The Interpreter

The first thing I noticed when entering Noam Neusner’s office in Washington, D.C. was the president’s dog. A framed photo of the first canine, Barney, hangs by the door. It’s a big color print, and I pointed to it and offered an approving laugh.

“That’s funny,” I said.

Neusner, who is otherwise affable and easy-going, didn’t laugh with me just then. There are other large Bush family photos around the small office space, including a few of the president himself, and the dog is no tongue-in-cheek addition. It’s the president’s dog.

Neusner is the president’s liaison to the Jewish community, and his adherence to the president’s policies and beliefs is, well, dogged. When I recently visited his office, in the Old Executive Office Building just west of the West Wing, he was making final arrangements for Jewish attendance at a presidential luncheon that afternoon on behalf of Bush’s faith-based initiative.

Neusner wears another hat in the administration as a special assistant to the president for economic speechwriting, but in his capacity as Jewish liaison, fitting the right Jew to the right event is part of what he does. He also communicates Jewish concerns to the White House, and White House policy to various Jewish constituencies. He is careful to point out that he’s not “the Jewish representative.”

“I don’t represent them,” he said, clearly enjoying the approaching understatement. “They represent themselves very well.”

And his job fits him well. Neusner, a graduate of Johns Hopkins, did a short stint in Jewish journalism before going to work as senior editor at U.S. News and World Report. He joined the Bush administration in 2002 as an economic/domestic policy speechwriter. His father is rabbi, scholar and prolific author Jacob Neusner (and yes, his cousin, you’ll notice, wrote one of our cover stories this week).

But beyond his CV, Neusner is something of a poster boy for the New Jewish Republican Guy.

While Sen. John Kerry won 77 percent of the overall Jewish vote, President George W. Bush peeled off increasing numbers of young men, according to a survey released this week by the Solomon Project (see story, p. 16). Bush did especially well among Jewish men younger than 30, carrying 35 percent of them.

This confirms what pollster Frank Luntz found by crunching exit-poll data last November: Bush’s largest gains in the Jewish community were among men ages 18-40.

Neusner is 35. He is a mature Washington 35 — not an L.A. 35 — looking at home in a button-down and tie and sporting an untouched receding hairline.

“I’m on the leading edge,” he said when I pointed out his demographic likeness to New Jewish Republican Guy. “There’s been a steady increase, among Orthodox, among immigrants. The Republican Party is more attentive to the needs of the Jewish community, and it is far more pro-Israel than it was.”

Neusner reports to Josh Bolten, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, former domestic policy adviser, and himself a kosher-observant Jew.

I walked into Neusner’s office thinking, here’s a man whose job is about to get much, much harder.

Bush’s inroads among the pro-Israel security hawks and the Orthodox is being tested both by his support for Israel Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s plan for a unilateral withdrawal from Gaza and by his open disagreement with Sharon over settlement expansion in the West Bank.

Some of Sharon’s biggest supporters now stand strongly opposed to his policy, and many of the president’s staunchest advocates in this past election are aghast either at his support for Sharon’s unilateral withdrawal or his criticism of Israel’s settlement expansion.

I had breakfast this week with two local Jewish Republican leaders who disagreed sharply with each other over the Gaza withdrawal. One said Bush was insisting the Israelis give up land while the Palestinians are offering nothing in return. Meanwhile the left, which once repudiated Sharon, now embraces his plan. Evidently, the “road map” to Middle East peace does not have left and right clearly marked.

Neusner acknowledged that he has had some explaining to do among the president’s supporters. But, he said, no one who has followed the president closely should be surprised.

“He has held a very steady gaze on a two-state solution since 2002, when he described the road map,” Neusner said. “He was genuine in his insistence that Palestinian leadership had to change, and he doesn’t take the security of our friends lightly.”

I spent a few minutes pressing Neusner for a sense of how important White House pressure has been in guiding Sharon’s policies. After all, Bush’s historic attempts to change the Arab Middle East depend, to no small extent, on his ability to get painful concessions from the Israelis as well.

But Neusner wouldn’t speak in terms of pressure or politics. This president, he said, does exactly what he says he will do, and bringing real change to the Middle East is one of those things he set out to do.

“How do we gauge success in the Middle East?” he asked. “Real democracy. Real reform. And the signs are positive.”

Maybe. But the road ahead for Bush’s road map, as events this week proved, will be anything but smooth.