Tag: Hillary Clinton

And so it appears that the dream ticket envisioned back in the spring is going to happen in a different form. Only I’m not sure if this is a dream or a nightmare.

Hillary Clinton, according to The New York Times, is ready to accept an offer from Barack Obama to be his secretary of state.

Her selection is still to be formalized and will not be announced until after Thanksgiving. It would be yet another direction in the unlikely journey of a onetime political spouse in Arkansas who went on to build a political base of her own and become a symbol of achievement to many women.

The role, though a supporting one, would make her one of the most influential players on the international stage, and it would represent at least one more act for one of the nation’s most prominent public families, as former President Bill Clinton would also become an ad hoc member of the Obama team.

From my perspective, as a progressive, a dove, as someone suspicious of the foreign policy establishment, the appointment of Hillary Clinton poses serious dangers to an Obama administration — or at least to progressives’ assumptions about what an Obama administration would be.

Clinton voted for the war in Iraq and has been dangerously hawkish on Iran. But a close read of Obama’s statements on foreign policy raise questions about how far from Clinton he really is — he did, after all, say he would go into Pakistan to chase al Qaeda and is planning a troop surge in Afghanistan.

At the same time, it will be Obama who is setting the policies and Clinton enacting them. While she publicly jabbed at Obama over his willingness to sit down with so-called rogue nations, she will have to do so if that is the policy that the president intends.

So, while a Clinton appointment is certainly a disappoinment, it doesn’t have to become a disaster — especially if Obama controls the appointments of undersecretaries and other lower-level appointments.

I think John Nichols at The Nation makes the most obvious point:

Clinton has many strengths — she really does know the world, she really is respected by key players in international hotspots, she really does care about poverty issues that have been too long neglected. Obama recognizes these strengths, and he has made the team-of-rivals calculation that they will benefit his presidency. He may be right. But neither he, nor his nominee for Secretary of State, should ever forget that Obama prevailed over Clinton and McCain because he was seen as someone who would be more rational, more responsible and, yes, more conciliatory in his relations with the rest of the world.

Even David Broder has serious concerns about Hillary Clinton as secretary of state:

Clinton is the wrong person for that job in this administration. It’s not the best use of her talents, and it’s certainly not the best fit for this new president.

What Obama needs in the person running the State Department is a diplomat who will carry out his foreign policy. He does not need someone who will tell him how to approach the world or be his mentor in international relations. One of the principal reasons he was elected was that, relying on his instincts, he came to the correct conclusion that war with Iraq was not in America’s interest. He was more right about that than most of us in Washington, including Hillary Clinton.

Of course, he will benefit from the counsel and the contacts that his secretary of state can offer. But remember, he provided another and probably more expert source of that wisdom when he picked Joe Biden, the veteran chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, as his running mate. The last thing Obama needs is a secretary of state carving out an independently based foreign policy. He needs an agent, not an author.

Then there is the senator’s famous ex-president husband, Bill Clinton:

The former president has, through the Clinton Global Initiative and his own extensive foreign travels and worldwide contacts, made himself a force in international affairs. It would be unfair, and unlikely, for him to shut down his own private foreign policy actions because they might conflict with his wife’s responsibilities. But foreign leaders would inevitably see Bill Clinton as an alternative route toward influencing American policy. And he would be unlikely to remain silent.