Hillary At State: The Continuing Conundrum

November 28, 2008 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Barack Obama, Bush Administration, Congress, Democratic Party, Domestic issues, Economic issues, International Affairs, National Security, News media, Obama administration, Presidents, Terrorism, War on Terror 

In today’s Wall Street Journal the paper’s Washington correspondent Kimberley Strassel devotes her “Potomac Watch” column to the consequences inherent in President-elect Obama’s reported offer of the office of Secretary of State to Sen. Hillary Clinton. 

The column maintains that the main advantage of handing this position to the junior Senator from New York, where Obama is concerned, is that it would oblige her “to dismantle her extensive political operation and end the patronage that has earned her continued loyalty.”

Really?  As I wrote earlier in TNN, a couple of days ago the Washington Post ran an op-ed which raised the prospect of New York Gov. David Paterson appointing ex-President Bill Clinton to the seat if Hillary vacates it, which, of course, would keep her organization more or less entirely intact, and enable the couple to wield almost unimaginable influence in two of the three branches of federal government.

And even if such a scenario didn’t happen, as Strassel points out, a Secretary Clinton would

have plenty of leeway to go rogue. The State Department is traditionally hard to rein in, and Mrs. Clinton has insisted she also be free of traditional constraints. She’s demanded the right to staff her department with her own people. And while national security advisors are often more powerful than secretaries of state, she wants the ability to circumvent that position and go directly to Mr. Obama. This is the stuff ugly internal disputes are made of.

The tragic events of the past 48 hours go a considerable way toward showing how especially undesirable it is, at this time, that Foggy Bottom not be the scene of the kind of infighting and semi-Machiavellian maneuvering that always has accompanied both Clintons wherever they’ve gone, and that the authority of the National Security Council not be vitiated by whatever notions Sen. Clinton might bring to State.  Whoever was behind the thugs that have brought death, injury, arson, and destruction to Mumbai had American casualties planned from the start.  The city was chosen because India’s antiterrorism structure has been weak compared to other nations.  For the safety of its citizens abroad – and those at home, as well – America can’t take the chance of having a State Department that’s dominated by dissension, no matter how expertly and efficiently the Department of Homeland Security and other defense and national-security organizations perform in the next four years.

Strassel also points out that a lot is still unknown about the identity and past of innumerable donors to Bill Clinton’s post-presidential projects, and that the records pertaining to such need to be thoroughly evaluated by Obama’s transition team before the President-elect can be sure that the appointment of Sen. Clinton wouldn’t raise conflict-of-interest issues. 

Elsewhere in today’s WSJ is a somewhat surprising column from the man often regarded as the Richelieu of the Bush White House, Karl Rove.  The veteran policy mastermind discusses Obama’s economic and domestic Cabinet and staff choices, and, for the most part, has high praise for such choices as Timothy Geithnet as Treasury Secretary, Christina Romer as Council of Economic Advisors head, and Peter Orszag as OMB chief. 

Rove states that the “only troubling personnel note” so far has been the selection of Melody Barnes to be Domestic Policy Council director; he points out that putting Ted Kennedy’s onetime staffer in charge of universal-health-care initiatives in that position, on top of former Sen. Tom Daschle’s appointment as Department of Health and Human Services Secretary, “sends a clear signal” that the President-elect is thoroughly committed toward the most expansive (and, for the taxpayers, expensive) health-care initiatives in American history.  He also notes that Obama’s recent statements regarding stimulus packages to lift the nation from recession have been confusing and sometimes contradictory.  But Rove makes it clear that he feels reassured when he looks at the economic brain trust being assembled for the coming administration.

Comments