White House Chronicle

News Analysis With a Sense of Humor

Obama’s Foreign Policy Cocktail

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Here in Washington, we were just settling down for the enervating business of projecting the future from the first tranche of President-elect Barack Obama’s Cabinet, when an ill wind from Chicago reminded us that all politics is human, and that political success does not equate to wisdom or simple common sense. Also, it reminded us that we love to see politicians fall.

The allegations against Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich have diverted even the most serious policy wonks from their ruminations. But this will pass, and most likely Blagojevich will go to his disgrace. The wonks will go back to puzzling how Obama’s foreign policy appointments will work together, or who will work against whom. It is not titillating, but it is engrossing.

This brings up the subject of Hillary Clinton, Obama’s pick for secretary of state.

What makes Clinton tick? Why would a woman who has been a successful lawyer, the first lady of a state, the first lady of the United States and a successful U.S. senator want more? Her ambition is Napoleonic, vaulting and incomprehensible. Those who are not addicted to the narcotic of power cannot understand it any more than we can grasp what drives Rupert Murdoch, the most successful publisher in history, to expand his empire at the age of 77, when he might reasonably be expected to be enjoying his family and reveling in his achievements.

But Clinton’s ambition, together with her husband’s position in the prompter’s box, does not auger well for harmony in foreign policy. First, there is National Security Adviser–designate James Jones to consider. He will see the president every day and, unlike Clinton, does not have to preside over the management of the State Department with its 50,000 widely scattered employees. More, he is fresh out of his Marine general’s uniform, and generals have more difficulty than most in accepting orders.

Then there is the possibility of a three-way struggle between Clinton, Jones and Susan Rice, nominated to be the next U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. She was an assistant secretary of state in the Clinton administration and signed on early as an adviser to Obama. She did not throw her weight behind Hillary–and the secretary of state-designate notices things like that.

Foreign policy is not just caught up in a triangle of strong egos. There is another player: the vice president. Vice President-elect Joe Biden has made foreign policy his area of expertise for many years, serving on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and traveling widely. Biden is not malicious, but he is garrulous and wont to say things he wished he had suppressed. Loose lips in the veep’s office could be a nightmare for all concerned, especially Clinton.

Clinton, herself, has one other problem: her husband. The former president made a speech in Hong Kong, after his wife had accepted the job of secretary of state. If this is not a conflict, it is at least a possible harbinger of things to come. Awkward things.

Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, may be called upon to keep the peace, but he has baggage too. He is known to be abrasive and to have strong ties to Israel, where he served in the Israel Defense Forces during the Gulf war. Obama might want to keep Emanuel out of foreign affairs even if, as chief of staff, he is forced to keep the peace between the super-egos. Of these, Rice is the gentlest, but she will have to answer a lot of questions about the Rwanda genocide during her Senate confirmation hearing. She was on President Clinton’s Africa team at the National Security Council during the genocide. As they say, it was not our problem, but it will force Rice to answer hard questions about the slaughter now taking place in Darfur and the eastern Congo.

Hillary Clinton is smart and energetic, but if she has diplomatic skills, she has not used them to date. In China, I watched her lecture women on becoming lawyers. The women, who had expected somebody more sympathetic, looked at her agog. Few of them probably knew what a lawyer was, and Clinton clearly had not bothered to find out what was on their minds. Not a good beginning.

The sorry thing is that it will be years before we know how well the Obama foreign policy team meshes; before the books are written and memoirs lift the curtain.

The Long Shadow of Clinton Falls

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Back to the future? Oh, say it ain’t so, Barack Obama. As the president-elect struggles to fill out his staff, there is concern among analysts and scholars of the presidency that the new president may be relying too much on the men and women who served Bill Clinton.

The problem is that they are perceived as yesterday’s people and, worse, that Obama was elected on a clarion call of change. The stalwarts of the Democratic administration of the ’90s have about them the ghostly tinge of another time. In a parliamentary system of government, you know the likely players after an election. There is in place a shadow cabinet, ready to seize the reins if the electorate favors a change. In a presidential system you hope for new faces.

We look not only for fresh ideas in a new administration, but also for fresh faces to carry the policies forward. The need for the new has been elevated by the George W. Bush administration, staffed as it has been by his father’s placemen, especially in the first term. Alas, it was old wine in new bottles. Sometimes the wine was bitter: men who came back to Washington to finish that which had been unfinished. While the new president might not have had an agenda, the staff he appointed did–and they sold it to the president, particularly after the emboldening that 9/11 conveyed.

That is one lesson for the Obama crowd. Another is do not tear up everything that the previous administration has done, even if you don’t like it. That just sets up a policy seesaw of the kind that debilitates. The new Bush administration reversed treaties, including the Kyoto agreement, and encouraged a kind of belligerence. It gave the back of its hand to all sorts of people and undermined, rather than reformed, the United Nations.

The early signs are that Obama is relying heavily on Clinton worthies. First there is Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.), who is known for his arrogance, effectiveness and profanity. Obama has chosen Emanuel to fill the position of chief of staff. He is an odd choice. It is a position best occupied by self-effacing professionals who can control an egotistical staff. It is a job best performed by those who can mollify without conceding. Ronald Reagan, after difficulties, found the right person in Howard Baker. George H.W. Bush had difficulties with John Sununu, fewer with Sam Skinner and found the perfect person in that Man for All Reasons, James Baker. Clinton had three chiefs of staff, but Leon Panetta stood out. Andy Card and Josh Bolten have both served George W. Bush well–not an easy assignment, given the intrusive influence of Vice President Cheney and the pre-emptive role of strategist Karl Rove.

Washington’s foreign policy establishment is particularly concerned about the names circulating for national security adviser and secretary of state. For national security adviser, these include Susan Rice, who was Clinton’s assistant secretary of state for African affairs. She is liked and respected, but her gravitas is questioned, as is her role in the Rwanda civil war. And for secretary of state, these include Richard Holbrooke, Clinton’s man in the Bosnian crisis and architect of the Dayton peace accords. If Emanuel has an ego, the brilliant Holbrooke is his equal. Then there is the perennial office-seeker Bill Richardson, Clinton’s secretary of energy and United Nations ambassador. A man of derring-do, he longs to move back to Washington and leave his gubernatorial duties in New Mexico. He likes worlds to conquer and supported Obama after his own presidential bid collapsed.

Their hopes may be dashed by the ambitions of Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), who is pressuring Obama for the top State Department job and by the friends of Sen. Dick Lugar (R-Ind.), who would like to see the minority leader on the Foreign Relations Committee go out in a blaze of bipartisan glory. The joke in the Capitol is that if you walk into any urinal and say, “Mr. Secretary,” 10 men will reply, “Yes?”

And so it goes. What is lacking so far are the new faces of “change.” Things look a little less Clintonesque over at the Justice Department, where a variety of names, some with Clinton ties and some without, are circulating. The wisdom about the other two critical appointments is less informed. This gives the Treasury either to former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker or to the quintessential Clinton man, Robert Rubin. Defense aficionados hope Obama will keep Robert Gates as long as he wants to serve, and then will slip in the much-loved but wayward Republican, Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska.