Ariel sharon tends to make his big political decisions alone. It's a vestige from his days as a willful Army gen-eral, when he led troops from hill to hill and occasionally defied his superiors by charging enemy ground. When Sharon pondered last week whether to leave Likud, the party he helped establish 30 years ago, the former arch-hawk canvassed the opinions of his closest advisers but shared his own views with no one. "We talked about it that afternoon in his office and he was completely poker-faced," says Reuven Adler, Sharon's political strategist and campaign manager. "I walked away thinking nothing was go- ing to happen." That evening, Sharon called Adler and told him to start thinking of a name for his new, more centrist political party.
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