CQ TODAY ONLINE NEWS
Nov. 21, 2008 – 7:00 p.m.
Sen. Hillary Clinton Would Have Short Record to Defend in a Confirmation Hearing
By Adam Graham-Silverman, CQ Staff
In meetings with the presidents of Pakistan and Afghanistan last year, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton asked each whether they wanted a special U.S. envoy to negotiate the tangled issues that divide them. Each, separately, told her yes, which led her to call the White House and make the appeal for such a post part of her presidential campaign.
The Bush administration never created the job, but now, with the New York Democrat looking increasingly likely to be nominated for secretary of State under President-elect Barack Obama , she may have a chance to do it herself.
Clinton’s supporters point to the special envoy idea as an example of her creative thinking on international affairs. But the fact that the effort never gained any traction underscores another point about her qualifications: While Clinton has been a high-wattage star on the international stage since her time as First Lady, she lacks a long resume of foreign-policy successes to accompany her celebrity.
One of Clinton’s harshest critics in this regard was the Obama campaign itself during the battle for the Democratic nomination.
“There is no reason to believe . . . that she was a key player in foreign policy at any time during the Clinton Administration,” Obama adviser Greg Craig wrote in a lengthy memo March 11 rebutting her claims to experience. “She did not do any heavy-lifting with foreign governments, whether they were friendly or not.”
Clinton Likely To Be Confirmed
Now that Obama’s message of change has carried him to the White House, he and Clinton would represent a very different United States than the world has seen over the last eight years.
“The differences between the two candidates were very narrow compared to the differences they had with the Bush administration,” said a Democratic Senate aide. “That’s why she was very comfortable being able to work on President-elect Obama’s behalf during the fall campaign.”
While the initial news of Clinton’s potential nomination was greeted with surprise, particularly among liberals who saw her representing the hawkish side of the party, her nomination would be almost certain to sail through the Senate. John Kerry , D-Mass., the likely chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee next year, recently called her a “terrific person.” On the other side of the aisle, Minority Whip Jon Kyl , R-Ariz., said she would be “a very good selection.”
The Clinton and Obama camps also have reportedly worked out an arrangement to head off potential conflicts of interest with former President Bill Clinton, whose global speaking engagements and philanthropic work around the Clinton Global Initiative have raised concerns.
The possibility of conflict between Obama and Clinton, however, may be a greater worry.
“You cannot be a truly effective secretary of State without the confidence of your presisdent, without the president trusting you,” said Aaron David Miller, a former top State official now at the Woodrow Wilson International Center. “She clearly does not have that with Barack Obama .”
Miller said other foreign leaders would seize upon any perception of daylight between Clinton and Obama and “play it like a finely tuned violin.”
Hawkish On The Use Of Force
During her presidential campaign, Clinton devoted a lot of energy repudiating her vote to authorize the Iraq War, which Obama has always opposed. In Congress, she focused on attacking the Bush administration’s prosecution of the war.
Clinton cosponsored unsuccessful legislation that would have required a new vote to authorize the Iraq war, as well as other abortive bills that would have required congressional consideration of a long-term security agreement with Iraq and banned private contractors there. She also supported congressional calls to ensure that Iraqi oil revenues and not U.S. funds go to repairing the country.
As a presidential candidate, she said she would set up meetings on Iraq with Persian Gulf States, Jordan, Egypt and allies in Europe, as well as with Iraq’s neighbors—including Iran and Syria. On a different note, she said that the United States would retaliate if Iran attacked Israel, noting that “we would be able to totally obliterate them.” Obama, an advocate of broad diplomacy, dismissed such talk as unhelpful.
Last year, when Iraq commander Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker appeared before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Clinton sharply told them: “I think that the reports that you provide to us really require the willing suspension of disbelief.”
But as secretary, Clinton would oversee some of those efforts and work with Petraeus, who now heads the U.S. Central Command.
Like Obama, she said the Bush administration’s focus on Iraq had shortchanged the conflict in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In addition to an envoy for those countries, she called for a high-level appointee to handle nonproliferation, adding that the United States would retaliate against countries that harbored groups planning nuclear attacks.
“We have to make it clear to those states that would give safe haven to stateless terrorists that would launch a nuclear attack against America that they would also face a very heavy retaliation,” she said early this year.
Thin Legislative Record On Foreign Affairs
In terms of legislative accomplishment on foreign affairs, however, the list is thin. Clinton sits on Senate Armed Services Commitee, not the Foreign Relations panel. But her supporters point to New York’s ethnic diversity and the city’s wounds from the Sept. 11 attacks as evidence of her understanding of global issues.
Perhaps most mocked, however, was her claim in March that she landed “under sniper fire” on a trip to Bosnia in 1996, which several traveling companions challenged as untrue. She later acknowledged she had misspoken.
Though Clinton has traveled to more than 80 countries since becoming First Lady in 1993, supporters point to her well-received speech at the 1995 United Nations World Conference on Women in Beijing, as a touchstone for her commitment to human rights and democracy.
“If there is one message that echoes forth from this conference, let it be that human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights once and for all,” she said.
“She was in many ways the face of America during that period, the human face, the informal ambassador, and she was somebody who generated enormous good will for her country,” said Melanne Verveer, Clinton’s White House chief of staff.
Verveer said that Clinton would resume that role and have no problem taking orders abroad from her onetime rival.
“Anybody who knows Hillary Clinton knows she’s a team player,” said Verveer. “She will do what is asked of her.”
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