Tag: Hillary Clinton

A Long Way From HillaryCare

by Chris Bodenner
Many great nuggets of reporting in Joe Klein’s new column, but this one seems most apt in the wake of yesterday’s confirmation:

In some ways, the most surprising of his appointments — Hillary Clinton, the new Secretary of State — has emerged as an exemplar of Obamism. … Clinton, who can be spiky, has re-emerged as a natural diplomat. When she heard that Holbrooke and General David Petraeus had never met, she invited them over to her Washington home on a Friday night before the Inauguration. The two men spent two hours in front of a roaring fire with Clinton, getting to know each other, talking about the diplomatic and military division of labor in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Clinton’s was an Obamian gesture — enticing the lion to lie down with the lion — the sort of attention to detail that seems to have been replicated across the policymaking spectrum during the Obama transition.

Also, we’re a long way from Gennifer Flowers:

Toward the end of the campaign, Michelle Obama asked me if I was going to write a novel about them like Primary Colors, my satiric account of the 1992 presidential race. I was at a loss for words, in part because the thought hadn’t even vaguely crossed my mind. "He can’t write a novel about us," Barack Obama reassured his wife. "We’re too boring."

The Right And Hillary

Daniel McCarthy notices that the chumminess from the period when she might have prevented the first black president has not dissipated:

[Clinton is] a monster of the conservative movement’s creation. Throughout the ’90s, the movement’s mouthpieces put about the idea that Hillary was the power behind the throne — she was, after all, less popular and further to the Left than her husband. This backfired spectacularly: after all, if Hillary could be co-president, doesn’t that make her eminently qualified for the senate, to be president again, or to be the nation’s top diplomat?

And having done at least as much as her feminist fans on the Left to build up the myth of omnicompetent Hillary, what is the Right doing now? Lying down for her: “even firebrand South Carolina Republican Jim DeMint,” Time’s Massimo Calabresi writes, “said he was ‘optimistic and hopeful about [Sen. Clinton’s] role as secretary of State.’” If there is a Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy, it’s evidently the best friend Hillary Clinton could hope to have.

Until, of course, they discover her real views about the Middle East.

Hillary Clinton For Secretary Of State, Ctd.

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Marc thinks through the politics:

Don’t believe reports that Max Baucus intends to take the lead role on health care legislation, anticipating a leadership vacuum because of Sen. Ted Kennedy’s illness and a possible Hillary Clinton departure. What Baucus wants to do is make sure that his finance committee plays a key role, so he’s found a way to invest in the debate.

I defer to Marc’s reporting. But this idea just resonates with me as classic Obama. I don’t think Clinton as secretary of state would be mere symbolism. And I think it’s a brilliant way to coopt her without in any way demeaning her. More to the point: Dick Morris is furious and Drudge is trying to wish the story away. That tells you what smart politics this would be. The more I think about it, the more I support it. She did her duty this fall. And she is the kind of toughie who could be a real Iron Lady type with the Russians and Iranians. That global presence would be a better prep for a future presidential run (yes, I’ll jump off that bridge when we get to it) and help separate her from her hubby. And if she turns Obama down, her leverage against him is weakened anyway. He did his best. Due diligence, and all that.

But I don’t think it’s a head-fake. And I think she may say yes.

(Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty.)

Hillary Clinton For Secretary Of State

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That’s the buzz. Marc reports that Clinton and Obama met yesterday in Chicago. For my part, I think making her secretary of state is an inspired idea.

Obama has to offer something to Clinton. She’s his main threat now and rightly regards part of his victory her doing. The primaries helped him. Left to fester in the Senate, Clinton will plot against the president if he doesn’t actively seek her support and engagement and "spread the political wealth" of his mandate.

It is a senior enough position not to be fobbed off; it really does take advantage of the Clinton name abroad; it could even put Bill to good use and keep him out of mischief; and Obama has kept telling us that his cabinet model is "Team Of Rivals." Giving Hillary that kind of position is straight out of Lincoln.

Unlike the vice-presidency, a secretary of state has real constitutionally-designated things to do. From Clinton’s point of view, it would be a natural position from which to run to succeed Obama in 2016 (or to make an inside push to oust him in 2012). The emergence of Max Baucus as the front senator for healthcare seems to me a sign that Obama might have already been signaling this maneuver. If Clinton isn’t the lead player on healthcare, what is she going to do?

So here’s hoping he offers and she accepts. It’s an elegant and shrewd move; both public spirited and yet coldly calculating at the same time. Pure Obama.

(Photo: Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty.)

No Hillary, Thank God

Valerie Jarrett, co-chair of the Obama transition team, on the role of the next first lady:

She won’t be focused on being part of a "two-for-one" deal, like the one the Clintons proposed at first. "Michelle is really not interested in doing that," Jarrett said. "Having a seat at the table and being a co-president is not something she’s interested in."

More on Michelle Obama’s intentions here.