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For someone who has only been in politics for four years, Ehud Barak has two striking accomplishments to boast of. Furthermore, Barak's widening lead in the polls indicates, as much as anything can, that he's run a very good campaign. So far, he has to be judged a remarkably successful politician. But being a successful prime minister is a very different challenge. If Barak wins, he would enter the Prime Minister's Office with a big question mark hanging over his head. He would assume the leadership of the State of Israel with roughly one year's experience in government. He was Yitzhak Rabin's interior minister and Shimon Peres's foreign minister, and didn't leave much of a mark in either post - with the possible exception of his enthusiastic support for Peres's Grapes of Wrath bombing in Lebanon, which turned out to be of dubious wisdom. Barak's intellectual hubris and tendency to trust only his inner circle could be a distinct disadvantage in a prime minister with such meager experience as a statesman. Rabin also ascended to the prime ministership in 1974 as a former IDF golden boy, replacing Golda Meir, who had resigned, after he had served only a few years as ambassador to the US and minister of labor and social affairs. Three years later Rabin resigned over his wife's illegal US bank account. Rabin's first term is widely judged a failure, an apprenticeship for his historic later term. Tel Aviv University Middle East affairs professor Itamar Rabinovich, however, does not see a precedent. "The big difference is that Rabin essentially inherited the prime ministership; he did not have to wage a campaign for it. Barak has had to wage two very tough campaigns - first in his party, and now in the country as a whole. I'd say he's proven his mettle. I don't know if he's going to be elected prime minister, but if he is, he would come into office quite well-prepared," said Rabinovich, ambassador to the US in the Rabin-Peres government and an unofficial adviser to Barak. Prof. Ehud Sprinzak, a noted Hebrew University political scientist, is one of many intellectuals who's had his brain picked by Barak. "Barak is brilliant, sophisticated, a long-range strategic thinker," Sprinzak said of the front runner in next Monday's prime ministerial election. "He said some very interesting things about Israel's role in a future Middle East. Besides this, I think he's an honest person." But Sprinzak also has his misgivings: "Barak gives you the feeling that he thinks he's smarter than everyone else in the world. He's not particularly good at human relations. He's alienated a lot of people in his party." "Brilliant" is a word frequently associated with the One Israel leader and former IDF chief of staff. Like his mentor, Rabin, Barak, 57, is known for his analytical mind. Unlike Rabin, he's also known for his voracious reading habits and wide-ranging knowledge. He can dazzle cabinet members or journalists in a briefing. He has a master's degree from Stanford University in systems analysis. Even more than playing classical piano, Barak's favorite hobby is taking apart watches and putting them back together, said Ilan Kfir, co-author of the recent, highly flattering biography, Barak - Number One Soldier. BUT the flip side of Barak's brilliance is his intellectual arrogance. In his 1997 political memoir, I Have Seen Them All, Dan Margalit wrote that many people who'd held discussions with Barak "got the feeling that he'd already thought over the subject beforehand and made up his mind. Some were impressed by the sharpness of his intellect. Others found it intolerable." Soon after winning the Labor Party primary for chairman two years ago, Barak was tagged with the nickname "Napoleon." He'd leapfrogged all the veteran Labor politicians - such as Haim Ramon, Yossi Beilin, Uzi Baram and Avraham Burg - who'd long had their eye on the leadership, and now he was shunting them aside. He was turning for advice only to his personal inner circle, led by his brother-in-law, attorney Doron Cohen. Now, however, Barak has placed these once-disgruntled colleagues into key positions in the election campaign. Burg, whose public war of words with Barak almost drove him to the Center Party, is the campaign's chief mouthpiece, and Baram is not far behind. Ramon, who likewise came close to bolting to the Center, is head of Barak's campaign for the June 1 runoff election (if there is one). Beilin is Barak's emissary to the all-important Arab sector. "He's made a sulha with everyone," insisted Kfir. "He's managed to implement most of his political program despite some very strong internal opposition," said Rabinovich. AT Kibbutz Mishmar Hasharon, not far from Netanya, "The members may disagree on political issues, but everybody agrees on Ehud," said Itai Margalit, economic manager at the Hashomer Hatza'ir kibbutz and an old friend and classmate of Barak's. Margalit spoke of Barak only in platitudes. "He's a true friend, he keeps a close, warm connection with the veterans and the elderly people here. His parents - what great people they are!" Barak's parents, Yisrael and Esther Brog (Barak Hebraized his family name in the IDF), immigrated from Lithuania and Poland, respectively, and were among the kibbutz's founders in the 1930s. Barak is the eldest of four brothers. He left the kibbutz in his mid-20s, and now lives with his wife, Nava, in Kochav Yair. They have three grown daughters. Margalit, who is Barak's age, describes his friend's childhood on the kibbutz in idyllic terms. Asked about Barak's personality - was he a leader even then, was he an extrovert or a loner, was he devoted to socialist ideology? - Margalit dismissed the questions for seeking complexity when everything had been so simple. "We all ran around together, Ehud wasn't a leader, he was just like everyone else - except he had a higher IQ, he had a remarkable memory. But as a person he was modest, a normal guy. There was no question about ideology, our ideology was in our deeds. Ehud was brought up to contribute, in the kibbutz and in the IDF. All of us were," he said. Margalit confirmed the details of an anecdote from Barak's youth, related by Kfir, which illustrates both Barak's early brilliance and his early awareness of it. Barak was bored in high school, unchallenged, and he seemed to pay scant attention to the teachers and rarely participated in class. When planes were flying over he'd wander to the window and watch them. When teachers tried to catch him unawares by calling on him, Barak would nonchalantly recite all the right ones, with full explanations, even though he hadn't taken a single note. By the end of the 11th grade, his kibbutz teachers had had enough and they told him, "You'll be promoted to the 12th grade, but you won't be going to this school anymore," and he was transferred. ON HIS way up the IDF ladder, highlighted by his command of the exalted elite unit Sayeret Matkal (IDF General Staff Reconnaissance), Barak won five medals for bravery, the most ever by an Israeli soldier. He was bold beyond belief, said Kfir, pushing forward in enemy territory even when it seemed like suicide, and succeeding. Yet as a political leader, Barak has appeared excessively cautious, and sometimes indecisive. The one bold idea he's come up with is for drafting yeshiva students into the IDF. During the long months when the Wye accord was touch-and-go, when Netanyahu was refusing the American-Palestinian demand that he give up 13% of the West Bank, Barak played it very safe. He said only that Netanyahu should arrive at an agreement, but declined to take a position on the heart of the dispute - whether Netanyahu should say yes or no to 13%. Privately Barak explained that if he backed the 13% demand and Netanyahu managed to get an agreement for less, then he, Barak, would end up looking like the weaker negotiator. After the recent conviction of Shas MK Aryeh Deri for accepting bribes, Barak at first hinted, but only hinted, that Deri should step down as party leader. Pressed by reporters in the ensuing days, Barak came out and said he that if elected, he would not hold coalition negotiations with Deri. As the campaign progressed, Barak came out more strongly against Deri and Shas, hinting, once again, that he would give the Interior Ministry to Yisrael Ba'aliya, which is going down well with Russian voters. But last week, when a Knesset committee voted on suspending Deri from the Knesset, Barak made sure that Labor MKs on the committee were conveniently absent, and Deri won the vote, 7-6. Rabinowitz, however, insisted that an opposition leader trying to get elected has a natural inclination to be cautious, to offend as few potential allies as possible, and this should not be taken as a predictor of how Barak would act as prime minister. The tasks that would face Barak in office would require the kinds of hard decisions, inspiring some and infuriating others, that a cautious leader might find impossible to make. Israel's next prime minister will very likely have to enter final-status talks with the Palestinians, who are demanding considerably more territory - including east Jerusalem - than most Israelis are ready to give up. Barak has sought to finesse this problem by vowing to give the public, by referendum, the last word on any final-status agreement with the Palestinians. This would be an unprecedented, unpredictable weakening of the prime minister's, the cabinet's and the Knesset's decision-making power. He has also pledged to get the IDF out of Lebanon within a year of taking office, which would probably require reaching at least a tentative peace agreement with Syria, which is demanding all of the Golan Heights in return. Barak would likely have to make a wrenching, divisive decision to make good on his pledge for peace in Lebanon. Is he up to it? "I think he's ready for a bold agreement with Syria, which, at the end of the day, means that most or all of the Golan will be given back," said Sprinzak. "He's convinced that Syria isn't a military threat anymore, and that peace with Syria will vastly improve Israel's position in the region. If Barak does this, it will be a great breakthrough. Nobody will be able to say that he doesn't have vision." YET another task for Barak, one he has embraced, is healing the political, religious, ethnic and economic divisions in the country - being prime minister of all the people, as he likes to say. But if heartwarming slogans and assurances alone could heal Israeli society, it would have been healed long ago. Barak would have to make decisions to push forward towards peace with the Palestinians and Syrians, yet without alienating the Right. He would also have to satisfy the secular demand for civil freedom without further embittering the Orthodox. Sprinzak said Barak is perfectly suited for this task, more so than Rabin was. "I always said that Rabin made a mistake in not showing more consideration for the feelings of the extreme Right, and Barak agreed with me," he said. "He's no great dove, he's a security hawk, a centrist, and that's what the Israeli public wants and needs now. My guess is that he would begin forming his government with the Likud, the National Religious Party, Yisrael Ba'aliya and Center. After this, the only question remaining would be whether he wanted to bring in Meretz or the haredim." In the public-opinion polls of the last few weeks, Barak has broken out of a virtual tie with Netanyahu and now holds a lead estimated in double figures. If he goes on to win the election, this campaign will certainly have been Barak's finest political achievement. It might not even be a bad indicator of what sort of prime minister he could make. On the night in 1992 when another relatively untested, cautious, middle-of-the-road politician was elected president of the US, defeated vice presidential candidate Dan Quayle said this of Bill Clinton: "If he runs the country like he ran his campaign, we're going to be all right."
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(May 14) - Unquestionably, 
