Hillary: The right choice at State?

Barack Obama is “either shrewd or delusional,” said John Heilemann in New York. During the fight for the Democratic presidential nomination, he and Hillary Clinton came to deeply resent each other. Hillary and her ex-president husband portrayed Obama as a lightweight and a phony, charging that his entire foreign-policy experience was limited to “a speech he made in 2002.” Obama countered that her experience consisted mainly of drinking tea with ambassadors when she was First Lady. Yet now, Clinton has reportedly accepted his offer to be his secretary of state. So why does Obama want his “frenemy” in his cabinet? Simple: Clinton is smart, tough-minded, and a very fast study, and her star power will allow her to deal with foreign leaders “on level footing.” Whether this turns out to be a brilliant choice or a disaster, “we’re about to embark on a new chapter in the Obama-Clinton saga.”

It’s likely to be an ugly one, said David Ignatius in The Washington Post. America needs a whole new approach to foreign policy, and the real “game changer” is Obama himself. It therefore makes no sense to subcontract foreign policy to “a big, hungry ego surrounded by a team that’s hungrier still.” Sure, Hillary has experience, said Thomas Friedman in The New York Times, but will she truly be seen as Obama’s emissary? For a secretary of state to be effective, he or she must speak only for the president, not as a separate power center. “Foreign leaders can spot daylight between them from 1,000 miles away.”

I couldn’t disagree more, said Lisa Schiffren in National Review Online. As a conservative, I’ve developed a grudging new respect for Hillary, who has displayed real political maturity and a tough-minded approach to foreign threats such as Iran and Hamas. Obama hasn’t given “15 minutes of thought to geo-politics” in his meteoric climb to power, and his pledge to “restore America’s image” won’t carry much weight when we’re dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian problem, Afghanistan and Pakistan, or the Chinese. What Obama needs in his secretary of state is not a mild-mannered emissary, but “a reliable reporter who can evaluate what she sees with harsh clarity and work with him to devise appropriate responses.” Hillary fills that requirement.

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As for her supposed differences with Obama, said Joan Walsh in Salon.com, “they were exaggerated for political reasons during primary season.” Obama found it useful to portray her as a hawk, while she needed to say he was naïve. In truth, they’re both pragmatic Democratic centrists who share very similar views on getting out of Iraq and in dealing with both friends and enemies. Besides, said the San Jose Mercury News in an editorial, Obama will be totally consumed with the economy when he takes office, so he needs a secretary of state “capable of quickly taking charge.”

And from a purely political perspective, said Andrew Sullivan in the London Times, her selection is inspired. If Obama had ignored Hillary and “left her to machinate on Capitol Hill,” he’d have to watch his back every step of the way, wondering if she was making a case for a primary campaign against him in 2012. But by offering her an irresistible job and “an independent claim on power,” he’s co-opted his biggest rival. And if Hillary does well, she’ll not only make Obama look good, she’ll have staked out “a better platform for the presidency in 2016.” Potentially, at least, it’s a “win-win” all around.