Tag: Hillary Clinton

Nancy Lorenz, a "queer, tree-hugging feminist," translates the Gillard news for a non-Aussie audience. Warren McLaren worries about the implications for climate change.

Beinart pops a Republican pipe dream:

It’s easy to see why conservatives would be salivating at the thought of a Hillary primary challenge. Presidents who face serious primary challenges—Ford, Carter, Bush I—almost always lose. The last president who lost reelection without a serious primary challenge, by contrast, was Herbert Hoover. But in truth, the chances that Obama will face a primary challenge are vanishingly slim, and the chances that he will lose reelection only slightly higher. No wonder conservatives are fantasizing about Hillary Clinton taking down Barack Obama. If she doesn’t, it’s unlikely they will.

And she won't. Her loyalty and diligence in this administration has really turned around my view of her. Not entirely, of course. But the grace with which she dealt with defeat and the deftness with which Obama won her over are all the more stunning in retrospect.

by Alex Massie

Justin Keating thinks I'm probably reading too much into Hillary's remarks about the Falkland Islands today. A good number of readers think so too. And it's true that this is an issue that's guaranteed to annoy Britons. Perhaps we are, as one reader put it, "hypersensitive".

But the point is this: whether Hillary Clinton thought she was humoring her Argentine hosts or simply being polite, she actually ended up doing rather more than that. A reminder of what she said:

[W]e want very much to encourage both countries to sit down. Now, we cannot make either one do so, but we think it is the right way to proceed. So we will be saying this publicly, as I have been, and we will continue to encourage exactly the kind of discussion across the table that needs to take place.

That may seem innocuous or a simple piece of diplomatic boilerplate. But it isn't. Hillary could, perhaps at the risk of disappointing her hosts, have said that this is an issue upon which the United States has no view. But she didn't. "Needs", for instance, is a pretty strong word.

The British position, right or not, is that there really isn't very much to talk about at all. Consequently, any American endorsement of talks is an endorsement of the Argentine position and not, however innocuous it might seem, a neutral view.

It's also possible that it might make "sense" for sovereignty to be transferred to Buenos Aires and the islands then leased back to Britain for the next, I don't know 99 years. (With an option to renew!) But that isn't going to happen either since the British view, in light of the islanders' own preferences, is that sovereignty is non-negotiable. And since that's what Argentina wants to talk about, endorsing the idea of talks can only be seen as supporting, in principle at least, Argentina's claims.

Is the British public mildly irrational about the Falklands? Perhaps. But the war wasn't that long ago and helps explain why Britain doesn't consider there to even be an issue over the islands' status. If the Islanders wanted to be Argentinian then things would be different. But they don't so they aren't.

Granted, as I pointed out here and here, the State Department's position has not changed much since 1982 but, Monroe Doctrine or not, this is a subject upon which the United Kingdom would very much prefer it if the State Department said nothing at all, far less give the impression that it agrees with Buenos Aires.

Daniel Larison has more to say on this too.

by Alex Massie

Bagehot of the Economist is beginning to have some doubts about the Obama administration:

I have hesitated to read drastic slights into the sometimes awkward diplomacy between Barack Obama and Gordon Brown. But this stance on the Falklands cannot be seen any other way. It really is no way for the Americans to treat their most important military ally—as some in America doubtless appreciate.

What stance? Well Hillary Clinton has been visiting Argentina and was asked about the status of the Falklands. Here's what she had to say:

And we agree [with Argentina]. We would like to see Argentina and the United Kingdom sit down and resolve the issues between them across the table in a peaceful, productive way.

And:

[W]e want very much to encourage both countries to sit down. Now, we cannot make either one do so, but we think it is the right way to proceed. So we will be saying this publicly, as I have been, and we will continue to encourage exactly the kind of discussion across the table that needs to take place.

Until now, like Bagehot, I've resisted being anything other than mildly irritated by the American stance and, yes, you can argue that Clinton was merely humouring her hosts and saying the bare minimum that they wanted to hear. On the other hand, this is, as Bagehot puts it, an unwelcome "intervention" and a public declaration of the American position, not an off-the-record "we take no position" briefing from a desk officer in the State Department or at the UN.

Perhaps it shouldn't be a great surprise. Foggy Bottom has never been too keen on taking the British side on this issue, seeing, I suspect, the Falklands as an anachronistic relic of Empire. Be that as it may, the principle of self-determination has generally been something Washington has recognised and it's blindingly obvious that absent that recognition there really isn't very much to talk about when it comes to the Falklands.

So one hopes that Clinton was merely being polite, but her words carry weight and will increase a sense of expectation in Argentina (and more broadly across Latin America) that cannot possibly be met and that is guaranteed to infuriate the British. At best this is clumsy; at worst it's rather worse than that.

If me email is anything to go by – incidentally, that's alexmassieATgmail.com if you want to get in touch – the average Briton is likely to react to this sort of American intervention by suggesting that it's time to bring our boys home from Afghanistan and leave the Americans on their own.

Weigel tackles Palin fans for abusing statistics to make her seem more popular than she is. Another telling piece of data: of the 296 customer reviews of going Rogue, 143 reviewers give the book five-stars and 124 give the book one-star.

I give it four stars for fiction; and zero for non-fiction.

(Hat tip: Sides)

The secretary of state dials back comments she made earlier this week suggesting that Pakistani officials know where top al-Qaeda leaders are hiding but are doing little to target them. Mike Crowley sees a trend:

Hillary is beginning to compile a non-trivial list of off-message comments that cause trouble. On a trip to China she dismissed human rights as a factor in US-China relations–apparently not a scripted statement. She got ahead of the Obama White House on talk of a complete Israeli settlement freeze. And this summer she compared the North Koreans to "unruly teenagers" at a time when the administration was arranging a visit to Pyongyang by her husband to free American journalists held there. For a woman so famous for her message discipline, it's more than a little surprising.

But useful. She can say things that are true, and which Obama can then walk back a little. I'm sure this is deliberate. And I have to say that her performance as secretary-of-state seems to me to be a real highlight of the administration. Compared to what might have happened, she and Obama have forged a real partnership.

by Patrick Appel

A reader writes:

Krugman and Drum make some good points, but they leave out the most important point. It's not about how people would react. It's how the President would react to the reactions. This very week, Sec. Clinton lost her cool when she thought a student ignorantly insulted her. She didn't explode or have a meltdown as some of her detractors would describe it. Nor did she strick a blow for women's equality as her fans would tell you. She was placed in an awkward situation by a random questioner and she showed just enough anger/exasperation to make the tone of her answer the issue.

The President, on the other hand, regularly gets compared to Karl Marx and Josef Mengele by far more formidable opponents and deflects it deftly without a bead of sweat.

Does he never misstep? Of course not. I would say his handling of the Gates matter was such an instance. But he still had the self-restraint and perspective to somewhat salvage the situation and to turn it into a learning moment.

We don't know if President Hillary Clinton would have had the stomach to tackle health care right away. If she did, yes we can assume that the attacks would have been just about as ugly. How would she have countered? If we are questioning our choice, that's the question we need to be answering.

by Patrick Appel

Watching the health care ruckus, Krugman feels vindicated. During primary season last year he predicted that any Democrat would be unfairly attacked by Republicans. He sees the town halls as disproving the charge that Hillary Clinton was too polarizing. Drum tweaks: 

If Hillary Clinton had won last year's Democratic primary and gone on to become president, and then this year's town hall meeting had turned into insane gatherings of lunatics yelling about death panels, every single pundit in Washington — Every. Single. One. — would be blaming it on her.  Their unanimous take would be: Democrats knew that she was a divisive figure and chose to put her in the White House anyway.  It's hardly any wonder that conservatives have gone nuts, is it?

The stand-off continues:

“There is no memorialization of any informal and oral agreements. If they did occur, which of course people say they did, they did not become part of the official position of the United States government,” Clinton said at a news conference with Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu.

“And there are contrary documents that suggest that they were not to be viewed as in any way contradicting the obligations that Israel undertook pursuant to the road map.” she added. “And those obligations are very clear.”

Obama is live-streaming the White House forum on healthcare reform.