Rosner's Domain: Bill Clinton as special Mideast envoy?

I didn't see this Financial Times' piece but Marty Peretz did. Apparently, it was published Friday, and was calling on Barack Obama to appoint Bill Clinton ASAP to be the special envoy for Middle East peace (as we all know, Clinton must be the man since he had such great successes). Anyway, here's Peretz:

A special envoy for the Middle East is an old hat idea.  In fact, it is not exactly an idea and certainly not a new idea. By my count, there have been perhaps a dozen special envoys to the region in the last dozen years, perhaps more, and many of them appointed by the president of the United States as his personal representative to the disputants.  Here are the a few of the designees of the White House: Philip Habib, William Burns, Anthony Zinn, James Jones, Curtin Wilson. Didn't George Tenet also play this role for President Bush? And wasn't James Wolfenson a special rep of someone or other, as well? Then, of course, there is the present special envoy of the Quartet, come straight out of 10 Downing Street to the Middle East bazaar, Tony Blair.  Very important person, accomplished nothing.  Someone once suggested that George Bush Sr. be appointed to this prestigious office. And someone else suggested that James Baker be the one to do the miracle of Middle East peace. The problem with the last two men is that they don't much like Jews. This might be called a disqualification.

In his short piece, Peretz quotes something I wrote quite a while ago, "a special envoy for Middle East peace...is a diplomatic tool that has become a cliche, an envoy in the guise of a messiah" (it is a good line - is it not?). Most Israeli officials assumed way before the election that such envoy will be appointed as way of showing "involvement" in the peace process (the involvement presumably lacking during the Bush years), and Clinton's name was bound to come up, as the "envoy" scheme is also a tribute to the peace making days of the Clinton era.

And Clinton is free, and somewhat bored. And his good friend, Tony Blair, is already in the region, making peace. That's why we added Clinton's name to the list of possible envoys presented to the Israel Factor panel last week. As you can see here, the panel, generally speaking, liked the idea.

But Peretz doesn’t like it:

Bill Clinton is by now a very frivolous man. He is full of self-love and, thus, can no longer be trusted with an important public chore, as Obama must have noticed during the campaign.  It is true that Clinton is invested in the historic struggle between Israel and the fissiparous Palestinians.  It is hard to imagine that he is not still committed to the Camp David principles to which Ehud Barak committed but Yassir Arafat would not even discuss.

My guess: it will not be Clinton.