Tel-Chai Nation

Ari Shavit, a reporter for Haaretz, has some interesting discoveries about Tzipi Livni:

Over the past week I took statements from about a dozen people who know Tzipi Livni quite well. None of them is close to either Benjamin Netanyahu or Ehud Barak. Most support Kadima or parties on the left. Nevertheless, all are concerned. The portrait they paint of Livni is a disturbing one.

Kadima's chairwoman is a principled, patriotic, exemplary human being. She is intelligent and a quick study. But there is one fault that no one disputes: Livni is short-tempered. Her more serious critics believe she has an attention deficit. She is incapable of delving into the details of a document or of sustaining an extended discussion. She does not stay with a topic until it has been completely clarified. Her thinking is not clear and she cannot distinguish the wheat from the chaff. Unlike Netanyahu and Barak, who can get to the bottom of an issue and discuss it in all its complexity, Livni tends to oversimplify, to go for the schematic. One of the most respected figures in the country says she is opinionated and superficial.

Read the rest, but let me just note that Livni is anything but patriotic, and I wouldn't be surprised if she weren't that principled either. Nor do I personally consider her particularly intelligent. But I guess this is as honest a take as you can get from a left-wing newspaper on what Livni is really like.

Labels: Israel, political corruption