Latter-day Solomon

Last week's issue of The New Yorker featured a lengthy but entertaining profile of Mort Zuckerman. A mogul in the true sense of the word, Zuckerman accumulates cash, properties, publications, television appearances, miles in the air, political connections, philanthropic positions, and famous girlfriends like my shoulders collect dandruff -- quickly and silently. "Zuckerman speaks softly, except when he shouts, which he does occasionally, at people who work for him or to make himself heard as a commentator on 'The McLaughlin Group,' the Sunday-morning talk show. Quiet-talking is a power tactic, and Zuckerman has mastered it."

Zuckerman, left, on a panel with Al Gore and Roger Ailes.

After amassing a fortune as chairman of Boston Properties, the power-hungry billionaire decided to play a hand in the course of history. The purchase of three influential publications allowed him to acquire such a role. The Atlantic, U.S. News and World Report, and the New York Daily News target three different audiences and provide Zuckerman a bully pulpit from which to advance his views.

As a hawkish Democrat, Zuckerman often plays a convincing neoconservative, a characteristic especially noticible in his McLaughlin Group punditry. During the lead-up to the Iraq War, Zuckerman was a strong supporter of invasion; even in 2004, his Daily News endorsed Bush. Only recently, like so many others, has he started to come around to reality. "[He] now deems the war, and the Administration, to be a disaster, though one worth seeing through; he supports the surge."

On McLaughlin Group, one often catches him after a policy mission to Israel. The Jewish State's Ambassador to the United Nations, Dan Gillerman, considers Zuckerman to be a "roving ambassador to and from the United States and Israel." Often annoyed with Pat Buchanan's de facto anti-Israel rhetoric, Zuckerman takes over the group's Middle East discussions at McLaughlin's behest and maps out the real picture, or a synthesis of the pictures perceived by the D.C. emissarial establishment and Tel Aviv government.

Influence is a finite commodity, valuable due to its scarcity. Through persistence, charm, and shrewd business acumen, Zuckerman makes out with a fair share of the available stock. As the chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, he holds the highest position in the hierarchy of Jewish advocacy institutions. Abraham Foxman, head of the Anti-Defamation League, calls the rank "the King of the Jews," making Zuckerman a latter-day Solomon; a representative, in Ambassador Gillerman's eyes, of the Jewish people, not just Israel or the United States.

A small but significant clique of powerful Jews share Zuckerman's bellicose foreign policy views. Zuckerman labels Iran an irrational actor, Lebanon a haven for Hezbollah, Hamas a band of terrorists. Iraq's WMDs embodied a mortal threat to the Jewish State. Like coreligionists Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, Zuckerman often takes stances in response to the worst-case scenario for Israel. And those who simultaneously breathe the rarefied air of neoconservatism and wield political power often make decisions that create unpredictable and dangerous results.