Would I prefer Gov. Bill Richardson over Sen. Hillary Clinton for Secretary of State? Yes, yes I would. Richardson certainly has the stronger resume of the two, and he’s more sympatico with my political views on foreign affairs. But it isn’t an insult to Richardson to get the lesser appointment of Secretary of Commerce. It isn’t a snub to the Latino community. In narrow, parochial, terms, Richardson will probably be able to do more good for the Latino community at Commerce. And Richardson isn’t owed the State Department. Hillary Clinton may be slightly less qualified on paper, but she has intangible strengths that certainly put her in the same league with Richardson.
It is not known why Obama is leaning towards Clinton at State (if the reporting is accurate), but we can all recognize a variety of possible motivations. He is uniting the Democratic Party by providing jobs for countless Clinton supporters, he’s neutralizing a potential rival and critic, he’s tapping into the star-power of the Clinton Couple, and he’s sending a reassuring message to both hardline Israel supporters and moderate Republicans. What would Richardson bring to the table that compares?
Richardson has his own liabilities, including a reputation as a bit of a publicity and credit hound. Many people inside the Washington foreign policy establishment, including Steve Clemons, have raised alarms about Richardson’s managerial style and fitness for State. In other words, it isn’t a total slam-dunk case that Richardson would be the better of the two. In fact, I think John Kerry has a good case that he is the best fit for the job, and he could argue that Obama owes him the position, too.
Ultimately, this is a personnel decision for president-elect Barack Obama. If he is willing to put up with the potential drama of the Clintons, then he can live with the consequences. If Richardson would rather work on foreign affairs than commerce, he can hold out for a position as emissary to some hot-spot in the world. Perhaps Richardson could be our point-man for defusing tensions between India and Pakistan. Regardless, it’s wrong for the Latino community to feel disrespected because Richardson did not get the State Department.
While not widely known, the Commerce Department has extensive operations internationally, with staff located directly in the American embassies around the globe. These officers are charged with helping American exports and facilitating imports where desired. A well-run Commerce Department can do much to help solidify our relationships with Central American and South American nations as we try to reground our international policies. Richardson could do much to further that effort. His just might be an inspired choice for Commerce Secretary.
The Washington Post has a front-page article on the diversity of the cabinet.
Boo,
By choosing Clinton for SoS, ‘(Obama’s) sending a reassuring message to both hardline Israel supporters and moderate Republicans.’ Can you tell me what that message might be. I suppose it sounds something like Israel can go on as usual without any friction from the U.S. Why isn’t Obama sending a message to the Palestinians? And what is the equivalency between ‘hardline Israel supporters and moderate Republicans’? I have no idea who these ‘moderate Republicans’ might be and I know for sure that ‘hardline Israel supporters’ envisage nothing less than the permanent partition of Jerusalem (says Obama, too) and the continuous expansion of squatters’ rights to real estate (formerly called settlements). And that’s where Mr. and Mrs. Clinton fit in. Don’t fool yourself. The Clinton veneer is paper thin and the world has moved on since Bush turned up. Of course Gordon Brown will cheer (you know, we have a special relationship), Sarkozy will flatter and seduce (Mrs. Clinton will smile), Merkel will welcome a woman (while holding her breath because Germany has no intention of sending more troops to Afghanistan, NONE!), etc. I can just see the Clintons in Tehran. If the appointment goes through, what is Obama thinking. We can only guess. And one more question: if Richardsom becomes Secretary of Commerce, isn’t he there to help all Americans, not just Latinos? Of course, you say. So why place emphasis on his ethnic background. This crap has to stop. Obama is in a now-or-never situation and nevertheless keeps campaigning.
The appointment of National Security Adviser Jim Jones should send a message to the Palestinians. Let’s begin with the fact that the biggest obstacle to progress on the settler issue is the immensely strong pro-settler lobbying done right here in Washington DC.
In order to take on that lobby, you must do some combination of disarming/reassuring them. That means that they must be involved in the process at many levels. But there is a bigger pro-Israel lobby than just the pro-settler lobby. I wouldn’t lazily place Hillary Clinton in the pro-settler category. Her positions may have that effect, but her position is really more of a pro-security stance that leads to a default pro-settler outcome. Jim Jones does not share that preference for inertia.
He believes our number one priority in the Middle East is some kind of concord on the settler issue that leads to a lasting agreement.
If Obama staffed up with a bunch of vocal anti-settlers, his administration would be under instant siege. So, it’s hard to read the tea leaves in a case like this. You cannot just look at the appointments and figure out where the policy is going because the staffing would look similar either way.
So, all this foreign policy stuff is really not about how the United States will interact with the world, but what impressions and messages are sent to which groups within the United States.
And people continue to try to deceive themselves, in the face of volumes of evidence to the contrary, into believing that Obama really, really, really IS going to change American foreign policy.
no. that’s a misreading of what I’m saying.
I’m saying that it is hard to read precisely because a successful strategy for changing policy would look strikingly similar to a strategy for the status quo, from a strictly staffing perspective.
In other words, Obama would cripple himself if he were to staff up with a group known for their hostility or deep skepticism about Israel policy in the occupied territories. To get the kind of change we know we need, he must bring over a substantial portion of the pro-Israel lobby, including some of the more hard-liners. There is probably no more difficult balancing act conceivable for anyone that would actually change policy and make a breakthrough.
What I am hearing all around me is that the best way to be a peace president is to surround himself with people whose foreign policy tool of choice is military violence. I have another take on it. Obama never was and never will be a peace president.
As for the Israel thing, please name one person he has chosen so far or is likely to choose whose connection with the Middle East does not run straight through Tel Aviv. Name one “Middle East expert” he has consulted whose sole interest in the Middle East does not center around Israel. Name one Arab-American of any description whom he has chosen or is likely choose to serve in his administration IN ANY CAPACITY (except, perhaps, mopping the floors). Never mind that, name one person he has chosen or is likely to choose who can be expected to EVER speak up for the Palestinians or the Arabs.
I’m not seeing a balancing act here.
And having said that, given the disastrous results every single time a U.S. administration has involved themselves, the best thing Obama or any other American president can do is to stay completely out of the Israel-Palestine thing, and leave it to others who have already proven more capable of bringing about acceptable results.
Jim Jones, for one, has a good working relationship with the Palestinians. He hasn’t rolled out his foreign policy team yet, so I can’t speculate about lower level positions. But insofar as there is any pro-Arab element in our permagov, it comes through the Realist School. A corrupt pro-Saudi group, for sure, but about all we have to work with on the other side of the aisle.
And I doubt there are more than 10 pro-Arab Democrats in Congress.
This country, even before 9/11, was relentlessly pro-Israel and only becomes more so when things like Mumbai come off.
To change it to a more balanced goal-oriented policy, you must work with this reality.
Well, I do not expect U.S. Middle East policy to change with Obama and I never did. I repeat that the very best thing that the United States can do for everyone in the Middle East is to stay out of it. Just in the last year other parties have proven themselves far more capable of helping things move in a positive direction.
And in any case, nothing will change until Israelis give up their territorial/regional military dominance ambitions, and stop trying to destroy the Palestinian people. The Israelis know very well what they need to do to bring security, and they are not yet ready to do it.
I don’t know Jim Jones, but a good working relationship with the Palestinians usually means a good working relationship on behalf of Israel with the corrupt collaborationist thugs of Fatah, who would sell their mothers for the right price.
you know of anyone else ready to work us to get an administrative government back up and running? There ought to be a little realism mixed-in with your criticism.
I know the PA has been dismantled. But a precondition of self-government is having one.
BooMan, I do defer to you in matters of American politics, but when “realism” says things like “in order to bring peace Obama needs to speak in a hawkish manner and surround himself with well-know proponents of military and other forms of coercion” (aka hawks), it is difficult for a simple-minded empiricist like me to grasp just how that is supposed to work. That sounds like Alice in Wonderland thinking to me.
The PA was a corrupt bunch of collaborationist thugs primarily looking after their own self-interest. It was, furthermore, dismantled, along with its governing infrastructure, in a most brutal and systematic manner by the Israelis themselves, who, Kafka-like, “punished” the PA for its alleged inability to effectively govern (in the face of overwhelming odds) by intentionally and violently depriving them of the means to do so. For example, every time the PA “failed to prevent” an attack against the Israeli occupation, the Israeli military would bomb to the ground more of the PA’s enforcement facilities.
As for your rather patronizing comment about the precondition for self-government, how can the Palestinians have an effective government when Israel cripples their democratically elected government by, starting immediately after the election, detaining or murdering any government official whom Israel does not like, and by deliberately destroying the physical, economic, and social infrastructure that is necessary to govern? And how can the Palestinians be expected to exercise democracy when they are punished for choosing the “wrong” people?
For the last eight years our country has been run by people who opposed Madrid, opposed Oslo, and opposed Camp David. They ran this country as Netanyahu would have wished. Included in this, was a policy of standing by while the Israeli government destroyed the progress made under Oslo.
But now we have a new chapter. No Democratic administration (and most Republican ones) would not have governed as we have over the last eight years. Obama is no different.
The key problem is the same as the one faced by Poppy and Clinton at the beginning of this process…no functioning Palestinian government to hand things over to.
Jim Jones has been working on that problem, and that is why he knows the issues and has no time for more of the same.
Set aside the elections that brought Hamas to power. That was one more instance of neo-conservatives having reality destroy their theories. Set aside that Fatah has a corrupt and somewhat collarberationist history.
That’s in the past.
The future must involve recreating the conditions for a Palestinian takeover of governance, and it also has to be done in a way that faces the reality of American and Israeli politics. Presidential leadership is the indispensable ingredient in this, and we have to accept that almost two decades have been wasted as a result of the damage Sharon and Bush did to the process that was established in the 1990’s.
Hamas’ rise was a reaction to that, but it can’t be much as far as being a solution. That is because of the political reality part of the equation. Fatah is the only partner that is usable.
Should read:
No Democratic administration (and most Republican ones) would
nothave governed as we have over the last eight years. Obama is no different.BooMan, Oslo was dead well before George W. Bush came along. In any case, it was a sellout of the Palestinians, and it did not fail, it had exactly the results the Israelis and their supporters intended. It was a great success for Israel and a disaster for the Palestinians, just as it was intended to be. Many of us, including far better people than I, recognized that reality from the beginning and never supported Oslo. (And by the way, if you have not read Hanan Ashrawi’s book you should do so. It clarifies a lot. What a shame she has been so sidelined.)
The success of Hamas in the elections had everything to do with Palestinians looking for an alternative – any alternative – to the thuggish, corrupt Fatah collaborators, who had always served themselves and their U.S. and Israeli masters far more than they had the Palestinians. That, and not Bush’s failure to support the already-long-dead Oslo and other phony “peace processes”, was the reason that so many, including large numbers of secular and Christian Palestinians, preferred to vote for Hamas.
“Fatah is the only partner that is useful”? Useful to whom? Certainly not to the Palestinians, and they have not been ever since they discovered how to feather their own nests with “peace process” after “peace process”.
And what useful partner have the Palestinians EVER had in Israel (or, heaven forbid, the U.S.)? None, of course, because Israel’s long-term goal is as it has always been, to cause the Palestinians to slowly but surely disappear, and the U.S. has never seriously challenged Israel’s right to pursue that goal. Those Palestinians are so stubborn, though aren’t they? The old die, but the young do not forget, and they have sumud. They do not give up.
Sooner or later Israel will have to talk to Hamas, and the sooner the United States gets its fingers completely out of the pot and allows better-suited parties to move in the sooner this will happen. The best thing Obama could do would be to stop the pretense that the U.S. is any kind of “honest broker” and let those take over who can honestly and with integrity support the rights and interests of both parties, and put real, genuine pressure on Israel to seek peace rather than more and more and more conquest.
The Palestinians have been ready for decades. The Arab League has for six years been offering Israel everything it claims it wants, and for six years Israel has been refusing to even discuss it. Syria has shown willingness to make peace since Hafez Al Asad’s time, and Israel has demonstrated clearly that illegally holding onto someone else’s territory means more to it than peace. So, it is not Israel and the U.S. that do not have a useful partner.
It’s sad to see how low of an opinion you have of people. Things are not so bleak as you think, and they are not so bleak because people are not so bad.
I don’t know how all you managed to get out of everything I said is that I have a low opinion of people. That hardly is an adequate or even an accurate summary.
PS Mumbai was almost certainly the doing of an Indian group. Neither the Palestinians nor Arabs had anything to do with it. And yet they WILL be punished for it, if not directly, then indirectly.
“‘hardline Israel supporters’ envisage nothing less than the permanent partition of Jerusalem (says Obama, too) and the continuous expansion of squatters’ rights to real estate (formerly called settlements).“
“Hardline Israel supporters” have never envisioned anything less than genocide; the systematic elimination of a human group in whole or in part. They don’t call it genocide, they probably don’t even think of it as genocide, but that has been the long-term goal from the beginning of the Zionist project. From the very beginning Zionists recognized the necessity of removing the non-Jewish indigenous population of Palestine (see Herzl’s Der Judenstadt), and over the decades they devised numerous plans to “transfer” the population (one destination was Iraq). By a combination of death and dispersal the Palestinian people would cease to exist, and the Zionist dream would eventually come to full fruition. Ben Gurion himself said, among numerous other things, that “the old will die, and the young will forget”.
What they did not count on was how very, very difficult it would be to pry the Palestinian people from their land, and the idea of Palestine from the minds of the people. The old have indeed died and will continue to do so, but the young have not forgotten.
Correction: of course I mean ‘permanent unification of Jerusalem’ not ‘permanent partition’ as I wrote above. The Clintons drive me up the wall, I drive myself up he wall over the Clintons.
“he’s sending a reassuring message to both hardline Israel supporters“
He is sending a chilling message to the Palestinian and Lebanese people. As for the people of Gaza, he has already sent them the message that the ongoing slow genocide they are being subjected to is not worth the United States’ time and attention.
I thought our new president was characterized as ‘no drama’ Obama. I hope he makes that point clear to the Clintons. After the last eight years of psychodrama, stabilizing this country’s mental health and repairing our reputation abroad should be a top priority.
How is Obama going to mend the US reputation abroad by gathering around him a gaggle of people who consider military violence one of the primary tools of foreign policy? Hillary Clinton, for one, never saw a military action she did not whole-heartedly endorse.
for many reasons I just can not seem to tolerate the Clinton appointment.Period. None of the other losing candidates have been so up front about all the things they are owed and how to deliver. Kerry really fought for Obama and RIchardson stuck his neck out etc=but the Queen of corporate donors and her hawkish crew and her really lousy campaign team and her truly mismanged and chaotic campaign are to be rewarded? anyway she is really someone I was hoping would continue in the Senate-
So Richardson will get a post in Commerce which is good but woould rather see Kerry as SoS-don’t think the Muslim and Arab world really wants another woman. And how in the hell did Clinton become qualifed for this post. AAArgh!!
“don’t think the Muslim and Arab world really wants another woman.“
What actual facts do you base that on? I don’t mean to be rude or dismissive, but that comment not only has no basis in reality, it is insulting.
For your information, when I was in the Middle East this past April I spoke to many, many different people of all different ages, from all different walks of life and levels of society, including some politically very well-connected, and you might be surprised at how many of them did not care whether the next President was Hillary or Obama, as long as it was not McCain. And given your mistaken belief that gender is a big concern over there, you would probably be shocked at how many preferred Hillary over Obama.
Do you really think that anyone at all had problems with Condoleeeeeeezzzzzza Rice because she is a woman?!
I am a woman and did not mean to imply this was a sexist thought.Although I too have connections in Europe it was rather surprising your response.Obama actually was the favorite so there you go.(Check out the polls)Oh and by the way not everything Clinton is just peachy for lots of people.
Oh and Rice really is someone to aspire to huh??? She has just been so effective–and yes there is Albright.My thought on this is Clinton’s voting record and her speeches am tired of the hawks and war mongers.Check out her record before you go ballasitic with the sexist stuff.
Pardon me, but why else would you suggest that Muslims and Arabs do not want another woman, other than that you believe they have something against dealing with women in positions of power?
And my point had nothing to do with defending Hillary Clinton. Her record on Iraq and Palestine, two areas of great familiarity and importance to me, is beyond dismal. That is the primary reason I would not have considered voting for her for any reason.
As for Albright, I was present outside the Greek Theatre in June, 2000 when she addressed the Berkeley graduating class. I saw her lying flat on the back seat of her SUV as it peeled out of the driveway and sped down the street immediately after her speech. She left without even having the courtesy to sit through the address of University Medalist, Fadia Rafeedie, a Palestinian-American (traditionally the Medalist speaks before the guest speaker, but they changed the order that year, presumably to spare Albright the embarrassment of having to sit through Fadia’s very pointed remarks).
As for Condoleezza Rice, she is proof positive that incompetence is no barrier to achieving high position.
But what has any of that to do with the fact that they are women, or more to the point, with your suggestion that Muslims and Arabs do not want a female Secretary of State?
PS I was talking about my (clearly anecdotal) experience during the month of April in the Middle East. I spent the entire month there. It has been three years since I set foot in Europe, so I was not commenting about Europe at all. Every single person I spoke to wanted a Democrat to win the election, and not a Republican. Most felt that it did not matter so much whether it was Obama or Hillary. Some preferred Hillary, some preferred Obama. Few if any considered either one of them any great gift to the Middle East, Arabs, or Muslims, but they felt that a Republican would be a guaranteed disaster, while either Democrat would at least be less likely to go on the kind of military rampage Bush has become famous for.
People in the Middle East tend to be coldly realistic about what to expect from the United States. That is based on decades of bitter experience. They don’t have high expectations of any administration, but they feel that at least with a Democrat in office it is less likely that the U.S. will decide to liberate their countries. I hope they are right.
A very dear friend of mine in Gaza summed it up very well shortly after the election when he said “For sure Obama will not help us, but I am glad he was elected because he will be better for the United States”.