Obama Report: Should Hillary Be Secretary of State?

Not all of my advice to Barack Obama has been bad. Back in 2004, I thought he should run for president this year, and thought that if he could get the nomination (a big "if" with a formidable opponent like Hillary Clinton with all the seeming name, money and organizational advantages) he would win the general election. I didn't think it would be a good idea to have Hillary Clinton as the vice presidential nominee. On the other hand, I didn't think it a good idea to have Joe Biden as the vice presidential nominee and that has worked out okay -- I guess. (Kind of. Well,at least Biden didn't cost him the election with his foot-in-mouth disease.)

Now, all the pundits are saying the idea of having Clinton as Secretary of State is a wonderful idea, inspired by the ancient saying attributed to the Chinese military sage,Sun Tzu, "Keep your friends close and your enemies even closer." The Sunday morning bloviators are citing Doris Kearns Goodwin's book, Team of Rivals, about Abraham Lincoln's first cabinet, which included his competitors for the Republican nomination for presidency as precedent for Obama selecting Clinton. Even Henry Kissinger thinks it would be a wonderful idea.

I'm not so sure it's a good idea to select Hillary as Secretary of State. As I see it, there are two main requirements for the job. You want someone who is an innovative thinker, who has the ability to think outside the box in coming up with solutions to almost insoluble problems between nations, and you want someone who can manage a large bureaucracy of around 40,000 employees

Hillary Clinton has a certain kind of intelligence, she is not a dummy, along the lines of George W. Bush or Sarah Palin by any means. But neither is she a Henry Kissinger, although an evil genius in many ways, nevertheless a genius. Is there anyone besides Nixon and Kissinger who would have had the nerve to make the opening to China 35 years ago, and does anyone doubt that the world is a much better, safer place because they did take that step? Hillary is the good student, the one who studies hard and gets A's because she can regurgitate what the teacher told her. But she has never demonstrated the ability to innovate -- not as First Lady, not as Senator and certainly not as a presidential candidate. I will forgive her the vote to invade Iraq, other smart people besides her were misled by the Bush Administration's hyperbole about weapons of mass destruction. But she could never find it in herself to admit her mistake and to tell us what she learned from it.

Hillary's attempt to paint Obama's call for negotiations with our enemies as being dangerously naive is an example of her conventional thinking that shows her limited imagination. In fact, the idea that we dare not talk to our enemies is dangerous in my opinion. It shows weakness, not strength, to think that somehow we will become contaminated if we talk with those with whom we have disagreements and conflicts.

Nor has she shown any ability to manage a bureaucracy. After starting out 20 points ahead in the polls, with all the resources of Clinton loyalists from her husband's time as president, with a substantial war chest of money, how could she lose the nomination to a little-known first termer? She was out worked and out organized. Clinton's presidential campaign was a constant stream of turn-overs, with leaks and back biting. She was unable or unwilling to put an end to the fighting and get everybody working together to run her campaign. Things won't get any easier in the Department of State, with its byzantine rivalries.

So, should Hillary have no role in the Obama Administration? I have an excellent job for her, one for which she is well suited -- Supreme Court justice. There will certainly be several Supreme Court vacancies, probably early in the Obama administration. Hillary can do much more to influence the public policy direction of the country with a life time appointment to the Supreme Court than she could with four, or even eight years as Secretary of State. Writing Supreme Court opinions is the kind of wonkish detail at which she would excel. As a Senator, she would have an easy time getting confirmed by the Senate.

So, please, Barack. Listen to me this time. Don't appoint Hillary as the next Secretary of State. Get her to wait for the Supreme Court appointment.

No More "Deranged Narcissism"

Although I was happy last night that Obama has clinched the votes needed to be the Democratic presidential nominee, I went to bed feeling sick to my stomach. The discomfort was due to my dismay at Clinton's graceless speech Tuesday night. She had lost the nomination, and if she really had as much concern for working men and women as she has been claiming the last few weeks, then she needed to admit defeat and start the process of motivating her followers to work hard for Obama's election in November.
Instead, we got what Jeffrey Toobin, the New Yorker writer and CNN commentator referred to as the "deranged narcissism" of the Clintons,in which Sen. Clinton was introduced as "the next president of the United States," talked about winning the last primary of the season, when in fact the voting wasn't even over and she did not win it, and claimed she had won more popular votes than anyone else, a dubious claim that includes popular votes for her in Michigan where her name and none of the other candidates' names were on the ballot and doesn't include any votes for Obama, even though, clearly, many of the voters who voted for "undecided" rather than Clinton were Obama supporters.
I went to bed thinking that Clinton is willing to tear the party apart even further to make sure that Obama doesn't win in the fall, so that she can run again in four years. I still do not trust her, but I'm feeling a little better today after the reports that she intends to concede and endorse Obama on Saturday. I am still worried about the price of that concession. Has she been successful in forcing her way onto the ticket, as the vice presidential candidate? She has indisputably been trying. I think Clinton's presence on the ticket would guarantee defeat in November. It would energize the Republican right wing, which is not happy with McCain, but hates Clinton even worse. It would keep Bill in the news. If Hillary could not keep Bill on message, there is no way Obama could do so.
I don't see what Clinton would bring to the ticket, or, if Obama/Clinton were elected, to the country. Her vaunted "competence" is so much myth. She has screwed up everything she has touched, from the failed health care initiative, early in the first Clinton administration to her own campaign. There is no way she should have lost this campaign. She started out with a 30 point lead in the polls. The Democratic party belonged to Bill Clinton. Hillary had all the connections; all the experience in national campaigns and she lost to a little known first termer who raised more money; put together a better staff; had a better strategy and executed his strategy far better.
I will hold my breath until Saturday. I won't really believe that she is conceding until I hear it. And, I won't really believe that she is not doing everything she can to sink Obama's chances until he is inaugurated next January 20th.

Is Obama Wrong About Wright?

For those readers I have left, if I have any, which I probably do not, here are my thoughts on recent political events.

I don't get too excited about hearing a preacher "damn America". I've been hearing it from conservative evangelical Christians for the last 50 years. I grew up hearing Billy Graham on the radio predicting that any day now God would strike out at America for failing to heed his commandments.

More recently, conservative superstars like Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and James Dobson have built empires on blaming American decadence for such natural disasters as hurricanes in Florida and New Orleans, and the AIDS epidemic. John McCain stood by smiling as right wing preacher, John Hagee, who calls the Roman Catholic Church "the great whore," and who claimed Hurricane Katrina wiped out New Orleans because of gays, endorsed him. Although there was a minor brouhaha about McCain seeking Hagee's support, it was nothing compared to the firestorm over Obama's former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright's intemperate remarks. I don't defend Reverend Wright, any more than I defend the white preachers who get carried away with their own rhetoric. But the snippets of sermons played endlessly on the cable news networks did take some of his most inflammatory statements out of context. Anderson Cooper of CNN has an interesting article here. The long and short of it is that the "chickens coming home to roost" quote after 9/11 was a quote from an American ambassador on Fox News. If you have 6 minutes and 48 seconds, take time to listen to the more complete context of the famous "God damn America" snippet by Reverend Wright. It is probably not something I would say, but it is completely within the parameters of what has been said in pulpits many times by other ministers.

More importantly, Reverend Wright is not running for president of the United States. If he were, he wouldn't get very far, as other preachers, including Pat Robertson and Mike Huckabee discovered (interestingly, Huckabee defended both Obama and Wright, pointing out that ministers speak extemporaneously and get carried away with their words sometimes.)

No one can reasonably say that Obama hates whites -- how could he, he is as much white as he is black. About the only thing they can say is that he should have left the church. Maybe he should have, if he was concerned only about his political future, he probably would have. I'm sure Hillary was telling the truth (for once) when she said that she would not have stayed in the church; of course, she would not have because she would have been afraid of the political fall out. (The same reason she voted for the war in Iraq; she was afraid if she didn't it would affect her political future.) I realize I have long been an Obama supporter and am inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt, but I was very impressed with his speech on race in Philadelphia and his refusal to do the expedient thing and throw Wright under the bus.

So, we will see how it all plays out. I am not as confident that Obama will wind up with the nomination as many pundits apparently are. Too many things can happen and I do not believe Hillary will ever give up voluntarily. If Obama wins the nomination, I am very confident that he will win the general election.

So, way too much politics here, but at least I'm writing.