Goldberg: Let's talk about you and your candidacy. You're obviously a man of accomplishment. You come from a very famous family in Israel. But you are known in Israel as, let's say, a non-charismatic figure.

Herzog: Thank you.

Goldberg: You're welcome. There's a certain assumption made about—

Herzog: Do you know how many charismatic leaders we had and what happened to them? Just think about that.

Goldberg: There's a certain understanding in Israeli politics, and maybe this is just received wisdom, that the voters want somebody, especially from the center or center-left, who is either a general or is burly or gruff. No one would mistake you for Gabi Ashkenazi walking down the street. [Gabi Ashkenazi is a former Israeli Defense Forces chief of staff. Click here to see what he looks like.] So talk about the barriers to your success among the voters, and then we'll talk about the Labor Party's barriers.

Herzog: No. It's combined. It's intertwined, where the staging of Labor is an issue of itself.

Labor is staged right now in the center-left. It should resume its role as a mother party of a major bloc, together with all the other parties which I mentioned, because Labor has the capability of being so.

Now as for myself, since I don't intend to have kind of a psychological treatment with you. The real story is the following. There is an innate fear that runs within Israeli society of all that we see and hear around us, and you know what? It's a natural reaction of human beings. And my duty and role is to acquire enough trust. In all of the data and the polls, people trust me. This is one of my virtues. They have to be able to trust in me. And this is what I'm focusing on. That's my main challenge.

Goldberg: Come to this large question of the Labor Party. Why is the Labor Party in such a diminished state? Where did it go wrong?

Herzog: It's not necessarily in a diminished state.

Goldberg: Well, certainly compared to the founding of the state.

Herzog: Right now the Israeli political map is comprised of medium-sized parties. The last one who had more than 40 mandates was Ariel Sharon. But as for your question. A few processes, undercurrents—the first one was that we lost touch with some of what the public really feels is important to them. For a long time, we were members in coalitions of other leaders. We kind of were erased of our identity. It took us time to recover, and we also lost touch with new groups in society while taking the role and demanding to be part of it.

For example, the Russian immigration of a million people. We kind of lost them somewhere. They supported both Rabin and Barak. And they were turned off. Add to it other groups. The Arab population—they gave 96 or 98 percent support to Ehud Barak.

Couple it with the fact that there's a young generation who took over, who's coming in, who's voting, and they don't remember the legacy of Labor. And add to that the fact that even within that young generation, or the general public at large, we were viewed as giving up too quickly to the Palestinians or the Arabs.