When Barack Obama asked Hillary Clinton to serve as his Secretary of State, it appeared to be a move in true “team of rivals” fashion, very much in line with Abraham Lincoln’s Cabinet choices: naming the woman who based much of her campaign on presenting herself as better qualified to handle foreign policy to the chief foreign-policy position in the government. It hasn’t turned out that way, though, as William Jacobson pointed out recently:
Week-by-week, world event-by-world event, the public humiliation of Hillary Clinton is taking place right before our eyes. Actually, not before our eyes. Hillary has gone missing.
There was a time when United States Secretaries of State were front and center in foreign policy making and implementation. Our first Secretary of State was Thomas Jefferson, and other historical luminaries included John Quincy Adams, Daniel Webster, William Jennings Bryant, and George C. Marshall.
In more modern times, names such as Henry Kissinger, Cyrus Vance, James Baker, Madeleine Albright, Colin Powell, and Condolezza Rice loom large in our psyche and history.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton? Who? Possibly the most marginalized Secretary of State in modern times. . . .
Obama doesn’t act alone in foreign affairs, but he certainly doesn’t act through Hillary. . . .
The treatment of Hillary Clinton by Obama to date amounts to a slow drain of Hillary’s political persona. The fearsome tiger now is a pussycat. . . .
If Hillary’s loss in the primaries was a body blow, being Secretary of State is like being bled by leeches. Hillary seems to know her political persona is being bled dry, but she feels no physical pain.
Tina Brown takes it a step further, writing,
It’s time for Barack Obama to let Hillary Clinton take off her burqa. . . .
It becomes clearer by the day how brilliantly Obama checkmated both Clintons by putting Hillary in the topmost Cabinet job. Secretary Clinton can’t be seen to differ from the president without sabotaging her own power. And ex-President Clinton has been uncharacteristically disciplined about not threatening the careful political equilibrium his wife is trying to maintain. . . .
Before she took the job, she was assured she could pick her own trusted team. Yet she was overruled in appointing her own choice for deputy secretary, Richard Holbrooke. Instead, she was made to take an Obama guy, James Steinberg, who had originally been slated to become national-security adviser. (Hillary took care of Holbrooke, one of diplomacy’s biggest stars, by giving him the most explosive portfolio—Pakistan and Afghanistan.) She lost the ability to dole out major ambassadorships, too. A lot of these prizes are going to reward Obama fundraisers instead of knowledgeable appointees like Harvard’s Joseph Nye, whom she wanted to send to Japan.
Even when there’s legitimate credit to be had, she remains invisible. Contrary to administration spin that Joe Biden played a critical role in the decision to send more troops to Afghanistan, the vice president stayed opposed to Obama’s strategy. It was Hillary, sources tell me, whom the president relied on throughout the deliberations with principal national-security advisers to support and successfully argue his point of view. The need to paper over the difference between Obama and the vice president meant Hillary’s role went unacknowledged. . . .
You could say that Obama is lucky to have such a great foreign-policy wife. Those who voted for Hillary wonder how long she’ll be content with an office wifehood of the Saudi variety.
It may well be, though, that she’s reaching her breaking point. Though the Obama administration has lined itself up firmly behind Kristen Gillibrand, Secretary Clinton’s successor in the Senate, to the point of trying to snuff a primary challenge from Rep. Carolyn Maloney, Bill Clinton agreed to headline a fundraiser for Maloney later this month. Ed Morrissey points out the obvious:
Clinton’s spokesperson claims that this doesn’t constitute an endorsement, but it’s hard to read it any other way. Clinton hasn’t campaigned for Gillibrand, after all. Since Gillibrand got appointed to replace Hillary Clinton earlier this year, Bill and Hillary have remained quiet about the seat—until now.
More recently, she handed Obama critics a strong headline while speaking to employees of the U.S. Agency for International Development, criticizing the administration for its abject failure to find someone to run the agency.
Six months into the administration’s tenure without having appointed someone to the agency’s top spot, Clinton told USAID employees on Monday that several people had turned down the job due to overly burdensome financial and personal disclosure requirements that she called a “nightmare,” “frustrating beyond words” and “ridiculous.”
She also said the White House had turned down her request to announce on Monday that someone—expected by officials to be physician and Harvard University professor Paul Farmer, who is well known for his work in Haiti—would be named to the post soon.
“Let me just say it’s not for lack of trying,” Clinton said in response to an employee’s question about the delay, despite her and President Barack Obama’s stated desire to have USAID play a bigger role in American foreign policy. “We have worked very hard with the White House on looking for a candidate who, number one, wants the job.”
The comment drew laughter from the audience, prompting her to say: “It’s been offered.” She then launched into a critique of the vetting process.
“The clearance and vetting process is a nightmare and it takes far longer than any of us would want to see,” Clinton said. “It is frustrating beyond words. I pushed very hard last week when I knew I was coming here to get permission from the White House to be able to tell you that help is on the way and someone will be nominated shortly.”
“I was unable,” she said. “The message came back: ‘We’re not ready.'”
It will be fascinating to see how this all shakes out. After all, Sen. Clinton’s appointment was political in nature; her real utility to the administration isn’t her (relatively meager) foreign-policy credentials, but her political skills and support. (This is rather too bad; given that President Obama can’t seem to stop insulting people, it’s clear he could really use a foreign-policy ace or two at his side.) As Morrissey says,
If the politics between the two have stopped working, then Obama has no other need for Hillary. If Obama jettisons her, though, Hillary could turn into a formidable foe within the Democratic Party, and might wind up challenging an Obama re-election bid the way Ted Kennedy did to Jimmy Carter, which turned into a disaster for both men. How much defiance can Obama handle?
It will be interesting to find out.