perhaps because the Middle East has been a powder keg since the end of World War II, one might expect Jews to get a bit more than 2/10ths of one percent of the Awards. But again the numbers are startling. Nine of the ninety-two Awards (ten percent) have gone to Jews. They include:

The Norwegians have been notable in recognizing the contributions Jews have made to Peace over the years. One hopes Jews and Palestinians will soon find a way to share yet one more award for truly bringing lasting peace to that part of the world very soon.