Hillary for State?
I’ve been out of the country and not able to follow the Clinton for Secretary of State gossip in all the level of detail I would have liked. But surely I wouldn’t be the first to observe that this would seem like an odd pairing. Clinton and Obama are both formidable political leaders and, as we saw during the primaries, they have very similar ideas about the vast majority of public policy areas. But Obama thinks Clinton’s support for invading Iraq in 2002-2003 showed bad judgment and Clinton thinks Obama’s stated willingness to hold direct, high-level talks with Iran without preconditions is “naive and irresponsible.”
That’s not to say it’s a bad idea — what matters is ideas moving forward, not things that have been said in the past. But the specific policy area at issue seems to be one in which the two of them aren’t all that well-aligned.
54 Responses to “Hillary for State?”
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November 16th, 2008 at 9:25 am
But, of course, Obama and Clinton had zero space between them during the campaign on substantive foreign policy issues.
It was only on domestic policy where Obama’s anti-leftism created space between the candidates.
But original Iraq war hawks like Matt Yglesias just looooove assuaging their guilt for all of the deaths they’ve been responsible for by trying to find scapegoats, and don’t really care if they’re distorting foreign policy stances in the process…
November 16th, 2008 at 9:27 am
As someone who voted to authorize the war in Iraq and has never been able to bring herself to admit that the vote was a mistake, Clinton is the wrong person to represent this country abroad in the post-Bush era. She is also (like Obama) far too hawkish on Iran.
November 16th, 2008 at 9:30 am
Haim Saban thinks Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would be “Good For Israel”.
In the same way that Chevron thought that Secretary of State Condi Rice would be good for ..er. Houston:
http://www.aztlan.net/oiltanker.htm
November 16th, 2008 at 9:39 am
Howard Dean’s old outfit –Democracy for America — is running a poll asking people to vote for the best candidate for Secretary of State, of Defense,etc.
Their list of candidates for Secretary of State are:
Hillary Clinton
Tom Daschle
Chuck Hagel
Richard Holbrooke
James Jones
John Kerry
Richard Lugar
Sam Nunn
Thomas Pickering
Jack Reed
Bill Richardson
Anthony Zinni
Writeins are also allowed. I’m planning to writein Samantha Power — who resigned from the Obama campaign after British papers reported that she had called Hillary Clinton a “Monster”.
Ah, good times. Remember?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/03/06/samantha-power-resigns-ov_n_90339.html?page=62
November 16th, 2008 at 9:44 am
It seems to me that there has been a good deal of convergence on most of the foreign policy issues that divided the two a year ago, with Obama unfortunately being maneuvered to the right on several points.
The Iraqi parliament just approved the security agreement. It thus becomes harder for Obama to make the case that we should be out in 16 months when the Iraqis want us to stay for three more years. Anyway, Obama barely discussed Iraq during the final weeks of his campaign, and seems to be running away from some of his earlier positions.
Yes, he will start bringing more people home, faster. This will allow him to say he is “ending the war”, although the war seems to be ending quickly on its own accord, without much help from him. Significant troop withdrawals are in the cards, no matter who is president. But we are never going to leave Iraq fully. After The War is “ended”, we’ll still see plenty of American military presence left behind as part of a security arrangement which will probably evolve into a permanent situation. As long as there are negligible US casualties and relatively low costs, not many people will care anymore.
Iran remains an issue separating the two. Obama still seems to be holding on to his commitment to talk with the Iranians and to open up a new diplomatic front ikn the Middle East. But it wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing to have those talks led by a person who is known to be an Iran hawk, Israel-firster and diplomacy skeptic. If any deals are made, Clinton’s support for them, and role in negotiating them, will give the deals more credibility at home.
November 16th, 2008 at 9:50 am
RE Dan Kervick’s comment “It thus becomes harder for Obama to make the case that we should be out in 16 months when the Iraqis want us to stay for three more years.”
—————–
Yes, in his waning days, Cheney must have twisted some arms to ensure we would be guarding Big Oil’s investments –both the oil deposits and the puppet government — several more years.
Fuck Cheney. Fuck Maliki. Fuck President Bush.
November 16th, 2008 at 9:54 am
Needless to say, the Israel Lobby will be pushing for long term US military operations in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Not to defend the US, but to defend Israel. Both Iraq and Afghanistan are good bases for invading Iran.
We really need to explain to American voters just how badly Israel Lobby Traitors have screwed this country. The last thing we should be doing is pandering to the Lobby by installing their key puppets in positions of power.
Nancy Pelosi at least had the smarts to block Jane Harman from becoming Chairwomen of the House Intel Committee.
November 16th, 2008 at 9:57 am
If Hillary Clinton does become Secretary of State , will she really have that much power because there have been cases of the Secretary of State having little influence over the president. In the cases of Nixon and Carter, the Secretary of States were overtaken by the the National Security Advisors. While in the Bush administration Colin Powell was ignored.
November 16th, 2008 at 10:02 am
Don Williams,
What Maliki seemed to indicate last week is that since Iraqis tend to trust Obama to leave eventually, and did not trust McCain to leave, the Obama election enabled him to make a more credible case that three more years is just three years. I don’t think a lot of Cheney arm-twisting was necessary.
Both Maliki and the US just pulled off a three year extended hitch to an arrangement that benefits both governments, but which lacks popular support. And my guess is that they are both betting that as things continue to settle down and Iraq returns to prosperity, then these facts on the ground will solidify into a more broadly accepted state of affairs, both domestic publics will get on board, and Iraq will become comfortably absorbed into the global US security system, along with Japan, South Korea, etc.
November 16th, 2008 at 10:12 am
First, I’d like to thank my white brothers and sisters for their intelligent comments on this website. (What is race but extended family?)
Second,I’d like to note:
It really doesn’t matter whom Obongo appoints. This will be one of the worst “presidencies” in American history.
————
SIGNATURE:
The white patriot’s Coat of Arms: gens alba conservanda est (the white race must be saved)
—-
T.S. Eliot: “White Trash” is a white person who fornicates with a non-white.
—-
BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA’S DECLARATION OF WAR AGAINST EUROPEAN AMERICANS.
Obama has supported:
(A) Reparations. Redistributing money from European Americans (Whites) to blacks, mestizos, and Asians.
(B) Criminalizing white parents who refuse to let their children practice miscegenation.
(C) Using “hate crime” laws to silence any criticism from European Americans.
(D) Using Third World immigration to overwhelm European American majorities.
(E) Maintaining anti-white affirmative action programs
(F) Creating a mandatory “America Serves” community-service program to indoctrinate and deracinate young European Americans
—-
From evolutionary philosophy email list: “Children of mixed, white-black, marriages identify 99% of the time as black and detest European Americans (whites). Why? They almost always look black (eye color, hair texture, nose shape, skin color, etc.). Obama wrote: “I found a solace in nursing a pervasive sense of grievance and animosity against my mother’s white race.”"
November 16th, 2008 at 10:15 am
I think John Henninger is right. If this is more of a political strategy appointment, for whatever reasons – to assuage Hillary’s supporters after the VP snub / to minimize the influence Hillary can have on domestic policy / to keep Hillary in line – then appointing her SOS is a good way to minimize her influence. Obama will appoint someone with loyalty to him as National Security Advisor, and proceed to do what Bush did when Rice was NSA and Powell was SOS.
November 16th, 2008 at 10:23 am
Shorter MY:
1. I subjectively characterize HRC’s judgment on a single issue as “bad.”
2. She criticized Obama when they were in direct competition with each other at high stakes.
3. The past doesn’t matter anyway.
4. They’re a poor match on substance because their one point of disagreement is on a high-visibility topic.
Not persuasive. I mean, just say: is HRC’s Iraq vote a deal-breaker or not? Biden’s his veep, it can’t, analogously, be the deal-breaker you would like it to be.
November 16th, 2008 at 10:38 am
It would be a curious choice. I have no problem with Clinton being appointed to any domestic cabinet position. But her top foreign policy priority has always seemed to be avoiding having Democrats look weak, and that is the silliest of motivators.
It is true that Biden voted for the war, but he saw the folly of it reasonably early and took seriously the question of what to do to fix the mistake. (Of course his solution was never tried and I have no idea if it would have turned out better or worse than what was done).
Clinton not only supported giving the president the power to start the war, she gave that nonsense speech suggesting that her time in the White House gave her some special insight that the war might be necessary. She then moved to the view that it was right to start the war (her role in it) but Bush messed up the execution. And then moved to the position that it was wrong to talk about the past, but we should start pulling out, although not as naively as Obama says. And then finally she got pushed to essentially agreeing.
But her instincts on foreign policy seem to be to go along with Republican ideas and hope to win elections on domestic policy, which is fine for a domestic cabinet position, but not for a foreign policy cabinet position.
November 16th, 2008 at 10:43 am
On a different point, I am still somewhat surprised by the conventional wisdom that we will have to stay in Iraq longer than people are saying publicly as if there is some draw to remaining.
The agreement that Bush is pushing says we will stay no longer than 3 years, that does not commit us to staying 3 years and the push in Iraq has been in the other direction.
Similarly, I know that even Obama has been pushing the idea of a residual force. But in general we are able to keep residual forces in places which like us, and/or have something to gain from our presence. The residual force does not seem to be designed to pacify a civil war in Iraq. Nor does it seem likely the Iraqis will want us to stay to protect them from their neighbors. We want to have a presence there to carry out our own operations. And the Iraqis have already made clear they don’t want that in insisting we not use Iraq to attack outside of the country.
It is hard to see a stable Iraq wanting us to stay to fight foreign terrorists. And it is hard to see our being able to keeo a residual force in a country that doesn’t want one, particularly if like Iraq it has a history and desire to be a regional player with a decent sized army.
November 16th, 2008 at 10:46 am
Nigel: A) this thread was/is about Clinton as potential Sec. of State. B) You list lies.
Editorial comment: I may be white/ of European descent but you’re no brother of mine. I’ll take Obama in my “extended family” over you and your paranoid, white supremacist delusions any day. “Race” is an absurd, albeit sadly pervasive concept that has zero basis in fact. Lighter or darker skin color, differently shaped eyes, nappy hair or straight, tall or short, psoriasis or seborrhea? All variations on a theme. There’s a single race: the human.
November 16th, 2008 at 11:01 am
I’m starting to fear that Obama is trying to be all things to all people. He seems to be trying to placate everyone group with hurt feelings over his election. He should take a page out of Bush’s book: “Elections have consequences, so bite me.”
Granted, Obama isn’t dumb enough to say that in public, but I hope he is thinking it.
November 16th, 2008 at 11:02 am
When talking about the time limit, you should consider what force is being left behind. Maliki will want active American ground operations to end as soon as he can afford to do without them in central Iraq. Obama, who wants American ground forces out of the country as soon as possible, can negotiate from a position of strength with Maliki.
If the Sunni resistance to Malki’s government is as weak as its lack of resources would indicate, we could easily make Obama’s deadline with respect to everything but air bases and intelligence-gathering facilities. If we aren’t using our air force to bomb Iraqis, keeping them on hand to deter Iran might be to Maliki’s advantage. The war will essentially be over by late 2009/early 2010.
The wild card here is not the Iraqi or American governements, but the Sunni’s. They lost this war big-time. This is a terrible thing for the mass of the Sunni population, but it is the reality on the ground. If they have accept their losses and deal with that reality, like the factions in Yugoslavia did, peace is possible sooner than anyone expects. If they go all out to try to re-take central Iraq from the Shites, it is going to get very, very bad for a time.
November 16th, 2008 at 11:31 am
My first thought about Clinton in Obama’s cabinet was skepticism for a number of different reasons, but thinking about it, if there’s one place I’d put Clinton inside an Obama administration, it would be the State Department.
We all know that Obama wants to put a larger emphasis on diplomacy, and we also know that the State Department has been marginalized and demoralized during Bush’s tenure. Well, if there’s anything that we know about Hillary Clinton, it’s that she refuses to be marginalized. With Hillary at the helm, you can be sure that the State Department will hold its own regardless of who’s there at the Defense Department.
The more I think about it, the more I think that this is an inspired choice, if it plays our.
November 16th, 2008 at 11:45 am
Re Don Williams
1. The reason why the blogs resident Bolshevik favors Samantha Powers is because she proposed sending the marines into Israel to enforce an imposed settlement on the Israelis and Palestinians. Not going to happen. This dispute can be settled in a matter of days if the yellow bellies running the Government of Israel will just apply Hama Rules and quit fucking around.
2. We really need to explain to American voters just how badly Israel Lobby Traitors have screwed this country. The last thing we should be doing is pandering to the Lobby by installing their key puppets in positions of power.
Is Mr. Williams telling us that Rahm Emmanuel is not an Israel Lobby Traitor?
November 16th, 2008 at 11:46 am
Is the move from Senate to Cabinet a promotion? I wouldn’t think so. What will Hillary do when her time at State is up in 4 or 8 years? Can she really go back to the Senate? From what state? To me it seems like this is a way for Obama to put his thumb on her independence. It eliminates a potentially powerful rival in the Congress and makes her subordinate to his views. It’s for these reasons that I support this appointment, however he’s going to need to move outside of the former Clinton Administration for further appointments or risk losing his Washington outsider appeal.
November 16th, 2008 at 11:49 am
I take it this topic prompts ‘greatest hits day’ among our resident neurotics.
November 16th, 2008 at 11:55 am
It is hard to see a stable Iraq wanting us to stay to fight foreign terrorists.
I’ll go out on a limb here, Lon, and guess that the US national security establishment isn’t really all that concerned about “fighting foreign terrorists” in Iraq.
The United States has just spent a fortune engineering a hostile takeover of a foreign state in the heart of oil country, moving its old anti-US leader aside and stretching him out at the end of a rope, and then succeeding at long last in solidifying the power of a new government, one which it hopes will over time prove hospitable to the long-run strategic presence of the United States, and its military and diplomatic encampments, in their country. It’s still touchy, but Iraq appears to be on its way to becoming an established imperial client.
The fact that the effort was much more costly – financially and politically – than it was expected to be by the national security mandarins who launched it or supported it, gives those Potomac poohbahs even more reason to see the project through, and reap a reward for the sunk costs. The US investment in Iraq has been massive. Besides the costs of the military operations themselves, we have spent a fortune on bases, influence-buying and a Taj Mahal “embassy” which is to function as the US imperial headquarters in the Middle East for years to come. Do you think that the mandarins are just going to let Barack Obama abandon all that imperial infrastructure to the Iraqi desert? Presidents come and go, but the empire goes on.
I think people should consider just how important various Iraqi government words and pronouncements issued in November 2008 will prove to be in November, 2011. By then we will have been in Iraq for eight and a half years. Isn’t it becoming clear that talk of “deadlines” is becoming more and more absurd each day, and that it’s looking like the can will be kicked down the road indefinitely? I wonder what sort of new “deadline” will be negotiated in 2011?
If anyone wonders what is the the “draw” of maintaining a strategic military presence in Iraq indefinitely, they should look at a map of Iraq and the broader neighborhood, consider our long-term economic challenges and opportunities, and ask themselves who are some of the US competitors and rivals who would be thwarted by a permanent US foothold in Iraq. They could also look at the economic interests of the military-imperial establishment for whom expansion, procurement and investment in the empire are ends in themselves. What was the draw of remaining in Okinawa since 1945, after all?
It looks to me like Bush just won the Iraq War.
November 16th, 2008 at 11:56 am
If Hillary is happy in the Senate with an eye toward eventual leadership and maybe a Ted Kennedy-like legacy, there’s no reason for her to leave. If her goal is still to become President, there is nothing that 8 more years inside the Senate waiting on leadership position and making a bunch of votes that’ll be distorted any number of ways in the future.
A Cabinet seat might not be the “promotion” that VP would be, but Sec. of State would give her unequivocal foreign policy experience, and make her very formidable if she chooses to give it one last shot in 2012.
November 16th, 2008 at 12:00 pm
What will Hillary do when her time at State is up in 4 or 8 years?
Maybe she’ll just retire to Lee Hamilton, Sam Nunn-style elder statesperson status. She’ll be 65 or 69. She can chair the 2017 counterparts of the 9/11 Commission.
November 16th, 2008 at 12:04 pm
This is a very strong point that many are overlooking. In viewing the Sec’y of State as nothing but the Diplomat-in-Chief, people ignore the tremendous executive challenge facing State if some of the nation’s foreign policy is going to be brought back outside of the Defense Dept.
It would also be underlining confidence by the Obama administration that the whole “not ready to lead foreign policy” stuff was just talking points angling for political advantage, and there wasn’t ever any “there” there.
And with respect to Nigel, there may be a third point in there somewhere about it signaling Pres-elect Obama’s intention to marginalize the Clinton’s as a potential rallying point for opposition to an aggressively anti-white agenda, but I’ve been getting my B and C vitamins, so I just cannot muster the imbalance in brain chemistry required so that it all makes perfect sense, hahahahahahahah…
November 16th, 2008 at 12:09 pm
Dan Kervick, Iraq is not Japan, 1945. It was a stupid analogy when McCain made it, and it’s a stupid analogy today on this blog. I’ll give you a hint: 911 didn’t just happen because “the terrorists were jealous of our freedoms”. The neo-cons who believe like you do that we can eventually remake a region that’s been steeped in ethnic and religious strife for centuries have driven this country to the brink of ruin.
And last week, voters loudly repudiated you. Bush hasn’t won any war. He kicked the can to the next guy to clean up after him.
November 16th, 2008 at 12:11 pm
A Cabinet seat might not be the “promotion” that VP would be, but Sec. of State would give her unequivocal foreign policy experience, and make her very formidable if she chooses to give it one last shot in 2012.
Resigning as Sec. of State to challenge the Democratic incumbent in 2012 would make her the biggest ingrate in modern political history. Look what the Clinton machine tried to do to poor old Bill Richardson for merely endorsing Obama. That would be suicide to her legacy.
Maybe she’ll just retire
I think she’s too ambitious to want to retire in 8 years.
November 16th, 2008 at 12:13 pm
I agree with Bruce McF about the vital need for the State Department to recapture some of the power that was exported to the Defense department during the Bush years. And aside from the ballbusting force that Hillary Clinton can herself bring to this task, she can also enlist Bill Clinton, his loyal Washington supporters, and his global minions in the project.
Obama is the new power in the Democratic party, but his generation is still rising. The Clintons remain a center of established power in Washington, and if Obama truly wants to make the State department powerful again, that’s the place to turn.
November 16th, 2008 at 12:17 pm
The Clintons remain a center of established power in Washington, and if Obama truly wants to make the State department powerful again, that’s the place to turn.
Why not just appoint Bill and leave Hillary in the Senate?
November 16th, 2008 at 12:18 pm
Jesus, my bad. I meant 2016. And for what it’s worth, if her goal is truly the Presidency, she’ll only stay on for 4 or 8 years anyway. Nobody does 8 straight years at State anymore.
This is contingent on Obama having his full two terms, of course.
*knock on wood*
November 16th, 2008 at 12:18 pm
Nice picture there. Jesus, you people never quit. BO’s VP supported the invasion in Iraq and said knowing what he does today he still would. John Kerry voted for it. i don’t remember Richardson coming out against it. Hagel…for it, and an extreme isolationist, who would be one of the most bizarre picks ever for SoS. But you all don’t quit. Your strange fascination with Hillary never ends. I think it’s plain old misogyny. If she were a yes woman you’d like her.
November 16th, 2008 at 12:19 pm
…4 or 6…
jeeze
November 16th, 2008 at 1:11 pm
Re SLC’s comment “Is Mr. Williams telling us that Rahm Emmanuel is not an Israel Lobby Traitor?”
————-
Frankly, I don’t know yet. While I think it’s funny that he served as a (Logistics) volunteer for Israel’s IDF –and his father was in the terrorist Irgun — I haven’t seen specific incidents of him harming the US for the sake for Israel. Unlike the Neocons and Israel Lobby puppets in Congress, for example.
November 16th, 2008 at 2:45 pm
Dannity, you have completely misunderstood by position. I think the Iraq war was a grotesque moral catastrophe and act of sheer villainy.
My position is that it is simply evil, and a violation of all civilized standards of domestic and international behavior, to murder hundreds of thousands of people who have not attacked you, and pose no threat to you, and to kill and maim tens of thousands of your own soldiers, for the sake a mere material, strategic or political advantage.
For a couple of years I have had to knash my teeth as self-styled “progressives” and “liberals” in the Serious Foreign Policy Establishment, who purport to be on “our side”, have systematically ignored the most obvious and vile dimensions of the Iraq War, the sheer violent criminality of the whole thing, and have confined themselves to making only Serious Criticisms that say this exercise in barbarism was wrong because:
1. It probably wouldn’t succeed, or
2. The “surge” wouldn’t work, or
3. It would empower Iran, or
4. It would empower the Kurds, or
5. It would empower the Shia, or
6. It was a “distraction” from the war in Afghanistan, or
7. It was a “distraction” from the War on Terror, or
8. It was a “distraction” from the Hunt for the Diabolical Osama Bin Laden, or
9. The planners didn’t employ enough soldiers, and by the way we need a bigger army, or
10. The planners employ post conflict resources in the right way, and by the way we need a Post-conflict Stabilization and Reconstruction force.
But the fact is that Bush very well might have succeeded in accomplishing, at tremendous human, material and moral cost, his strategic objectives. We may very well end up with a US-friendly government in Iraq, a permanent military presence and imperial footprint in the country, a lucrative US stake in the Iraqi oil business, improved strategic influence over the entire Gulf oil economy, and fewer worries over our global business rivals in China and elsewhere.
And if the war then does succeed in its own terms, those who couldn’t bring themselves to criticize the war other than for reasons of tactics and execution, and are So Well-educated, and So Serious and So Above lower class squeamishness about blowing up large numbers of the world’s miserable, will be left without much of a leg to stand on.
And it’s starting to look to me that that’s where they are. So, far from offering any “lessons” to our strategic class about overreaching and such, the next imperial adventure will garner even less resistance from the “progressives” and “liberals” in that class.
November 16th, 2008 at 3:37 pm
First, I’d like to thank my white brothers and sisters for their intelligent comments. (What is race but extended family?)
Second:
Rosco, my white brother, let’s keep such disagreements in the family as civil.
I am in no way a “supremacist.” I don’t know whether whites are superior. I don’t care.
All I know is that whites are my tribe, and, because they are my tribe, I am loyal.
Blacks have the NAACP.
Mestizos have La Raza
Asians have the 80-20 Initiative.
What do European Americans have? Isn’t it about time we have our interests served too?
————
SIGNATURE:
The white patriot’s Coat of Arms: gens alba conservanda est (the white race must be saved)
—-
T.S. Eliot: “White Trash” is a white person who fornicates with a non-white.
—-
BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA’S DECLARATION OF WAR AGAINST EUROPEAN AMERICANS.
Obama has supported:
(A) Reparations. Redistributing money from European Americans (Whites) to blacks, mestizos, and Asians.
(B) Criminalizing white parents who refuse to let their children practice miscegenation.
(C) Using “hate crime” laws to silence any criticism from European Americans.
(D) Using Third World immigration to overwhelm European American majorities.
(E) Maintaining anti-white affirmative action programs
(F) Creating a mandatory “America Serves” community-service program to indoctrinate and deracinate young European Americans
—-
From evolutionary philosophy email list: “Children of mixed, white-black, marriages identify 99% of the time as black and detest European Americans (whites). Why? They almost always look black (eye color, hair texture, nose shape, skin color, etc.). Obama wrote: “I found a solace in nursing a pervasive sense of grievance and animosity against my mother’s white race.”"
November 16th, 2008 at 6:20 pm
Nigel, unless you have evidence for claims A-D about Obama, I’ll assume they’re lies (and E and F distort the motives behind the programs they mention). And of course the whole idea of blind loyalty to the group you belong to (whether your race or your nationality or your religion or whatever), not knowing or caring whether their ideas are actually better or worse than other groups’ (as you admit you don’t know if whites are better in any objective sense than other races), is the sort of mindless anti-intellectual us-vs.-them thinking that has been the source of most of humanity’s troubles over the years. In this article the evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson gives an interesting summary of studies which show that conservatives seem to be much more drawn to this sort of “follow the herd” mentality than liberals:
The differences became even more interesting when Ingrid began to analyze the moment-by-moment experience provided by the beeper data. We might be the only people on earth who can report time budgets for liberal and conservative religious youth. Liberals spent about 10% more time alone than conservatives, which is a lot when you consider that these are high-schoolers without a lot of discretionary time on their hands. Even more amazing, the positive mood of conservatives depended upon being in the presence of others. They consistently reported being bored, self-conscious, and lonely when alone and turned on in the presence of others. In stark contrast, the liberals maintained the same mood in the presence and absence of others and even preferred to be alone! Ingrid has kindly allowed me to make her thesis available on my website for those who, like me, enjoy delving into the details.
These kids obviously belonged to the same biological species but their cultures transformed them into different creatures as far as their response to their environment was concerned. The next step toward thinking like an ecologist is not to regard one culture as better than the other, but to regard each as a strategy for survival and reproduction that succeeds under some conditions but not others. What are the niches of liberalism and conservatism, in either their religious or non-religious manifestations?
Liberals place a high value on individual autonomy and decision-making. Individuals are expected to internalize the norms of their culture and do the right thing on a case-by-case basis after thinking about it. This strategy can be highly successful but can also be costly in the time required for information processing, in making mistakes, and in ignoring successful behaviors winnowed by tradition that work without anyone knowing why they work. Conservatives place a high value on obedience to authority. This strategy might stifle creativity but has a number of advantages, such as easing the burden of information processing, retaining successful behaviors winnowed by tradition, and coordinated action. Even liberals sheepishly acknowledge that they are like cats when it comes to herding.
I think it’s reasonable to imagine that most of the people who have achieved anything new and original in human history–scientists, artists, intellectuals of all stripes–have probably had a tempermant more like the “liberals” in this study than the “conservatives”.
November 16th, 2008 at 9:33 pm
But, of course, Obama and Clinton had zero space between them during the campaign on substantive foreign policy issues.
Well, as someone who opposed the Iraq War from the beginning, I can say that you are absolutely full of it, Petey. Hillary Clinton exercised her constitutional power to start the Iraq War. With her vote, she killed over 4,000 brave Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. Obama not only didn’t do that, he opposed it.
That said, implementing the policies of Obama’s clearly superior foreign policy intellect, Hillary Clinton will make a fine subordinate and will gain some valuable experience, which she needs if she plans to run in 2016.
November 17th, 2008 at 12:19 am
Ignore Petey, he has his own less than honorable past that you can find if you dig through MY or Ezra Klein’s blogs at the time. He’s was mad at people who opposed Iraqattaqk for forever. Democrats have to love shit like that and sneak in under the radar to do something. They should in the best case have southern accents to do it with.
When all that got flipped on it’s head, he comes up with post-hoc bullshit reasons why he’s the *real* leftist. Him and Bill Clinton, and blah, blah, blah. It’s sad.
November 17th, 2008 at 12:49 am
Ed Marshall,
Don’t forget the good old days when both Petey and his muse, John Edwards, tricked us into thinking they were sane people.
To veer on topic on a moment, This would be a bad move for Hillary. She’s got a safe Senate seat that allows her to speak and vote as she wishes and at least one more presidential cycle she could run in. Why forfeit that for a job as a Obama staffer (if the boss can fire you, you’re staff) having to compete with the VP, National Security Advisor and SecDef for foreign policy authority?
Stay in the Senate, Hillary. Let Richardson take a crack at it.
November 17th, 2008 at 12:49 am
On the contrary, Matt, Obama panders to AIPAC and Clinton is OWNED by AIPAC (and the Saudis have also provided her a “handler” in Huma Abedin).
Both of them want to attack Iran, and expand the wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
I’d say they’re both perfectly suited to continue US wars for the foreseeable future. Not as perfectly suited as John McCain, who would have attacked Iran before even being sworn in as President in January, but still…
November 17th, 2008 at 1:17 am
Please forgive the low-octane namedrop…but yesterday when I ran into him- Tom Hayden (my Bill Ayers in a manner of speaking) articulated a plan as to how the Obama Administration should work the Israel/Palestine situation:
“Just tell the Secretary of State to do x, y, and z and not deviate from that. Tell them what to do and just have them do it.” Now, Hillary would be the wrong person, but a clear-cut diktat like that might just do the trick.
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