Clinton: Back in the limelight

last updated 8 January 2015

She’s back! said Mark Silva in the Chicago Tribune. For the first six months of the Obama administration, the president seemed to shunt Secretary of State Hillary Clinton into the background, and her supporters recently started to grumble about sexism. But in the past two weeks, Hillary has been “asserting her command,” giving a speech about U.S. engagement abroad that the State Department hyped as a “major” address, embarking on a trip to India, and hogging the spotlight as the sole guest on NBC’s Meet the Press. Clinton may have finally gotten the attention she craved, said The Boston Globe in an editorial, but she proved she still has a lot to learn about international diplomacy. She provocatively compared North Korea to a group of “unruly teenagers” clamoring for attention, so Pyongyang responded with a string of personal insults of its own, likening her to a silly “schoolgirl.” In a more serious misstep, Clinton said that the U.S. would extend its “defense umbrella” over the Middle East, “once” Iran obtained a nuclear weapon—a formulation that treats an Iranian nuke as a fait accompli.

Well, at least Hillary has taken off her “burqa,” said Anne Applebaum in The Washington Post. Ever since Daily Beast editor Tina Brown used that metaphor for Hillary’s secondary role a couple of weeks ago, Washington has been buzzing with speculation about Clinton’s relationship with Obama, her rival for the 2008 Democratic nomination. But the charge that Obama is deliberately keeping Hillary under wraps is based on a misunderstanding. The president may set overall policy, but every secretary of state has to create her own agenda—“she can visit, she can write, and she can speak, knowing full well that everyone will hang on her every word.” If Clinton has no major foreign-policy ideas to articulate, that’s her fault, not Obama’s.

That’s not wholly true, said Doyle McManus in the Los Angeles Times. Obama is deeply involved in foreign policy, and he’s surrounded himself with “heavy hitters” such as Middle East envoy George Mitchell, Afghanistan envoy Richard Holbrooke, Vice President Joe Biden, and National Security Advisor James Jones. Anyone, including the experienced, savvy Clinton, would have trouble carving out a dominant role among that “cast of characters.” As Obama listens to these and other advisors, makes decisions, and dispatches his envoys around the world, there is only one real role left for Hillary: to stay back in Washington, “explaining it all on Meet the Press.”