The politics of personality

Sharon is reportedly considering calling his new party 'Kadima,' or Forward. As a colleague of mine commented today, perhaps a more suitable name might be 'Kadima, smolah, smolah, od ktzat smolah...' ('Forward, left, left, a little more to the left')....
Another suggestion for a name for his party that I heard today was, 'Acharai' -- 'After me' -- the mythical battle cry of commanders in the Israeli army, who lead the way for their soldiers. It is apt here because the new party revolves so much around Sharon. Were he, G-d forbid, to drop dead tomorrow from a heart attack (unfortunately not an entirely impossible scenario...), the whole party would collapse with him in about three seconds flat. Indeed, one of the interesting things about this election is that even though the country reverted back (in 2001) to a system where there is no direct vote for prime minister, but each person instead gets one vote, for a party, more people than ever will, in effect, be basing their vote exclusively on who they want to see as PM -- the rest of the party be damned. Whoever votes for Achrayut Leumit / Kadima will really only be voting for Arik; a vote for Labour will, for a very large proportion of people, be a vote specifically for Amir Peretz; and while the Likud is in some senses the exception to this trend -- there are many people who will vote Likud whoever leads it, and others who will find its new/old hard-right line appealing whoever's at the top -- if Bibi, for example, ends up as leader, he personally will be earning many people's votes as well. Some have said that the past week has finally divided the political map into three distinct political visions, given it a right, a center and a left; the truth is that at least two of these are embodied completely, and only, in two specific people, upon whom the entire political arrangement depends at the moment. Their parties are blank, bland, irrelevant slates and stand for nothing. In short, Israel could just as easily have abolished the party vote as abolished the direct vote for PM -- that's the vote that people will be casting anyway....