It's going to be interesting to see how the SoS position takes shape

[ProSense]

Clinton Is Said to Accept Secretary of State Position:

Mrs. Clinton had to accept that she might never become president, a former aide said. “There’s a very small chance that she could run again,” he said. “You’re not going to be the president, so you want to make sure your next few years, which may be your last in public life, really make a mark.”

Two advisers to Mrs. Clinton said she was concerned about establishing her role in the administration before agreeing to the job. She wanted assurances that she would have direct access to Mr. Obama and not need to go through a national security adviser, they said. And she wanted the authority to pick her own staff at the State Department.

This was particularly important because her relationships with members of Mr. Obama’s foreign policy team fractured during the bruising primary season. Gregory B. Craig, a longtime friend of the Clintons who broke with them to back Mr. Obama and helped savage her foreign policy background during the primaries, was selected as White House counsel and removed from direct involvement with the secretary of state.

Mrs. Clinton wanted to avoid the situation that faced another celebrity chosen as secretary of state, Colin L. Powell, who found hawks like John R. Bolton given top jobs under him after he took the job under President Bush.

[ErinBerin84]

1. yeah, I wonder about the staff selections for the State department.

Andrea Mitchell made it sound on Hardball last Friday like Hillary wouldn't get to pick them.

[karynnj]

2. I wonder if this is the hold up in actually taking the job

In addition to Powell's problem with the staff under him, he had a problem with the VP and SoD and there coterie having more influence with Bush. Now, the fact is that Joe Biden has something like 30 years of foreign policy experience compared to HRC's limited experience.

[ProSense]

11. Interesting. n/t

[AtomicKitten]

3. "Will Clinton Fill the State Dept with Loyalists?"

Will Clinton Fill State Dept. With Loyalists?
Foreign Policy World Fears Clinton Will Take Old Guard to Foggy Bottom

http://washingtonindependent.com/19654/clintons-team-at-state
By Spencer Ackerman 11/21/08

* snip *

“Foreign policy is probably where Clinton and Obama differ the most,” said the Democratic official. “They just have fundamentally different instincts. On the big decisions, Obama can and will certainly call the shots, but the consistency of follow-through could really be a problem. And the instincts on the smaller decisions will be very different. Cohesion of our foreign policy could suffer.”

* snip *

“State is already, like most agencies, riddled with Bush loyalists,” said a Democratic official with ties to the foreign-policy community. “If you add in a camp of Clinton loyalists, plus career staffers, none of whom are directly tied to Obama, I think it should be a serious concern to Obama. Clinton folks are known for their loyalty to the Clintons.”

* snip *

Some Obama loyalists pointed to a 2007 memo written by Harvard’s Samantha Power — a former leading Obama adviser who resigned from the campaign after making an untoward remark about Clinton — that summarized the Obama campaign’s ideological meta-critique of many of the people who might staff a Clinton-run State Dept. Titled “Conventional Wisdom vs. the Change We Need,” the campaign released Power’s memo to the press after the Clinton campaign labeled Obama naive for proposing negotiations with dictators without preconditions; for ruling out the use of nuclear weapons on terrorist training camps; and for proposing highly-conditioned military strikes in Pakistan against senior Al Qaeda operatives.

“It was Washington’s conventional wisdom that led us into the worst strategic blunder in the history of U.S. foreign policy,” writes Power, who declined to speak for this story. “The rush to invade Iraq was a position advocated by not only the Bush Administration, but also by editorial pages, the foreign policy establishment of both parties, and majorities in both houses of Congress. Those who opposed the war were often labeled weak, inexperienced and even naïve.”

Some in the Obama camp are left wondering whether picking Clinton as secretary of state represents an acquiescence to such conventional wisdom. “That memo was emblematic in many ways of the difference between the two groups,” said a Democratic foreign-policy expert and Obama loyalist. Asked about the ideological implications of the difference, the expert said, “The early Obama supporters were generally much more opposed to Iraq and you can draw out assumptions from there."

[Muttocracy]

4. Hmm. And it seemed to me foreign policy was their biggest difference

so I'm baffled. Oh well.

[AtomicKitten]

14. I don't get it either.

For about 100 reasons.

I figure Obama is putting together something I just can't see yet.

[Whisp]

22. I don't get it either.

still crossing my fingers tho that either Hillary declines or is not asked or fails or something or

if she does get the job, she will realise who her boss really is, not her or her ego, or her husbands ego, but

Barack Obama is the bossman.

as much as I do not like the idea of a warmongering liar in the SoS position, I have faith in Obama and how he plays the chessboard.

[peace13]

6. Samantha Power gave us a warning months ago.

Reading all of this is very surreal.

[AtomicKitten]

15. it is

I am sad not to see her around. She has a brilliant mind.

[wisteria]

Delete dup.

[wisteria]

20. Insightful article. n/t

[Life Long Dem]

5. I look at this as the media bullying the people,

and Obama into choosing a position. And if the media wins we lose.

And I'd would think it's too late for change. You won't see me as into politics anymore. There would be no use in trying to change things if the media is able to divide and conquer. You won't see me around anymore. I will have had it.

[Life Long Dem]

9. Let me add, that this is how surprised I'd be if Obama didn't have a grasp on things.

And I wouldn't hate Obama if he in fact did cave-in like this, I just wouldn't see a use in using my vote anymore if the media decides things.

[rwenos]

7. She'll Still Serve at the Pleasure of the President

It's an administrative job, a top job in the Executive Branch. But Hillary will still serve at the pleasure of the President, and so will her appointed staff.

I can see Hillary is negotiating now to get as much autonomy as possible, and the idea of ANY SoS not having direct access to the President is both stupid and scary. And there's the axiom that a job candidate has more power after having been offered the job, and before accepting it, than at any other time in the relationship.

Hillary goes off the reservation, she's out. That's not a hard call. Meanwhile, she's a tremendously talented person, famous around the world, and she's got a chance to do what she has always SAID she want to do -- i.e., serve America. Let's see if she means it, or if, like the Pubbie a-holes always said, "it's just about her."

Summary: give her a chance. Give Obama a chance.

[ProSense]

8. "Hillary goes off the reservation, she's out. That's not a hard call. "

No, I don't suppose it would be.

[Honeycombe8]

12. She will not be able to be fired until 1 day after he is re-elected.

But unlike the VP position, at least the SOS can be fired or transferred.

(She can technically be fired, but she can't be fired as a political matter.)

[joshcryer]

10. Stage of grief: Bargaining.

;)

[TahitiNut]

21. Poor Nell

:eyes:

[Honeycombe8]

13. Some pundit said she did not get her wish to name all the SOS staff.

The Clintons turned in a "wish list" of sorts. Demands. Obama's team considered them. She did not get the demand she had of hiring all the SOS team. But maybe she can name some of them.

As for how the job shapes up, Brezhinski thinks that Biden and Jones will determine policy recommendations that Obama will then decide on, and Clinton, as SOS, will act on those decisions. The SOS does not determine policy.

[stillcool]

16. I am very confused about this..

is it a done deal, or is the dance still going on?

[AtomicKitten]

17. there has been no formal offer made as of yet

it's Kabuki Theater in the press right now .... weird shit

[stillcool]

19. thanks! I thought maybe ..

I missed something. Damn but the media has some serious power shaping people's perceived reality.

[wisteria]

18. She is suppose to represent Obama's POV not her own.

This article reads like it is Hillary making the demands and her POV on foreign policy that matters. And then there is this, "Mrs. Clinton’s stature and capabilities", just how many trips overseas has see made since the 90's? And,about her capabilities on foreign policy, exactly what are they? She never sat in on foreign policy discussions when Mr. Clinton was in the White House and during her term in the senate she was not a member of the foreign relations committee and her interests never lead her down the foreign policy path. Oh, and those comments from her aids, about her chances of running for president again and not being able to have a high profile role in the senate being significant factors in her decision to accept the SOS position seem telling in that she is going for this not because she really cares about foreign policy, but because she wants something grand and important for herself. Frankly,all this does not bode well for what needs to be accomplish overseas. We needed someone with knowledge, interest and a passion for the job- not an ambitious woman just out to make a name for herself.

And, I would say Mrs. Clinton has not ruled out entirely never running for president again.

[niceypoo]

23. It's worth it just to watch the meltdown here on DU

The delicious irony of it all is that it's all over nothing, just the usual hysterics from the usual suspects.

I can't wait!!

[lamp_shade]

24. My thought exactly. That's Entertainment!

[ProSense]

25. Hillary plays hardball

Hillary plays hardball

The first sign of friction in the Obama camp as Mrs Clinton demands - and gets - a purge of her critics before accepting Secretary of State role

By Leonard Doyle in Washington
Sunday, 23 November 2008

Before Hillary Clinton has been formally offered the job as Secretary of State, a purge of Barack Obama's top foreign policy team has begun.

The advisers who helped trash the former First Lady's foreign policy credentials on the campaign trail are being brutally shunted aside, as the price of her accepting the job of being the public face of America to the world. In negotiations with Mr Obama this week before agreeing to take the job, she demanded and received assurances that she alone should appoint staff to the State Department. She also got assurances that she will have direct access to the President and will not have to go through his foreign policy advisers on the National Security Council, which is where many of her critics in the Obama team are expected to end up.

The first victims of Mrs Clinton's anticipated appointment will be those who defended Mr Obama's flanks on the campaign trail. By mocking Mrs Clinton's claims to have landed under sniper fire in Bosnia or pouring scorn on her much-ballyhooed claim to have visited 80 countries as First Lady they successfully deflected the damaging charge that he is a lightweight on international issues.

Foremost among the victims of the purges is her old Yale Law School buddy Greg Craig, a man who more than anyone led the rescue of his presidency starting the very night Kenneth Starr's lurid report into the squalid details of the former president's sex scandal with Monica Lewinsky were published on the internet in 1998. Despite his long and loyal friendship with the Clintons, Mr Craig threw his lot in with Mr Obama at an early stage in the presidential election campaign. As if that betrayal to the cause of the Clinton restoration was not enough, Mr Craig did more to undermine Mrs Clinton's claims to be a foreign policy expert than anyone else in the some of the ugliest exchanges of the battle for the Democratic nomination.

Until this week he was poised to be the eminence grise of the State Department, organising as total revamp of America's troubled foreign policies on Mr Obama's behalf. Its turns out that Mrs Clinton's delay in accepting the president elect's offer to be his top foreign policy adviser had much to do with her negotiating the terms of the job and insisting on the right to choose her own state department staff and possibly even some of the plumb Ambassador postings. She wanted guarantees of direct access to the president – without having to go through his national security adviser. Above all she did not want to end up like Colin Powell who was completely out-manoeuvred by the hawkish Vice President Dick Cheney who imposed neo-conservative friends like John Bolton on the State Department and steered the US towards a policy of using torture to achieve its aims.

Mr Craig's crime was not so much that he enthusiastically backed Mr Obama for President and helped run his foreign policy advisory panel, it was his lacerating attacks on the putative Secretary of State's claims that she passed the "Commander-in-Chief test" as a foreign policy expert in the Clinton Administration. In a devastating memo of 11 March last, which he addressed "to interested parties," Mr Craig said: There is no reason to believe, however, that she was a key player in foreign policy at any time during the Clinton Administration. She did not sit in on National Security Council meetings. She did not have a security clearance. She did not attend meetings in the Situation Room. She did not manage any part of the national security bureaucracy, nor did she have her own national security staff."

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