HRC and CGI
This business concerning Hillary Clinton’s potential appointment as Secretary of State and the finances of Bill Clinton’s foundation seems like a real issue to me. There’s nothing to be done about the fact that the Clinton Foundation has, in the past, gotten large sums of money from foreign governments. But I don’t really see how you could have a Secretary of State whose husband was engaged in that kind of fundraising. Or, more generally, who’s involved in the kind of freelance foreign policy work that Bill does as head of the Foundation. I wrote some about this during the primaries, and my sense of it was that the Clinton camp understood this would be an issue were Hillary to become President, and that something would need to change. To me, it’s just the same if she’s Secretary of State — something would need to be worked out. Anything else would all-but-guarantee a lot of awkward questions, hearings, etc.
I’d consider it one more reason why this may not really be something the Clinton family wants to do. As far as I’m concerned, the John Kerry idea seemed perfectly fine — Kerry clearly supports Obama’s foreign policy agenda, he has more experience in diplomatic matters than anyone in the Senate other than Joe Biden and Dick Lugar, and the idea that it would somehow be unacceptable for Russ Feingold to chair the Foreign Relations committee is ludicrous.
51 Responses to “HRC and CGI”
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November 18th, 2008 at 10:38 am
I think Obama simply wants Hillary out of the Senate and stuck in Foggy Bottom. Smart if you ask me.
November 18th, 2008 at 10:40 am
Why Kerry over Bill Richardson? Not only is Richardson more experienced, in my opinion, but he’s also a governor. I’d rather Obama not purge the Senate to fill his cabinet, even if he plucks from only blue states.
November 18th, 2008 at 10:46 am
I think Obama simply wants Hillary out of the Senate and stuck in Foggy Bottom. Smart if you ask me.
Why? What threat does Hillary pose in the Senate, that she won’t pose as the frigging Secretary of State?
I don’t see her as much of a threat either way, but it seems clear that she’ll have a higher profile at State than as a junior senator.
November 18th, 2008 at 10:58 am
The Clinton Foundation is really not a big deal at all, and I’m not quite sure why so many people keep insisting it is. If Bill has to ditch the Foundation while Hillary is SOS, he’ll do it. You really think Bill is going to let himself be the reason that Hillary can’t accept this appointment?
The only caveat here is that if Hillary doesn’t really want the job, she can use the Foundation as a convenient excuse to say no thanks without the appearance of dissing the P-E.
November 18th, 2008 at 11:01 am
Papa Bear Richardson FTW!
November 18th, 2008 at 11:06 am
I wonder if there was a backroom deal struck during the primaries, in which Hillary was promised the SoS gig if she threw her support wholeheartedly to Clinton?
November 18th, 2008 at 11:07 am
Why not Richard Lugar? That could provide cover for choosing McCain as SecDef and Voinivich as OBM (both Senators from states with Republican governors) which would give O control of the Senate. Then, usher in the era of Obamalot.
November 18th, 2008 at 11:07 am
Woops I meant “…she threw her support wholeheartedly to OBAMA…” dammit…
November 18th, 2008 at 11:14 am
If your campaign position on diplomacy was centered around negotiations with dictators from mostly-adverse regimes without preconditions, why would you hire as your chief diplomat a woman whose main position on diplomacy was that your idea is stupid, naive and dangerous? Just a thought.
Also, during the campaign Richardson’s intellect struck me as wildly inconsonant with his resume (see, e.g., his love for Whizzer White). I’d take Kerry any day. And w/r/t Andrew Dupont’s point, it’s about time that Massachusetts got a new senator. Marty Meehan’s been waiting for like 20 years.
November 18th, 2008 at 11:31 am
I’m baffled by support for John Kerry as SoS. His substantive positions on the issues are fine, but let’s face it: the man is incapable of forming a straightforward declarative sentence, and that strikes me as a rather important skill for the nation’s chief diplomat to possess.
November 18th, 2008 at 11:32 am
It’s fun to see Matt and Josh come down with Clinton Derangement Syndrome. At least Atrios can still think like a rational adult about matters Clinton
November 18th, 2008 at 11:35 am
Might the floated offer of SecState to Clinton, scotched only by Bill’s foundation work, be a nice way of publicly recognizing Hillary’s importance to Obama while leaving both Obama and Hillary in positions they both prefer?
In other words, this may just be a face-saving move for everybody involved. Obama gets to be the gracious victor with the offer, Hillary gets recognized as a power player but gets to stay in the Senate, and Bill gets to keep doing what he does, rather than sitting at home with his mouth shut.
November 18th, 2008 at 12:01 pm
The Clinton Foundation is really not a big deal at all, and I’m not quite sure why so many people keep insisting it is. If Bill has to ditch the Foundation while Hillary is SOS, he’ll do it. You really think Bill is going to let himself be the reason that Hillary can’t accept this appointment?
Sorry, I just don’t buy this at all. No way Bill would be willing to ditch his foundation. In fact, I don’t even think he would be willing to do full disclosure on the donors – he wants to keep his last shreds of reputation.
November 18th, 2008 at 12:09 pm
Might the floated offer of SecState to Clinton, scotched only by Bill’s foundation work, be a nice way of publicly recognizing Hillary’s importance to Obama while leaving both Obama and Hillary in positions they both prefer?
No. The only things people really remember in any given narrative are the opening and closing (this is especially true in politics, where there is less critical thna almost anywhere else). The opening to our narrative was Obama’s takedown of Hillary in the primary. If this process ends in rejection of Hillary for SoS, nobody will remember the gesture of good faith, they’ll only remember Obama’s repudiating the Clintons–again. If this is just a PR stunt, it’s an incredibly stupid one.
November 18th, 2008 at 12:10 pm
* “less critical thinking than,” not “less critical thna.” I’d really benefit from a preview pane on this site.
November 18th, 2008 at 12:17 pm
Wouldn’t Matt’s reference to the Clinton campaign prove the opposite of what he says? After all, if they were prepared to undergo the scrutiny of her running as the Democratic nominee for president, surely they’re prepared for a cabinet office. Maybe not, since one should never underestimate the thoughtlessness that ambition brings, but we should at least consider that this week’s media flap is overblown.
I agree with the comments that keeping her out of the senate is not a concern. The blog truism that surely she’d rather have a safe seat in senate seems wrong to me (perhaps bred of a blogosophere’s preoccupation with the Washington insiders), because her motivation for considering this has to be that she doesn’t have much power in the senate. Job security’s a big concern if you’re not yet tenure track of if you’re, oh, an auto worker, but what tenured prof wouldn’t leap at the chance to shape foreign policy?
Last, my own feeling is that she’d be fine but not ideal as secretary of state, since she’s showed so little courage as a political leader, why I voted against her in the primaries. She’d be great as top Democrat in the senate, because she’d think only in terms of winning and would enforce discipline, but that choice isn’t open to us.
It’d be great, too, I think, if Obama could tell her he’s naming her to quite a different cabinet position, with the mandate to present a health care plan within the administration’s first 100 days, where she’d really taken risks in the past. But Washington prejudices being what they are, she’d feel slighted by such as “low” cabinet position, and the rest of Washington would groan at the been there, done that with her. Oh, well.
November 18th, 2008 at 12:19 pm
This would be a good time to revisit the Clinton Divorce Initiative.
November 18th, 2008 at 12:26 pm
Of course their long-term plan has been that Hillary would be President-Elect now, and Bill would be stepping down from whatever activities he is involved in that would be inappropriate for the spouse of a President-Elect. That’s why he worked so hard at lucrative speech-making for the last eight years, so that they could have a hiatus from it for a while and still be well-off.
I’m quite certain they’re well-prepared to make whatever changes are necessary.
November 18th, 2008 at 12:33 pm
Why would she want the job?
Hillary still wants to be President. The last person to go from State to the Presidency was James Buchanan. The last cabinet member to be elected was Hoover, I think.
Secrataries of State have bosses. Senators don’t. When is the last time Hillary had a boss? She’s been a senator, first lady, senior partner at a law firm.
November 18th, 2008 at 12:34 pm
There has been talk about Hillary challenging for the Senate Majority Leader post.
Maybe this is a way for Obama to earn a big favor from the Senate Majority Leader.
November 18th, 2008 at 12:34 pm
No way Bill would be willing to ditch his foundation.
Bill will do whatever he has to to clear the way for Hillary. Watch.
November 18th, 2008 at 12:34 pm
The funny thing about Kerry is that 4 years ago, voters decided he was not fit to be the guy that selects the SOS. Now he could be the SOS, in a twisted Gerald Fordian sense. It just proves that it’s more important to be popular amongst an elite few in DC than to be popular with voters.
November 18th, 2008 at 12:37 pm
Uh, yeah, mike, nothing’s changed in the past four years. Certainly not the political preferences of Americans.
November 18th, 2008 at 12:55 pm
Kerry should be SOS. Bullshit comments like that of American in Exile are childish and just regurgitations of right-wing spin. Next, we’ll be hearing that Obama can’t be president because he likes arugala too much.
November 18th, 2008 at 12:55 pm
Does anyone besides me see a problem with trading
for the approximate $38.12 that Hillary would be better than Kerry?
Throw in the scratchiness over “The sense among the no-drama Obama world is: This is well on its way to winning best Oscar for drama,” even though Bill has been out of the country, and you have to wonder whether this is a good idea at all.
November 18th, 2008 at 12:58 pm
Hmm, I actually basically believe Hilary that she isn’t likely to run for president again. She’d be 70 next time she gets a chance, pushing McCain territory.
November 18th, 2008 at 1:00 pm
As one who preferred Obama to Clinton but would happily have voted for either over McCain, the reason I preferred Obama was Clinton’s militaristic foreign policy views. Frankly, their domestic views were virtually indistinguishable. The whole “had she voted against AUMF” argument misses the fundamental point – she wouldn’t be HRC had she voted against AUMF – that vote wasn’t an anomaly – it was part and parcel of her views on America’s role in the world. As one who voted for Obama precisely because I found his non “Bomb-em-into-the-Stone-Age” foreign policy far preferable to Clinton’s I have to say I see no value whatever in appointing her to head the State Dept. HHS – sure; State – never.
November 18th, 2008 at 1:21 pm
To me the fact that Feingold would become Froeign Relations chair is a huge plus for Kerry as SOS!
November 18th, 2008 at 1:31 pm
Hillary still wants to be President.
How do you know this?
November 18th, 2008 at 1:34 pm
Hiring Hillary is liking casting Katie Holmes in a big role in a big budget movie. She’d be fine at the job, but how much unneeded drama and distraction would her husband generate? So, who needs her?
November 18th, 2008 at 3:17 pm
Hiring Hillary is liking casting Katie Holmes in a big role in a big budget movie. She’d be fine at the job, but how much unneeded drama and distraction would her husband generate? So, who needs her?
That’s actually a most excellent analogy. It’s excellent because, in fact, there is no evidence at all that Tom Cruise would ever provided any unneeded drama and distraction during the filming of a Katie Holmes movies.
The reality is that, while Tom Cruise may be plenty weird, Hollywood is filled to the gills with weird people and really the only reason that this view of Cruise as a trouble-maker and distractor has currency is the fact that the mass media woke up one morning and decided to pick on him in a way they have never picked on any other big star. As it happens, what is verifiable and factual about Cruise is that he is the biggest movie star on the planet, his movies make huge profits, and he has been involved with dozens of movies that not only made those profits but were actually quite good, a claim that many other actors, even those with superior skills, simply cannot make.
It’s a most excellent analogy, deep and brilliant. (Too bad, I’m afraid, that you intended the shallow and bass-ackwards version of the analogy.)
November 18th, 2008 at 5:52 pm
Then why wasn’t Katie Holmes brought back in the Dark Knight Trickster?
November 18th, 2008 at 6:38 pm
To Francisco the Man @24:
Obviously I disagree that acknowledging John Kerry’s case of Senate-speak is “right-wing spin.” And your simply proclaiming that an opinion contrary to your own is “childish” and “bullshit” does not strike me as particularly persuasive or particularly mature.
Would it kill you to express your disagreement in a civil fashion? It’s really not that hard.
November 19th, 2008 at 9:51 am
I don’t object strongly to Hilary Clinton at State, but was hoping for John Kerry.
However, she may not accept. I think Obama was right tactically in trying to placate the Clintons. They can claim (mostly rightly) that they did do the utmost to get him elected. They have a claim. Better to make her a BIG offer … maybe she will pitch for something lower, or accept staying in the Senate.
If she did take it, I think Bill Clinton would have to temporarily step aside from his foundation. Perhaps the Clintons may not like that side of the offer.
November 20th, 2008 at 2:55 pm
it seems like, if Hillary becomes the Sec. State, then there will be some serious personality and agenda conflict between her and Obama
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