This piece appears on Iowa Independent as well as OffTheBus.
James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, praised the foreign policy skills of candidates Barack Obama and Bill Richardson while talking with Iowa Independent and several audience members following an Iowa City talk today.
"Obama has an incredible understanding of the issues," Zogby said. "This is just an incredibly smart guy."
Zogby was less positive when asked about Hillary Clinton's statement that the U.S. is more secure now than before the Iraq War. "It's not a sellout so much as what they think passes as smart politics," he said. "It's a bad calculation based more on the politics of convenience, and I don't trust that instinct."
Zogby didn't offer these observations in his address to a crowd of 125, many of whom munched on free pizza, and the Arab American Institute does not make endorsements.
Zogby told Iowa Independent he's had no contact with Republican candidates -- "I'm a Democrat and that's known"-- but others in the organization have talked with the Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson campaigns. He said the Arab-American community used to lean three to four percent Democratic, but since 2002 has shifted to roughly a 44 percent Democratic to 28 percent GOP margin.
Zogby was making his second Iowa City appearance of the year. He was overshadowed on the Middle East front when he visited in April -- the same week as former president Jimmy Carter.
Zogby also cited the influence of the Israel lobby on Middle East policy debate, differentiating the coalition of neoconservatives and evangelicals from the mainstream of Jewish-American opinion In a question and answer session, Zogby said "Partly ignorance, partly fear" prevents discussion. He said it's not the Jewish community that stifles discussion, "It's the perception of fear about it, more than it," likening the lobby to the Wizard of Oz, an ultimately powerless "man behind the curtain" cultivating fear. "It's anti-Semitism on the part of politcians who think the Israel lobby is a monolithic thing -- I used to call them anti-Semites for Israel," he said, noting that both Arab Americans and Jewish Americans want peace and hold similar views.