It’s the defining anecdote for any article of this type, repeated ad infinitum without entirely losing its resonance: After his first meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Bill Clinton reportedly asked a circle of aides: “Who the f**k does he think he is? Who’s the f**king superpower here?”
That was in the summer of 1996, just after the 46-year-old Netanyahu had won his first election as leader of the Likud party. He was already a media star in the U.S., familiar to CNN viewers as an Israeli government spokesman during and after the first Gulf War. He spoke flawless American English, having spent much of his childhood in upstate New York and then attended MIT, where he earned multiple degrees. No one mistook Bibi — a nickname deployed in countless New York Post headlines — for a liberal even then, but his affect and demeanor suggested an energetic pragmatist fashioned by the neoliberal era, ready to lead the Middle East into the future.
