Q and A with David Remnick

David Remnick is the Editor-in-Chief of The New Yorker. His most recent book is "The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama."

Michael Orbach: What does the book's title refer to?

David Remnick: It's partly literal and partly a metaphor. Literal: the opening scene is the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, a very important civil rights battle and where Obama opens his campaign for the African-American vote in 2007. It's metaphorical in the sense that Obama is not the only bridge but the latest in the long journey that we have traveled since the 17th century in America where race is concerned.

MO: What was in your mind when you decided to write a biography of our current president?

DR:  What was in my mind [was to write a biography] while the president was in office - to get as thorough an understanding of him as humanly possible and usually that process, in terms of biography, doesn't happen until many years after that official is in office. So on one hand, it's journalistic impulse, and on the other hand, it's a scholarly one on amphetamines.

MO: How did you manage to write a 500+ page book while editing The New Yorker?

DR: Coffee. Gallons of it.

MO: How is our president doing?

DR: That's going to depend on who you are and what your politics are... My politics are far more with the Democrats than with the Republicans so it shouldn't surprise you that I think he's doing pretty well so far. But I think you have to be more specific or it's kind of meaningless.

MO: So how's he doing regarding the Israel?

DR: He can't be considered triumphant because he's stuck with the same quandaries that American presidents and Israeli prime ministers and Palestinian leaders have been stuck with for decades. It's both the same and radically different from the way it was in previous presidencies. Obama sees it as a priority-by it I mean, a peaceful and stable end to occupation that's gone on since the end of the '67 War, with the full knowledge that it can't be ended without a stable sense of security for Israel and a contiguous Palestinian homeland. It's more difficult as time goes by. Other exigencies have entered into the picture. Many Israelis feel that previous opportunities for settlement have been lost as it was in the Clinton Administration and a greater distrust has popped up for people who are for the Two-State solution.

You have a right-wing government and it has elements, at the cost of provoking and annoying your readers, of people like Avigdor Lieberman, who can only be classified as the far-right and racist in their political orientation, and Netanyahu has to play to that side of constituencies. On the other side of the picture, you have Palestinian polity that's deeply split between a relatively progressive leadership in the West Bank that seems more open to a Two-State solution than any in history, despite the terrible hardships of the Israeli occupation, and a Hamas leadership in Gaza that's catastrophic and has very poor relations with its brethren in Ramallah and the West Bank. Life is no less complicated than in the year 2000, in many ways, it is much more complicated. One thing I agree with Obama on is I think it's axiomatic that the status quo is unsustainable, the delusion on the right that you can somehow muddle by and continue to be an occupying power and not lose prestige in the world and not lose support among your friends including the American Jewish friends, it's just that, a delusion. I think Obama recognizes that blind faith and blind abeyance to an Israeli leadership is not showing American leadership and doesn't serve Palestinian, Israeli and American interests.

MO: Do you think there are some other factors involved in the Orthodox sentiment towards Obama?

DR: What I think you're hinting at is race here. When I see placards in Israel calling Obama an anti-Semite or having him wear a kaffiyeh I just think that it's grossly unfair. And the roots of that are, to me, a great deal deeper than a debate over a detail in timing of a piece of negotiation. By no means, do I think that everyone who disagrees strongly is a racist, but I think it's one element among some people.

MO: What do you think the future will hold?

DR: I think you have to recognize the enormous degree of mistrust that has developed again on both sides. In Israel, it's not just the far-right that is deeply suspicious of Palestinian motives, it was a distrust that was exacerbated in 2000 and thereafter. On the Palestinian side there is distrust that goes back decades and legitimately so. I do know one thing: this can't go on. It's going to get worse for everybody. As time goes by it will get harder to get a Two-State solution and how could that possibly be good for Israel, not to say how it could possibly be just for the Palestinians? I think Obama recognizes this and by going to Cairo and giving the speech he gave he was trying to reorder the discussion and show some respect to the Arab world and extend a hand. I think many Israelis are waiting for a similarly extended hand in terms of a visit. I think Obama's frustration with Netanyahu has taken the shape of a kind of diplomatic rebuffs that have been misinterpreted as a kind of loss of faith in this long-standing partnership and friendship.

The mistrust in the Jewish side has taken a disgusting shape among some people who have been all too wiling to describe him as an anti-Semite. It's a conclusion grounded in complete misapprehension about Obama and his history. His greatest bases of support both politically and financially were Jews in Highland Park and the Northside as well as African-Americans. The only ethnic group that voted more for Obama than the Jews were the African-Americans. He won an excess of 80 percent. Some loudmouthed people screaming anti-Semitism are in no way representative, just as the leaders of the so-called big Jewish organizations giving their political opinion are in no way representative of American Jews. This seems to come as a surprise to them.