Joe Bennett: Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump the same class of leader

Netanyahu's comb-over invites a simple question: who is he trying to fool? Photo / AP

OPINION

I am delighted that Benjamin Netanyahu is no longer prime minister of Israel, and not only because his successor is called Bennett.

I am no student of Middle Eastern politics but I have never trusted Mr Netanyahu, mainly because of his hair. For as long as I have been seeing him on television he has been combing strands of that hair across his scalp in a bid to pretend he is not bald. A comb-over is a window on the soul and the view it offers isn't pretty.

Netanyahu's comb-over invites a simple question: who is he trying to fool? If he's trying to fool himself, is he a suitable person to be in charge of a country? And if he's trying to fool everyone else, then a. he thinks everyone else is easily fooled and b. he is happy to try to fool them.

(The most spectacular comb-over I ever saw was on a footballer called Ralph Coates who played a few games for England when I was a kid. When Coates ran on to the pitch a wad of hair was plastered across his scalp. The first time he headed the ball, however, the wad flew from the pate and for the rest of the game hung lankly by his neck. But one can sympathise with poor Ralph Coates. He was a youngish man playing a young man's game. His error was of youthful vanity. Netanyahu does not have the same excuse. He's 71 years old.)

I note from a newspaper photograph that Netanyahu's successor with the splendid surname is as bald as a billiard ball and he makes no effort to pretend that he is not. That's no guarantee that he will make a good prime minister, but it's something.
And he will need something if he's to make a good fist of running Israel, sitting as it does smack in the middle of the world's most volatile region, crossed with so many tribal and religious and historic fault lines that it's hard to know where to start. Though Israel decided quite a while ago to start with the principle that attack is the best form of defence. And possibly wisely.

Donald Trump's hair is a bird's nest of implants and fixative. Photo / AP

Anyway, by having a comb-over Netanyahu clearly belongs in the same class of political leader as Donald Trump whose hair is a bird's nest of implants and fixative. Both men are so beset with vanity that they are unwilling to acknowledge the simplest and least avoidable truth of being alive, which is that we age. So they lie with their hair as they lie with their words.

They're not alone in this, of course. The wealthier people get, the vainer they become and the more frightened of death. So in the world's richest country, denial of ageing is a massive industry. American retirement homes are awash with octogenarians with the hair or breasts or teeth of teenagers, while fell Dr Alzheimer quietly squeezes the last drop of juice from their brains. Vanity, vanity, all is vanities, said the preacher from the middle east more than 2000 years ago.

Trump and Netanyahu illustrate both the weakness and the strength of democracy. I forget who it was that said that democracy is the worst possible system for organising human society, except for all the other systems, but he was bang on. We voters are fools. We can and do vote the wrong people into power - people with comb-overs, people who lie. But at least in a democracy we can vote them out again - though sometimes it takes a while.

Vanity is not the only quality that Netanyahu shares with Trump. Like Trump he has been prepared to do anything to cling to power. Like Trump he has not gone graciously. Like Trump he has accused his opponents of fraud and corruption. Like Trump he has vowed to make a comeback. And like Trump he is in legal trouble, which is, one suspects, the main reason both of them have fought so hard to stay in office.

So it is hardly surprising that Netanyahu and Trump got on so very well. They are cut from the same cloth. I have no doubt that they have been corrupt together in ways that you and I as yet know nothing of. It is good to see them gone. And let us hope the whirligig of time brings in its revenges.