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Team of Rivals?
A couple of days after my initial post on the subject, Josh shared similar concerns about Hillary Clinton's potential selection as Secretary of State. I'm now following up my early thoughts with a more complete post. I hope it's clear from this that I'm not outright opposed to Clinton at State, but it does raise serious concerns for me, and I personally doubt she is either the most qualified or the best candidate for the role. This was cross-posted to The Lion and Gun.
At the moment I'm wrapping up Doris Kearns Goodwin's excellent book. (Lest anybody accuse me of bandwagoning, let it be known that I purchased it and have been slowly reading it since long before Obama's victory and transition.) Obviously the book has gained popular currency recently, especially with buzz about President-elect Obama potentially pulling former rival Hillary Clinton into his cabinet as Secretary of State. (I've already made some preliminary remarks on the subject here.) 'Team of rivals' is a good way to describe such an administration -- but a poor philosophy for building it.
Cliché tells us those who fail to understand history are doomed to repeat it. And there's some truth in that. But it does not follow that those who understand history can repeat it at will: what has worked in the particular circumstances of the past usually fails in the particular, and different, circumstances of the present.
There were plenty of good reasons for Abraham Lincoln to bring his rivals into his administration -- a new and fragile Republican party, a fragile nation headed for war. Today's challenges are certainly great, but they are nothing like what faced the new President in 1861, and the Democratic party is much stronger and more unified than the Republicans under their first President. Lincoln's decision to tap the talents of Edward Bates, Henry Seward, and Salmon Chase was fueled by the daunting challenges facing his administration. I fear that Obama's decision to tap the talents of Hillary Clinton has been fueled by a best-selling book.
Clinton's Qualities
There are arguments in Clinton's favor. For one thing, she's smart as hell. She's tough and determined. She's relentless. All of these are good qualities for the face of the nation's foreign policy, and they should not be underestimated. There are other benefits as well, some of which haven't been given much attention elsewhere. But the appointment, assuming it comes to pass, brings with it some significant problems. And many of Clinton's attributes political bloggers stress strike me as being hollow or not particularly useful. (I also think it's interesting that, from what I've seen, bloggers whose primary interest is domestic policy or political process seem to be celebrating the decision, whereas bloggers more focused on foreign policy tend to have considerable reservations.)
Beyond her innate abilities, Hillary Clinton will bring a significant amount of political capital to the State Department. Obama might be crafting the kind of star-studded cabinet that will strike fear into the hearts of Republicans. Clinton will bring with her the good will of Congress, the Democratic party, and a significant chunk of the American populace. All of this will help to clear any domestic roadblocks to Obama's conduct of foreign policy.
Clinton's star-power will also raise the profile of the (already high-profile) State Department. If Obama intends to shift the fulcrum of foreign policy conduct further from Defense to State this is a good way to do it. With somebody as famously tough as Clinton at the reins, voters (and political rivals) will be less likely to accuse an Obama administration's focus on diplomacy as weak-kneed appeasement. For the President's domestic agenda, but also for much of his foreign policy, he'll have to rally his grassroots, twist arms in Congress, and convince the American people to get behind him. Clinton can help with that.
Senator Clinton's familiarity with the levers of power in Washington -- and, even more importantly, her high profile -- will allow Obama to concentrate more on the gargantuan domestic policy challenges facing the nation without sacrificing Americans' trust on his ability to handle myriad foreign crises and entanglements. This might be the most important reason for choosing Clinton. There are many other candidates who could manage delegated foreign policy and the State Department as well as, or better than, Hillary Clinton. But there are perhaps none that are better known and would be better trusted by the American people.
Clinton's Detriments
Here, however, is where we start getting into thornier problems. Does Obama really want to outsource foreign policymaking to a State Department run by Hillary Clinton? Probably not. Surely one of the lessons of the early Clinton years was that the most important political decision making takes place in the West Wing, not at Foggy Bottom. And in the primaries Clinton staked out a substantially different (and more hawkish) foreign policy vision than Obama. He'll have to keep her on a tight leash.
How will Clinton react to that? Obviously she desired to be President. It's not a well-kept secret that she feels herself more qualified than Obama, and there's been little love lost between them even since the convention. Will she work well in a subordinate role? In public surely she will, just as she heartily campaigned for Obama in the general election. She might not always be so happy to back down in private. Of course, disagreement within policy-making circles, if handled right, can be a good thing. But many of Clinton's advisers have more spleen and less to lose by venting to the press, and the Clintons have always presided over a leaky ship. Obama is famously averse to seeing behind-closed-doors backbiting splayed across the front pages of America's newspapers, but that's exactly what we saw in the final four months of Hillary Clinton's campaign.
Of course if such disputes do end up leaking, as they probably will, it would prove embarrassing to Obama. (An un-amicable or forced resignation of his Secretary of State, taking with her a sizable chunk of the Democratic party, could potentially hobble his administration.) More importantly, they could seriously undermine the conduct of American foreign policy.
So, too, could the many (and possibly shady) dealings Bill Clinton has had with foreign leaders. I have written previously about this and won't belabor the point. Let me just stress that impropriety isn't the issue so much as the perception of impropriety. Bill's business connections and donor lists could cause serious (or perceived) conflicts of interest that further complicate American foreign policy. His ties in Kazakhstan, whose oil fields are jealously eyed by powerful neighbors, are especially problematic.
Qualities that aren't Qualities
Meanwhile, the qualities most observers have focused on strike me as being overestimated or not particularly useful. The first, and most easily dispensed with, is that Clinton will heal divisions within the Democratic party. What divisions? Didn't Barack Obama just win the election? Any divisions that remains, obviously not fatal, will be erased (if they can at all be erased) by his conduct as President. If there are any voters who refuse to vote for Barack Obama four years from now because he had the temerity to defeat Hillary Rodham Clinton in the 2008 primaries, they either have serious attachment issues or other (more or less legitimate) reasons that are really causing their opposition.
The second, and perhaps most often-mentioned, attribute is Clinton's worldwide popularity. I question, first of all, the veracity of this statement. I don't mean to deny Clinton's popularity, simply its degree. On this point I'm genuinely uncertain, but it seems to me that it was her husband who was really popular overseas. At any rate, I can remember seeing polling during the primaries (I can't recall the source, I'm afraid) showing that, out of a number of foreign democracies, Obama was supported over Clinton by wide margins in all countries save Israel and Britain. Certainly Clinton couldn't draw a crowd of 400,000 at the Victory Column in Berlin.
More importantly, I question the usefulness of having a popular Secretary of State. Sure, it will improve America's reputation abroad, but I think the returns are pretty marginal considering how much and how quickly Obama's election has done that already. Which is as it should be: it's the President who should be popular worldwide, not the Secretary of State. She needs to be the bad cop. Henry Kissinger, arguably the most successful Secretary of State of the post-war period, did not exactly inspire warm and fuzzy feeling worldwide.
Of course, Hillary can be (and often has been) a bad cop. That's another of her supposed qualities, in fact -- she'll be a tough and shrewd negotiator. And I don't doubt her toughness, but I do her diplomatic skills. So far in Clinton's political life her two greatest endeavors, health care and an election campaign, both failed in large part because of her inability to fruitfully resolve conflicts. Building a 1,300 page fait accompli without involving any of the stakeholders is exactly the wrong way to manage a huge a complex negotiation, but that's what was done with health care in 1994. More recently, Clinton's inability to forge a working relationship between the strong personalities on her own campaign team was at the heart of its failure. (And those were all people dedicated to a single goal!) It was, above all else, Clinton's indecisiveness and unwillingness to fire problematic advisers that had her campaign vacillating between different tactics and messages and leaking angry conversations all over the place. This raises doubts about both her ability to lead the huge bureaucracy she'd be placed in charge of as well as her ability to conduct fruitful negotiations between recalcitrant parties.
Others have vaunted Clinton's foreign policy experience and working relationships with foreign leaders. But today's crop of foreign leaders has changed from what she and her husband dealt with in the 1990s, and the extent to which she had a serious working relationship with any of them has been exaggerated by her partisans. So too is her vaunted experience. What experience? I thought that was revealed as bullshit during the primaries. Certainly Clinton has plenty of political experience doing plenty of political things, but foreign policy? She's never been a diplomat, she's never negotiated foreign treaties, she's never studied or written about international relations or foreign policy. The closest she's come (and this is really not so very close) is her seat on the Armed Services Committee.
And, I suppose, the sniper fire in Bosnia.
In all seriousness, this is the claim that I take the most issue with. The received wisdom of Clinton's experience stems from a mostly uncritical acceptance of a carefully crafted political narrative. Clinton has had more experience than Obama, yes, but not more than most professional politicians in their early sixties. And very little of her experience is relevant to a potential position at the head of State. She is, for all intents and purposes, a neophyte, and this was revealed in some of her foreign policy stances and statements (extending America's nuclear shield over its Middle Eastern allies!) during the campaign.
This is one myth I wish would be slayed.
Finally, there's been plenty of attention paid to what this will mean for Clinton's political prospects, or else how it plays politically for Obama. Does it remove a potential problem for his agenda in the Senate? Possibly, but I doubt Clinton would have (or could have) posed much of a threat from the Upper House. She could certainly do more damage, intentionally or not, to Obama's administration from the State Department; more importantly, she could do more damage to America's foreign policy than she could from the Upper Chamber. On the other hand, as I've said, she'll bring with her a store of political capital for Obama to share, so I think that's a wash. And as for Clinton's own ambitions, as Ezra Klein suggests, they are probably realistically at an end. 2016 will be the year for Mark Warner or Brian Schweitzer or someone yet to emerge. Hillary's star hasn't faded yet, but it will. If she still thinks she has a chance, Governor of New York would be a better place to build her movement. If she doesn't, Secretary of State could be her crowning achievement and lasting legacy.
In Conclusion
As Barron YoungSmith points out at The Plank, Barack Obama's own national security adviser-in-waiting, Jim Steinberg, warns against this kind of choice in an upcoming book:
None of this is meant either to disqualify Senator Clinton or to predict her failure. In fact, she could be a spectacularly successful Secretary of State; she could be the next Kissinger. She brings many considerable qualities to the position and she's certainly more qualified than, say, me. In fact, her attributes probably outweigh her detriments. But that's not the essential calculus because Clinton isn't the only choice. With other qualified candidates available -- John Kerry, Bill Richardson, Wes Clark, Richard Holbrooke -- we should not so blithely assume Clinton will be the best. I doubt she would be. All those I mentioned (and many others I didn't) have their own mix of qualities and problems; the question is, on the whole, who is best? I think someone like Richardson or Holbrooke fits the bill.
Senator Clinton's appointment would steal a newscycle or two (indeed, speculation already has), and it would guarantee more in the future. It's the kind of bold move most observers, myself included, have come to not expect from Barack Obama. It suggests an eye for political tactics and stunts that was assiduously avoided during the campaign. Maybe it's a brilliant stroke I simply have yet to appreciate.
Or maybe it's the result of reading a popular book of history and assuming the successes of the past could be repeated in the present. Which is the wrong lesson to take. But it's still a damned good book.
Photo provided under a CC license by Ellen Kanner.
Thanks for reading. If you found this post valuable I'd hugely appreciate it if you'd click 'recommend'! I'd also love to hear your thoughts in the comments below -- see you there.
At the moment I'm wrapping up Doris Kearns Goodwin's excellent book. (Lest anybody accuse me of bandwagoning, let it be known that I purchased it and have been slowly reading it since long before Obama's victory and transition.) Obviously the book has gained popular currency recently, especially with buzz about President-elect Obama potentially pulling former rival Hillary Clinton into his cabinet as Secretary of State. (I've already made some preliminary remarks on the subject here.) 'Team of rivals' is a good way to describe such an administration -- but a poor philosophy for building it.
Cliché tells us those who fail to understand history are doomed to repeat it. And there's some truth in that. But it does not follow that those who understand history can repeat it at will: what has worked in the particular circumstances of the past usually fails in the particular, and different, circumstances of the present.
There were plenty of good reasons for Abraham Lincoln to bring his rivals into his administration -- a new and fragile Republican party, a fragile nation headed for war. Today's challenges are certainly great, but they are nothing like what faced the new President in 1861, and the Democratic party is much stronger and more unified than the Republicans under their first President. Lincoln's decision to tap the talents of Edward Bates, Henry Seward, and Salmon Chase was fueled by the daunting challenges facing his administration. I fear that Obama's decision to tap the talents of Hillary Clinton has been fueled by a best-selling book.
Clinton's Qualities
There are arguments in Clinton's favor. For one thing, she's smart as hell. She's tough and determined. She's relentless. All of these are good qualities for the face of the nation's foreign policy, and they should not be underestimated. There are other benefits as well, some of which haven't been given much attention elsewhere. But the appointment, assuming it comes to pass, brings with it some significant problems. And many of Clinton's attributes political bloggers stress strike me as being hollow or not particularly useful. (I also think it's interesting that, from what I've seen, bloggers whose primary interest is domestic policy or political process seem to be celebrating the decision, whereas bloggers more focused on foreign policy tend to have considerable reservations.)
Beyond her innate abilities, Hillary Clinton will bring a significant amount of political capital to the State Department. Obama might be crafting the kind of star-studded cabinet that will strike fear into the hearts of Republicans. Clinton will bring with her the good will of Congress, the Democratic party, and a significant chunk of the American populace. All of this will help to clear any domestic roadblocks to Obama's conduct of foreign policy.
Clinton's star-power will also raise the profile of the (already high-profile) State Department. If Obama intends to shift the fulcrum of foreign policy conduct further from Defense to State this is a good way to do it. With somebody as famously tough as Clinton at the reins, voters (and political rivals) will be less likely to accuse an Obama administration's focus on diplomacy as weak-kneed appeasement. For the President's domestic agenda, but also for much of his foreign policy, he'll have to rally his grassroots, twist arms in Congress, and convince the American people to get behind him. Clinton can help with that.
Senator Clinton's familiarity with the levers of power in Washington -- and, even more importantly, her high profile -- will allow Obama to concentrate more on the gargantuan domestic policy challenges facing the nation without sacrificing Americans' trust on his ability to handle myriad foreign crises and entanglements. This might be the most important reason for choosing Clinton. There are many other candidates who could manage delegated foreign policy and the State Department as well as, or better than, Hillary Clinton. But there are perhaps none that are better known and would be better trusted by the American people.
Clinton's Detriments
Here, however, is where we start getting into thornier problems. Does Obama really want to outsource foreign policymaking to a State Department run by Hillary Clinton? Probably not. Surely one of the lessons of the early Clinton years was that the most important political decision making takes place in the West Wing, not at Foggy Bottom. And in the primaries Clinton staked out a substantially different (and more hawkish) foreign policy vision than Obama. He'll have to keep her on a tight leash.
How will Clinton react to that? Obviously she desired to be President. It's not a well-kept secret that she feels herself more qualified than Obama, and there's been little love lost between them even since the convention. Will she work well in a subordinate role? In public surely she will, just as she heartily campaigned for Obama in the general election. She might not always be so happy to back down in private. Of course, disagreement within policy-making circles, if handled right, can be a good thing. But many of Clinton's advisers have more spleen and less to lose by venting to the press, and the Clintons have always presided over a leaky ship. Obama is famously averse to seeing behind-closed-doors backbiting splayed across the front pages of America's newspapers, but that's exactly what we saw in the final four months of Hillary Clinton's campaign.
Of course if such disputes do end up leaking, as they probably will, it would prove embarrassing to Obama. (An un-amicable or forced resignation of his Secretary of State, taking with her a sizable chunk of the Democratic party, could potentially hobble his administration.) More importantly, they could seriously undermine the conduct of American foreign policy.
So, too, could the many (and possibly shady) dealings Bill Clinton has had with foreign leaders. I have written previously about this and won't belabor the point. Let me just stress that impropriety isn't the issue so much as the perception of impropriety. Bill's business connections and donor lists could cause serious (or perceived) conflicts of interest that further complicate American foreign policy. His ties in Kazakhstan, whose oil fields are jealously eyed by powerful neighbors, are especially problematic.
Qualities that aren't Qualities
Meanwhile, the qualities most observers have focused on strike me as being overestimated or not particularly useful. The first, and most easily dispensed with, is that Clinton will heal divisions within the Democratic party. What divisions? Didn't Barack Obama just win the election? Any divisions that remains, obviously not fatal, will be erased (if they can at all be erased) by his conduct as President. If there are any voters who refuse to vote for Barack Obama four years from now because he had the temerity to defeat Hillary Rodham Clinton in the 2008 primaries, they either have serious attachment issues or other (more or less legitimate) reasons that are really causing their opposition.
The second, and perhaps most often-mentioned, attribute is Clinton's worldwide popularity. I question, first of all, the veracity of this statement. I don't mean to deny Clinton's popularity, simply its degree. On this point I'm genuinely uncertain, but it seems to me that it was her husband who was really popular overseas. At any rate, I can remember seeing polling during the primaries (I can't recall the source, I'm afraid) showing that, out of a number of foreign democracies, Obama was supported over Clinton by wide margins in all countries save Israel and Britain. Certainly Clinton couldn't draw a crowd of 400,000 at the Victory Column in Berlin.
More importantly, I question the usefulness of having a popular Secretary of State. Sure, it will improve America's reputation abroad, but I think the returns are pretty marginal considering how much and how quickly Obama's election has done that already. Which is as it should be: it's the President who should be popular worldwide, not the Secretary of State. She needs to be the bad cop. Henry Kissinger, arguably the most successful Secretary of State of the post-war period, did not exactly inspire warm and fuzzy feeling worldwide.
Of course, Hillary can be (and often has been) a bad cop. That's another of her supposed qualities, in fact -- she'll be a tough and shrewd negotiator. And I don't doubt her toughness, but I do her diplomatic skills. So far in Clinton's political life her two greatest endeavors, health care and an election campaign, both failed in large part because of her inability to fruitfully resolve conflicts. Building a 1,300 page fait accompli without involving any of the stakeholders is exactly the wrong way to manage a huge a complex negotiation, but that's what was done with health care in 1994. More recently, Clinton's inability to forge a working relationship between the strong personalities on her own campaign team was at the heart of its failure. (And those were all people dedicated to a single goal!) It was, above all else, Clinton's indecisiveness and unwillingness to fire problematic advisers that had her campaign vacillating between different tactics and messages and leaking angry conversations all over the place. This raises doubts about both her ability to lead the huge bureaucracy she'd be placed in charge of as well as her ability to conduct fruitful negotiations between recalcitrant parties.
Others have vaunted Clinton's foreign policy experience and working relationships with foreign leaders. But today's crop of foreign leaders has changed from what she and her husband dealt with in the 1990s, and the extent to which she had a serious working relationship with any of them has been exaggerated by her partisans. So too is her vaunted experience. What experience? I thought that was revealed as bullshit during the primaries. Certainly Clinton has plenty of political experience doing plenty of political things, but foreign policy? She's never been a diplomat, she's never negotiated foreign treaties, she's never studied or written about international relations or foreign policy. The closest she's come (and this is really not so very close) is her seat on the Armed Services Committee.
And, I suppose, the sniper fire in Bosnia.
In all seriousness, this is the claim that I take the most issue with. The received wisdom of Clinton's experience stems from a mostly uncritical acceptance of a carefully crafted political narrative. Clinton has had more experience than Obama, yes, but not more than most professional politicians in their early sixties. And very little of her experience is relevant to a potential position at the head of State. She is, for all intents and purposes, a neophyte, and this was revealed in some of her foreign policy stances and statements (extending America's nuclear shield over its Middle Eastern allies!) during the campaign.
This is one myth I wish would be slayed.
Finally, there's been plenty of attention paid to what this will mean for Clinton's political prospects, or else how it plays politically for Obama. Does it remove a potential problem for his agenda in the Senate? Possibly, but I doubt Clinton would have (or could have) posed much of a threat from the Upper House. She could certainly do more damage, intentionally or not, to Obama's administration from the State Department; more importantly, she could do more damage to America's foreign policy than she could from the Upper Chamber. On the other hand, as I've said, she'll bring with her a store of political capital for Obama to share, so I think that's a wash. And as for Clinton's own ambitions, as Ezra Klein suggests, they are probably realistically at an end. 2016 will be the year for Mark Warner or Brian Schweitzer or someone yet to emerge. Hillary's star hasn't faded yet, but it will. If she still thinks she has a chance, Governor of New York would be a better place to build her movement. If she doesn't, Secretary of State could be her crowning achievement and lasting legacy.
In Conclusion
As Barron YoungSmith points out at The Plank, Barack Obama's own national security adviser-in-waiting, Jim Steinberg, warns against this kind of choice in an upcoming book:
"An examination of how [post-WW II] national security teams functioned suggests some general conclusions about the do's-and-don't's of the appointments process. On the whole, decisions to appoint all-stars or worthies without significant previous personal connection to the candidates has, with the important exception of Kissinger, proved problematic. At best, they have been marginalized or ignored in the decision-making process ... at worst, they have caused significant disruption as a result of being seen as not team players."
None of this is meant either to disqualify Senator Clinton or to predict her failure. In fact, she could be a spectacularly successful Secretary of State; she could be the next Kissinger. She brings many considerable qualities to the position and she's certainly more qualified than, say, me. In fact, her attributes probably outweigh her detriments. But that's not the essential calculus because Clinton isn't the only choice. With other qualified candidates available -- John Kerry, Bill Richardson, Wes Clark, Richard Holbrooke -- we should not so blithely assume Clinton will be the best. I doubt she would be. All those I mentioned (and many others I didn't) have their own mix of qualities and problems; the question is, on the whole, who is best? I think someone like Richardson or Holbrooke fits the bill.
Senator Clinton's appointment would steal a newscycle or two (indeed, speculation already has), and it would guarantee more in the future. It's the kind of bold move most observers, myself included, have come to not expect from Barack Obama. It suggests an eye for political tactics and stunts that was assiduously avoided during the campaign. Maybe it's a brilliant stroke I simply have yet to appreciate.
Or maybe it's the result of reading a popular book of history and assuming the successes of the past could be repeated in the present. Which is the wrong lesson to take. But it's still a damned good book.
Photo provided under a CC license by Ellen Kanner.
Thanks for reading. If you found this post valuable I'd hugely appreciate it if you'd click 'recommend'! I'd also love to hear your thoughts in the comments below -- see you there.
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First, let me the first to point that "keeping Hillary on a leash" is probably not the most appropriate expression to use for a lady.
Second, did Hillary need to be "kept on a leash" all summer and fall as she campaigned for Obama, "kept on a leash" as First Lady when she fought for health care, retreated into the background, and endured scorn for another 6 years while she made 82 foreign state visits? Did she have to be "kept on a leash" in the Senate when many expected to play a star and instead she played a respectful, uniting Junior Senator? Did she have to be "kept on a leash" when she helped on 8 national presidential campaigns. Except for 2 Senate races and 1 presidential primary, this woman has always worked for others, so why exactly this "kept on a leash" meme?
Third, if Bill can already earn a half million dollars for a speech and get $20 million from foreign leaders for his non-profit, there is little to vet. He doesn't need any more government ties to win influence, and whatever embarrassment power he has is already overlapped by Clinton Derangement Syndrome, where he'd embarrasss some just by scratching his nose.
November 18, 2008 2:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
I apologize if my use of words offended you. Honestly, I didn't consider Sen. Clinton's gender when employing a turn of speech I would use in normal parlance.
That said, I think you misconstrue my point. After arguing that Clinton's star power could allow Obama to focus on domestic policy while she holds down the fort at Foggy Bottom, I countered that the Bill Clinton's mistakes early in his first term suggest that policy delegation to cabinet members does not work very well in practice, and that Hillary's significantly different foreign policy views also argue against substantial delegation. I later made the point that internal policy squabbles can be embarrassing to the administration if leaked (as happened after Powell left the Bush administration), and Clinton has presided over a very leaky boat. The fact that Clinton was so recently an ambitious rival to Barack Obama really could be problematic (see Haig, Alexander) and could differentiate this situation from the examples you've provided.
Finally, your point with regard to Bill Clinton's finances and connections kind of misses my point. It's not that his shenanigans (or the perception that he's been involved in shenanigans) could hurt Obama's administration -- although it could. It's that they could produce real conflicts of interest in the conduct of American foreign policy. I'm not talking about 'Clinton Derangement Syndrome'. I'm talking about, for example, the Chinese not willing to believe the United States is an honest broker in some hypothetical conflict over oil in Kazakhstan because they think the Secretary of State's husband is in the pocket of the Kazakhstani government.
I'm not saying that any of this will come to pass. I'm not in the business of prognostication. But these are risks that should be considered. If, considering them, you still think Clinton's a better choice than the other alternatives, that's fine. I don't. So I think we'll have to agree to disagree.
November 18, 2008 6:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
My main point was #2, implying that Hillary is quite disciplined. I don't think her boat was so leaky. Things got more public in late January/early February when catastrophe hit, not unusual in a campaign, but a campaign is not State Department either, very different kind of people. Al Haig was a rough-and-tough General type where being part cowboy is part of the aura, Hillary's always been a team player. I keep repeating this.
November 18, 2008 11:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hillary is a team player. And her boat is leaky. She's not leaky. It's the boat. Not just her boat. Bill's boat too. And her boat started leaking long before she lost the primary. It's not about loyalty. It's a management problem. Remember Mark Penn? All the infighting? Infighting => leaks. Perhaps you're right that her state people will be better than her campaign people, but I'm still nervous because of the campaign people that she hired.
Finally, you can call it CDS if you want and blame it all on the media, but regardless of the cause, the Clintons have proven themselves to be scandal prone, and I'm worried about more to come.
That said, I think that Clinton also offers a number of advantages which Matthew did a good job of presenting. She may well be the best choice, but I'm anxious about it nonetheless.
November 19, 2008 2:14 AM | Reply | Permalink
Matthew,
I enjoyed reading this very much. I'd point out, though, that you bounce among a wide array of criteria in evaluating this choice. Domestic politics? Management skill? Foreign reception? Negotiating ability? Prior experience? Star power? It's unclear how you rate their relative importance.
Nor do I take the same lessons from the recent past as Steinberg. It's certainly the case that teams of role-players tend to perform better than teams of stars. But there's also a danger in excessive deference.
Take, for example, Condi Rice. She is eminently qualified, competent, and trusted by the President. She's a consummate loyal subordinate and team-player, who prefers to keep a low profile. But after eight years in senior posts, it's difficult to find any program or policy on which she's had a meaningful impact. We still have fewer Foreign Service Officers than members of military bands. We re-engaged in the Middle East peace process, and got exactly nowhere. Relations with Russia, her particular area of expertise, have steadily deteriorated as its power has increased and it has drifted into authoritarianism. Sure, she subtly shifted and shaded a thousand and one policies. But what has she fundamentally changed?
Contrast that with Donald Rumsfeld, who cuts a flamboyant profile. A congressman, ambassador, White House Chief of Staff and Defense Secretary before Bush ever held elective office; Rumsfeld was never the President's man, but a star in his own right. He feuded constantly with Colin Powell, ran roughshod over his subordinates, and aggressively pushed his own vision. Sure, the results were disastrous. But that's sorta the point. He grabbed intelligence turf from the CIA, diplomatic turf from State, and budgetary turf from everyone else. It was his vision of regime change that prevailed, as the National Security Adviser abjectly failed in her responsibility to referee internal disputes. It's tough to think of a Defense Secretary since McNamara who's had a larger impact, or a more decisive role in driving policy. Kissinger is another case in point. And if Colin Powell appears to be a counter-example, I'd point out that his independent standing gave him the stature to disagree in ways his successor hasn't- his tragic flaw was his ethos of service, which led him to suppress his concerns in public. Had he been as egotistical and shameless as Rumsfeld, we might never have gone to war in Iraq.
I wouldn't conflate being effective with being low-key. I would suggest, for example, that to manage his high-powered national security team, Obama is going to need a very special NSA. Someone whose "intensity can be off-putting," and whose "short temper" can intimidate subordinates; in other words, someone capable of holding their own and asserting their will while refereeing conflicts. Someone who's a real player, a star in their own right, "at the center of the Democratic Party’s shadow foreign policy establishment," and not just an Obama retainer. In fact, it'd be fine with me if the new NSA "does not have a longstanding relationship with Mr. Obama." Someone, in other words, who meets none of Mr. Steinberg's criteria for effectiveness, and all of his warning signs. Someone like, say, Steinberg himself. (I almost choked on my coffee when I read the quote you excerpted; it's either unconscious irony or a stunning lack of self-awareness.)
None of that answers the question of whether Hillary's the right choice, but I do think it goes some way to discounting some of your concerns. I also think you underestimate the importance of personal star-power in diplomacy. When Hillary walks into a meeting of foreign ministers, she has an instant advantage. Heads of state want their picture taken with her. Her arrival anywhere around the globe is instantly the top story on the news. Is it just the reflected glory of her husband? Partially, but who cares? It's there, nonetheless. And yes, Obama's popularity instantly eclipses hers. But she's a force-multiplier. He can't be everywhere at once, and has quite enough to deal with right at home. Sending Hillary abroad, where the Clintons have always been vastly more popular than in the states, is a stroke of genius - whatever the other (and considerable) drawbacks of her holding the office.
November 18, 2008 2:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
Many thanks for your thorough and thoughtful reply. I've taken your initial criticism to heart and added section headings to the post in the hopes of making the structure of my writing clearer. You're correct in saying that I don't make clear the relative importance of these various considerations. I only intended to explicate what I felt were the most relevant arguments for and against Clinton, then point out what arguments in her favor I felt were flawed and why.
I realize that my post would have been strengthened if I made clearer what I felt was most important, and why, in sum, I lean against the choice of Clinton. I don't really have the inclination to rewrite it (beyond the section headings). For what it's worth, I think the strongest arguments in Clinton's favor are the political capital her star power on the homefront will bring Obama and, quite simply, her smarts and affinity for policy wonkery. I think her lack of foreign policy experience and what appears from the outside to be poor diplomatic skills are the strongest arguments against. The essential point, however, is that we shouldn't simply weigh Clinton's strengths against her weaknesses -- I think her strengths would probably win -- but then compare that result against the net benefits (or detriments) the other candidates possess.
That said, I think your Rice and Rumsfeld examples sort of illustrate my point. Bush's foreign policy vision was fundamentally altered in the wake of September 11th, and the influence of folks like Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz and Cheney are a huge reason why. This was a change for the worse. While Rice has been less transformational, and in that sense less effective, she has also (as a result) been less destructive.
Having a 'star', or somebody strong-willed enough to shift (even hijack) a President's foreign policy, or both, can be a good thing if that star's foreign policy vision is superior to the President's. (Kissinger is perhaps the best recent example.) I don't think that Hillary Clinton's is.
So you're right that being low-key and being effective aren't always one and the same. But we have to consider both character or ability and the substance of one's ideas. Steinberg would be great as a headstrong NSA because he's at the top of his field. Joe Biden, had he been passed over for Veep, would have been a great Secretary of State because he knows more about foreign policy than almost any other elected official in the Democratic party. But I'm not convinced by either Clinton's foreign policy credentials nor her foreign policy ideas.
November 18, 2008 6:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
Matthew,
The subheads make the post substantially more readable. I know I'm not a natural blogger. I feel compelled to lard my posts with links to my sources, like so many digital footnotes, and have trouble producing anything short, pithy or punchy. So I've been experimenting with bullet points, subheads, italics - anything to make my writing fit for the screen. And since I sense in you the soul of a fellow long-form prose writer, I encourage your efforts in the same direction.
I take your points, which are well made. All I'd suggest in response is that there's another alternative to consider, beyond a Secretary pushing a President's agenda or substituting her own, be it superior or inferior. In most areas of policy, there are a few issues that draw the direct attention of the President, and a vast number that don't. Moreover, there are often conflicting imperatives that don't rise to the level of the Oval Office for their resolution. It's on these matters, of which the President is often entirely unaware, that crucial turf wars are won or lost.
Installing a heavyweight in a cabinet department is often a means of increasing its influence and importance. It's more likely to prevail in the constant internecine warfare that is official life in Washington. That's the point I was attempting to illustrate with the example of Rumsfeld, an absolute master of bureaucratic infighting. Putting Clinton at State, whatever its drawbacks, would serve to demilitarize our foreign policy and return its management to where it belongs - Foggy Bottom, not the Pentagon. I don't think Richardson or Holbrooke, for example, could do so as effectively. They're players, to be sure, but at the same level as most other Cabinet Secretaries.
Would you lose something in choosing Clinton over, say, those two? Absolutely. They have more experience. Better management skills. Less of an independent agenda. But would that be worth the price of installing someone capable of restoring State to its proper place in the bureaucratic firmament, not to mention able to wield her considerable star-power overseas and at home in support of the President's agenda? It might well be.
November 18, 2008 10:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks again for your comments and suggestions. I've noticed your increasing use of font styles and bullet points and the like, and I think it's a good habit to emulate. I'll be doing my best from here on out.
That said, I agree with your analysis; in fact, I made (admittedly fleeting) reference to that point in my original post: 'Clinton's star-power will also raise the profile of the (already high-profile) State Department. If Obama intends to shift the fulcrum of foreign policy conduct further from Defense to State this is a good way to do it.'
Perhaps, then, we're agreed on Clinton's merits and demerits, and what differs -- as you astutely pointed out in a previous comment -- is the relative weight we place on each of these factors.
November 18, 2008 11:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
Memo to Barack Obama:
Step away from Doris Kearns Goodwin and the Team of Rivals!
November 18, 2008 3:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
Mr. Locke, I have enjoyed reading each of your offerings as I run across them here. While this is without question a worthy topic to consider, with all due respect you are all over the map on this one. It is difficult to discern whether you are for this, against, or still trying to make up your mind.
I am leaning slightly towards being for it--I think that Sen. Clinton's abilities would allow here to be an excellent SOS. I don't think that, contrary to the conspiracy theorists (inc. Chris Matthews apparently), she'd set up a parallel government within the Dept. of State. That's just foolish. PE Obama knows what he is doing. In my opinion SOS Clinton would be a stronger, smarter and more compelling choice than either SOS Kerry or Richardson.
November 18, 2008 3:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for the kind words -- and for the constructive criticism! As I mentioned in my response to FlyOnTheWall's comment, I've added subheadings which hopefully make the structure of my post a little clearer. I wasn't attempting to make a clear-cut case one way or the other: as with all things in life, the selection has pluses and minuses. I intended to point out some of the strengths and some of the weaknesses, then point out why a number of the arguments that have been invoked in Clinton's favor have been flawed.
That said, I'm leaning against the nomination. I think she'll probably be effective, but I feel that several of the other candidates are more qualified for the position. I also think she presents more of a risk, for many of the reasons I've outlined.
I agree -- I'm under no illusions that she'll form a 'shadow administration'. (Something I foolishly alluded to in my previous post.) There will probably be some internal policy squabbles, though, which is a good thing as long as they stay internal. I suspect that sometimes they won't. Clinton's advisers have tended to be leak-prone, and the media has salivated over any Clinton dirt they can get. It's not a major point, but a consideration.
November 18, 2008 6:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
Anyone who's been here a long time knows I was for Obama from the start and had many reasons I did not want Hillary for president. Nevertheless, to begin with, I've decided to trust Obama's judgment. That's for starters. And he has good advisers. And must have had a working relationship with her in the Senate.
What are the concerns here? One is Bill. And I'm sure Hill was vetted sufficiently by the Obama folks, likely in the summer. The next is can Hillary be counted on as capable of loyalty? To me, you need look no farther than her long marriage to a very difficult man. Hillary has proven loyalty! She's a hard worker. She's wonky. And that guarantees she'll be ready to talk to anyone or go anywhere and can be counted on as our "face" to other governments. Then there's the worry about her executive abilities. Well, I'm sure she can get assistance in managing a huge bureaucracy. And assistance in choosing people to make sure State becomes the excellent, well-oiled machine it's been in the past.
I may not have covered everything. But trusting Obama and making the assumptions I've made, I'm ok with it - if Obama is.
November 18, 2008 4:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
Fair points all. I still harbor plenty of doubts. But to flog a dead horse once more, I don't necessarily think the cons outweigh the pros here -- just that, compared to the other candidates, I don't think that Clinton's the best. That said, I definitely tend to put faith in Obama's choices, which have been right with few exceptions for as long as he's been on the scene. Obviously he and his transition team knows more about this than I do, and has thought longer about it. I have confidence that things will turn out well in the foreign policy realm. I'd just have more confidence if Obama went with someone else. :)
November 18, 2008 7:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
Alot of people are missing the true premise of "Team of Rivals?. Lincoln famously said something to the liking of "these are the best people for the job, I have no right to deprive their services from the people." Obama isn't choosing Hillary mainly because of who she is or the fact that she was his chief rival. He is choosing her because she is literally the best person for the job(in his mind), her being his main rival is just drama.
November 18, 2008 6:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think the main point is Foggy Bottom is not the WH. Many of the gripes against Clinton were valid for the possibility of her becoming CinC. For cabinet positions, tho, they are less crucial. Lawrence Summers may be an abrasive jerk, but if he is a brilliant economist, that's all that matters at Treasury. We don't have to like these people. They just have to be the best.
For Pres, however, we need someone to steer the ship and be the face of the nation. We want a great president who is a great person. Clinton, Richardson and others didn't pass that test, but that doesn't exlude them, as imperfect as they are, from secondary positions if they are qualified.
November 18, 2008 11:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hillary is not Obama's rival. She WAS Obama's rival until June.
November 18, 2008 11:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't know if she's the best possible choice, buy I understand why so many Obama supporters are appalled by the idea. By choosing her Obama would undermine two of the basic tenets of his campaign: a. Hillary Clinton's experience as First Lady did not qualify her to be CIC b. He would pursue real change in foreign policy.
As a longtime HRC supporter, I never bought into either of these ideas. But I too wanted to Believe, so I sympathize with his supporters' reaction. And no matter how you look at it, both of these tents are violated by this choice. No one would choose an 8-year Senator to be Secretary of State - she's getting this because of her experience as First Lady, the experience dismissed as going to "tea parties." And even as a strong supporter of HRC, and someone who opposed the Iraq war from the start, I believe she would pursue a mainstream foreign policy that would be uninspiring, albeit much better than the last 8 years.
So yes, this is proof he's not offering real change in foreign policy. Which is disappointing for all of us. Although as a Clinton supporter I at least have the enjoyment of seeing the attacks on her experience as First Lady disappear...
November 19, 2008 12:43 AM | Reply | Permalink
Excellent post. Insightful and well argued.
November 19, 2008 2:18 AM | Reply | Permalink
Great post and much to consider. The curious thing is that when we think of the differences between Obama and Clinton the first thing many of us think of is foreign policy, making her as SoS a curious pick. But their disagreements were over some specific details in handling military action in the middle east rather than overall perspective.
Taking a broader view I think they have much in common in their global postitions (Iran notwithstanding). I think both Clinton and Obama see the need to become more comprehensive in their foreign policy dealings. Our war against terrorism must also deflate the rhetoric against us as an evil crusader. Issues like global poverty, education, women's rights, macro and micro finance, etc. all loom large in our combined futures. The US must have a leadership role in all of these issues and on these Clinton brings gravitas to the table. On a global scale she is perhaps the foremost leader in women's rights. Her views on improving world poverty focus heavily on education and her ideas on how to tackle it are sharp and complete.
The Clinton era is synonymous with relative peace in our dealings with foreign nation and also with prosperity. Our prosperity "trickles" around the globe in emerging markets. I think her close involvement in Bill's presidency may translate to some credibility regarding global economic issues also.
The more I think about it the more I see her bringing to the table. Once I get my mind out of primary mode and into unity mode anyway.
November 19, 2008 3:26 AM | Reply | Permalink
Senator Clinton would be the best choice for taking on the broadest and most difficult foreign policy goals looming before Obama in his first term. Few other candidates compare in toughness, flexibility, preparedness for crisis, and commitment, which is why the imagined downside of choosing her doesn't even budge the scales. If Obama wants a conditioned long-distance runner for his first term, she'll be his first choice.
Have any bloggers here ever hired anyone for a high-level position? Because no one argues like they have, including Matthew Locke. In all of the dozens of opinions on this topic across the TPM boards, I have yet to read a single argument against Clinton that can't be distilled to a simple dislike of her. I find this lack of self-examination tedious.
Because if Obama disliked her, she wouldn't be up for consideration. End of story. So try arguing from Obama's point of view, rather than from your own. I bet you can't.
Next!
November 19, 2008 10:06 AM | Reply | Permalink
The more I think about it the more intrigued I am by the idea of Joe Biden being America's chief diplomat. I guess Biden told Obama he didn't want his role as VP to be a shadow Secretary of State. But Biden is known and respected by most world leaders and has expertise in foreign policy. It seems he'd be very useful as envoy and representative for the Administration. I'm not suggesting, as others have, that he actually be Secretary of State so much as I am we have a Secretary comfortable with Biden having a larger role... an SoS who is a good manager and negotiator and a dedicated team player whose ego wouldn't be threatened by Obama sending Biden himself on diplomatic missions.
November 19, 2008 11:14 AM | Reply | Permalink
Excuse 2 posts in a row. I have one more point in response to Rose83. Obama's arguments against Hillary in the primary that you cite are arguably not discarded in that his chief argument was that judgment is more valuable than experience. So in theory, Obama could still believe Hillary's First Lady experience is useless but also think whether she's experienced or not isn't as valuable a factor as other things. Now, mind you, even as an Obama supporter in the primary, I recognized dismissing the importance of experience was largely just political expedience. What else does a first term Senator say in a campaign? The selection of Joe Biden as VP belied that tenet of the campaign but Obama of course wisely avoided citing Biden's experience as the draw as opposed to his values and integrity. Nonetheless, I do buy Obama to really have believed that he'd be the best president in spite of his short national resume. And I did buy the sincerity of his ambition to change course on foreign policy, not just from the Bush Administration but also from the Clinton years. Obama's 2002 speech opposing the Iraq War was less impressive to me for its correct conclusion than its insightful reasoning. Obama seems to have a strong (albeit not flawless) intuition for strategy vis a vis hearts and minds, and at the same time, a broad enough vision to balance that against other US objectives like mounting pressure on Al Qaeda, maintaining our alliance with Israel. I guess the result will careful tweaking in foreign policy that employs more nuance. Such as...
Haler and more creative efforts to broker an Israeli-Palestinian peace.
Abandonment of the fevered neocon push for democracy while still maybe cautiously pushing for gradual human rights improvements.
Projecting an America less interested in dominating other parts of the world but one that still has red lines on developing nuclear weapons or harboring terrorists that are not crossed without paying a steep penalty.
Greater attention to conditions that make fertile ground for terror recruitment.
Finally, I don't think that Hillary's differences of opinion with Obama are dealbreakers because he seems unafraid if not welcoming of having his thought process challenged, provided in the end, he's working with team players who understand the chain of command. Presumably, he trusts Hillary to be such a person. Others don't trust her it seems, but I have to assume Obama is better positioned to assess that. And one thing it's hard to deny Obama's campaign revealed is an exceptional talent for picking subordinates who serve him well.
November 19, 2008 12:05 PM | Reply | Permalink