It is still hard to believe but, if Hillary Clinton's "confidantes" are to be trusted, Barack Obama is about to appoint her secretary of state and she is about to accept. This appointment represents the capstone of betrayal of Obama's promise to be the "change we can believe in."
Having upended the Democratic Party, largely over his different views on foreign policy and the war in Iraq, he now turns to the leader of the ancient regime he ousted, derided, mocked and criticized to take over the top international-affairs position in his administration.
No longer, apparently, does he distrust Hillary's "judgment," as he did during the debates when he denounced her vote on the Iraq War resolution. Now, all is forgiven. After all, Obama's election, the only change he apparently truly believed in, is a fait accompli.
Apart from the breathtaking cynicism of the appointment lies the total lack of foreign-policy experience in the new partnership. Neither Clinton nor Obama has spent five minutes conducting any aspect of foreign policy in the past. Neither has ever negotiated anything or dealt with diplomatic issues. It is the blonde leading the blind.
And then there is the question of whether we want a Secretary of State who is compromised, in advance, by her husband's dealings with repressive regimes in Kuwait, Kazakhstan, Dubai, the UAE, Morocco, and governments about which we know nothing. These foreign leaders have paid the Clinton family millions of dollars E2 directly and through their library and/or foundation - funds they can and have used as personal income. How do we know that she can conduct foreign policy independently even if it means biting those who have fed her and her husband?
But the most galling aspect of the appointment is that it puts Obama in the midst of an Administration which, while he appointed it, is not his own. Rather he has now created a government staffed by Clinton people, headed by Clinton appointees, and dominated by Hillary herself. He has willingly created the same untenable situation as that into which Lyndon Johnson stepped when JFK was assassinated in 1963. Johnson inherited a cabinet wholly staffed by Kennedy intimates with Bobby himself as Attorney General. LBJ had no choice and had to spend two years making the government his own. But Obama had all the options in the world and chose to fence himself in by appointing Hillary as Secretary of States, Clinton cabinet member Bill Richardson for Commerce, Clinton staffer Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff, Clinton buddy (and top lobbyist) Tom Daschle to HHS, and Bill's Deputy Attorney General, Eric Holder, to Justice.
Presidents Clinton and Lincoln similarly appointed what Doris Kearns Goodwin has famously called a "team of rivals" to staff their cabinets and Administrations. Lincoln named all of his opponents for the Republican presidential nomination to senior posts in his cabinet and Clinton staffed his White House and much of his cabinet with ambassadors to other wings of the Democratic Party. George Stephanopoulos was his ambassador to House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt, Harold Ickes his emissary to organized labor, Al Gore his delegate to the environmentalists, Leon Panetta his liaison with Congressional committee chairmen, Ron Brown his man in the black community, and Henry Cisneros as his go-between with the Hispanics.
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