/ BARAK/ 1 Peres’s assurance that I’d be the campaign manager, that hadn’t happened. I wasn’t really surprised by that, however. When he offered me the job, I wondered how he’d managed to clear it with much more established Labor politicians. It turned out he hadn’t. Haim Ramon, the veteran whom I’d urged Yitzhak to bring back for the election, was put in charge. Shimon did ask me to head a small advisory team which reported directly to him, but all the key decisions were taken at weekly strategy sessions chaired jointly by him and Ramon. I still hoped to make the campaign a referendum on Yitzhak’s murder, and on the need to recommit Israel to democracy and dialogue over vitriol and violence. But Haim began with the assumption that, given Peres’s lead in the polls, we should simply play it safe, ignore the issue of the assassination, and try to ignore Bibi, too. He described it as a soccer match. We were leading by two goals, he told our first strategy meeting. The other side was never going to score unless we screwed up. “To win, we do what all good teams do. We play for time. We kick the ball around. We kick the ball into the stands. We wait for the final whistle.” I tried, without success, to argue that we were underestimating Bibi. “He may be young and inexperienced in national politics. But I know him from when he was even younger. He knows how to analyze a task, break it down, work out a plan and execute it systematically and tenaciously. If we play it safe and don’t define the campaign, he’II seize on every error we make and he will define it.” I wanted us at least to connect with Yitzhak’s legacy. I argued to both Peres and Ramon that we should promote Shimon as the candidate with the background, experience and vision to take forward what he and Rabin had begun. I also wanted us to echo a core assumption in all that Yitzhak did as a military and political leader: that peace was achievable only if Israel and its citizens felt secure. Even before the renewed