Should Hillary Clinton be the next Secretary of State? I’d rather she weren’t, and here’s why.
First, I don’t see her as conspicuously well qualified for this particular role; I think it has been chosen to offer her simply because it is perhaps the most prominent and prestigious Cabinet office. She has certainly “been around”, but she has no significant diplomatic or foreign-policy experience.
Second, over the course of the Clinton’s decades-long fundraising joyride they have had a great many “mutually beneficial” associations with a motley assortment of foreign nationals, more than a few of whom have been of questionable, if not blatantly felonious, character. Bill Clinton in particular, since leaving his office, has kept himself busy gadding about the globe, lubricating various business deals in its shady corners. It is difficult to imagine that no conflicts of interest will arise as a result.
Third, as Tom Friedman correctly observes in this column, it is essential that there be a close personal bond between the President and the Secretary of State. Friedman writes:
Foreign leaders can spot daylight between a president and a secretary of state from 1,000 miles away. They know when they’re talking to the secretary of state alone and when they are talking through the secretary of state to the president. And when they think they are talking to the president, they sit up straight; and when they think they are talking only to the secretary of state, they slouch in their chairs. When they think they are talking to the president’s “special envoy,’ they doze off in midconversation.
“It takes America’s friends and adversaries about five minutes to figure out who really speaks for the White House and who doesn’t,’ wrote Aaron D. Miller, a former State Department Middle East adviser and the author of The Much Too Promised Land. “If a secretary of state falls into the latter category, he or she will have little chance of doing effective diplomacy on a big issue. More likely, they’ll be played like a finely tuned violin or simply taken for granted.’
When the U.S. secretary of state walks into the room, Miller added in a recent essay in The Los Angeles Times, “his or her interlocutors need to be on the edge of their seats, not comfortably situated in their chairs wondering how best to manipulate the secretary. If anything, they should be worried about being manipulated themselves.’
My question is whether a President Obama and a Secretary of State Clinton, given all that has gone down between them and their staffs, can have that kind of relationship, particularly with Mrs. Clinton always thinking four to eight years ahead, and the possibility that she may run again for the presidency. I just don’t know.
Let’s not forget the bitterness of the campaign battle between Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama: despite her dutiful post-convention stumping for her party’s champion, it has seemed quite obvious all along that there was no love lost between them — and it was as plain as day throughout the campaign that Bill Clinton regarded the insolent upstart from Chicago with outright malevolence for his attempted (and ultimately successful) usurpation of his wife’s rightful place atop the ticket. This is not the sort of relationship that Mr. Friedman recommends. One cannot help but imagine that Mr. Obama is motivated mostly by a sense of obligation, or by a preference for keeping the Clintons within the pale, where he can keep an eye on them, rather than worrying about what they might be doing outside it. Both motivations make Mr. Obama seem weak.
Finally, as Christopher Hitchens has asked: is it really a national priority to give this woman a job? Haven’t we had enough of the Clintons to last us for a while?
13 Comments
I am certainly unenthusiastic at the prospect of a Secretary of State Clinton, for all the mentioned reasons, as well as some others.
However I’m given to understand that one of the primary motivations for considering her is that she has a so-called, excellent working relationship with Biden, whatever that means. Perhaps Mr. Obama means to allow Mr. Biden some heavy hand in matters normally within the bailiwick of State?
Quite apart from the lack of fellow feeling between Obama and Clinton, I can’t think of a single instance when she demonstrated significant diplomatic skills. She has always struck me as a partisan infighter, not a negotiator. But I admit to a visceral dislike of Clinton, so maybe my observations are skewed.
While I’m not all that fond of Hillary as Secretary of State, I must say that she’s far better than anyone else under consideration. Do you *really* want John Kerry as Secretary of State? Really?
Hi Eric,
Indeed, I almost listed that as one of Mrs. Clinton’s positive qualitifications: she isn’t John Kerry.
I find it hard to believe that Mr. Obama might seriously consider that insufferable, pompous windbag for anything at all. I’ve been treating media reports to that effect as being some sort of ghastly joke.
As much as I dislike the Clintons, I’ll take the missus over John bloody Kerry any day.
Is the short list for the nation’s top diplomatic position really that short? I will admit to not following politics too closely, but surely there have to be better candidates, no?
Well, the latest news seems to be that the job will indeed be hers. Kind of a State accompli.
I’m surprised we haven’t heard from “the one-eyed man” (who actually has two working eyes) on this one.
Not surprisingly, I have a different opinion of Hillary Clinton. I think she is smart as a whip (never understood that phrase, but the Internet helpfully explains that it comes from a whip which “smarts” the horse it strikes). I think she is diligent, hard-working, knowledgeable, and her heart is in the right place. I think she has been an effective Senator, as well as one who really can reach across the aisle, having worked effectively with people as unlike her as Jesse Helms. I think that in foreign affairs, she would be hard-nosed (and certainly not the patsy which Condi Rice is). She is on a first name basis with many, if not most, of the world’s leaders. I agree with her on policy matters. I think she would make a darn fine Secretary of State.
I think that the situation with Bill could be managed to be a positive. He has contacts throughout the world and knows geopolitics as well as anyone on the planet. One would hope that a heart attack, combined with the desire to burnish his legacy, would have mellowed him to the point where he will do the right thing. The conflict of interest problem can be managed through disclosure and restrictions on his contacts and activities.
As with any organization, I think Obama should be allowed free rein to pick his team without carping from the outside. He’ll be judged on results, and he ought to have the discretion to pick the group who he thinks will best be able to execute his agenda. If he thinks she is good enough, that’s good enough for me.
However, I also realize that there are many, including our gracious host, who have a visceral loathing of Hillary Clinton which blind them to what I consider to be her many praiseworthy qualities. Hence I am disinclined to get into a food fight over something which ultimately is not reducible to rational argument. Sort of like arguing over abortion, the putative existence of God, or whether the Stones are a better band than the Dead. (They are, but that’s not relevant here.) In any event, since she apparently has the job, in the fullness of Time, the Truth will be revealed to us all.
Well, Peter, having moved to the West Coast years ago, you weren’t on hand to watch carpetbagger Hillary — once she had settled on our fair city as a suitably vulnerable host for the furtherance of her ambition — parading around Gotham in a Yankees cap.
But as you say, now we’ll just have to see how it goes.
I agree with you about the Stones, but am sorry that your visceral fondness for the Clintons blinds you to their many blameworthy qualities.
Robert F. Kennedy did the same thing (albeit probably without the Yankees hat), so there is something of a tradition of national figures moving to New York to establish residency for the Senate. She couldn’t be a Senator living in Washington, and I don’t blame her for not wanting to move back to Arkansas.
We face difficult and intractable problems, and I think that Hillary is as equipped as anyone to try to solve them. But we’ll see.
Well, there are plenty of states out there, including Illinois, where she grew up. They have a large city there too, I hear.
And yes, I very much doubt that RFK wore a God-damn Yankees cap. Such transparent populist pandering would have been beneath him.
Anyway, Madame Secretary it is.
I mostly agree with Peter’s astute assessment and I think the denigrating terms you use Mac are just not called for …
That being said, I do not have much use for her either. I do not trust nor like many in either party — they are after all politicians, and even as I have run for public office myself I do not think politicians a good lot in the main.
But even the most antagonistic political rivals can be civil to and about each other, ‘specially when it matters so little as it does here amongst friends.
Anyway — I think Mr. Obama has a plan to get her out of the senate and then fire her down the road to have her off his back for good and ever, who knows in the long run…?
Any bets?
“Denigrating terms”?
Geez, Pat, I thought I was being most generously temperate.
Oh Peter,
Why did you have to begin your comment with that “whip” in the first paragraph? There are many of us in Arkansas who are too able to have the image of a gartered dominatrix named Hillary spring to mind.
And oh no you don’t Malcolm. She looks better in a Yankees cap than she does with one of those plastic Razorback headgear thingys one sees so often in Fayettville:
Consider the Clintons, Arkansas’ gift to the Nation (and now the World’s trouble spots).
And we don’t like the implication that we might be considered, “Indian Givers.”