re: #145 Bob Levin

First, Researchok’s question was about your discomfort over something that is pretty much non-existent.

China has an unbelievable amount of influence in our domestic politics. Israel, practically none.

However, it would be difficult to formulate a Middle East foreign policy without taking Israel into consideration.

I suspect you don’t want to trace the footsteps of our last conversation about this—so I’ll just ask you if you understand the paragraph about China and leave it at that. Oh, and are you bothered by the influence that China has on our domestic policy?

I freely confess that my knowlege here is unscientific, and if there was a real quantitative way to get at this I would love to know what it is. So instead I read the news. And I read lots of articles about how the various parties court the Israeli lobby in its various forms and flavors and how the media closely parses every interaction Obama has with Bibi and how Bibi addresses Congress and has side meetings with GOP leadership, and on and on and on.

I’m guessing that were I to do a news search for just this week there would be a mountain of such articles.

China? Not so much. They have massive economic influence, but do I see them trying to engage in our domestic politics? No. If you see that on anywhere near the scale that we see with Israel, please point it out. I’m fine with being wrong here, but I don’t think I am.

I would get queasy about any foreign country trying to play in our internal politics. But I only see one that really tries.