It’s 3 a.m., Clinton’s Soaring at State, So No Kidding They Didn’t Get It
23 August 2009 2:24 pm by Taylor Marsh
It’s 3 a.m. Do You Know Where Hillary Clinton Is?
She’s not answering those crisis calls at the White House. But she’s quietly revolutionizing American foreign policy.
David Rothkopf writes an op-ed in the Washington Post that proves just how fatal the progressive derangement of all things Hillary has been for some so called progressive big shots. Men who wouldn’t accept Hillary even when Pres. Obama showed his daring and brilliance by picking her for State, which had some chasing their analytic tails from the start of the Sect. Clinton rumors.
Of course, the lead on that one was Josh “don’t get it” Marshall.
Secretaries of State don’t usually last more than a single presidential term. And sometimes they don’t make it that long. So, for the life of me, I do not understand why Hillary Clinton would want to give up what is in all likelihood a senate seat for life to run the State Department for Barack Obama.
Late Update: This post, not surprisingly, has generated a big response. And a few of you have suggested that this is a way for Hillary to angle for another shot at the presidency in 2012 or 2016. But that strikes me as deeply, deeply improbable. Never an easy thing to challenge a sitting president of your own party, next to impossible to do it from his own cabinet. I don’t have an answer on why either party would want this appointment. But that ain’t the reason.
Women’s issues never crossed his mind.
Foreshadowing came through Linda Hirshman’s piece during the primaries, when TPM dropped her, then she confronted a editor asking him if they had many writers addressing “female voters”, which Hirshman deemed an important demographic during the primaries. Golis said: “I recognize that you think female voters should be one of those things, we disagree.”
No political analysis or editorial decision could have proven more wrong, short-sided or on the wrong side of history, especially where 21st century foreign policy is concerned.
TPM is a much respected progressive media company, deservedly so in some respects, with a recent influx of cash to prove it. But like other big name sites, their political analysis has been continually wrong whenever covering Clinton, but also when it comes to women’s issues. That is when they deign to decide women’s issues and opinions are important at all, which is rarely.
On another media plain, “Meet the Press” under the late Tim Russert, women’s issues were only discussed by men. Mr. Russert never invited a female on to discuss abortion, family or faith, preferring religious leaders like Richard Land and Rick Warren, as well as conservative male pundits, to women, even when they were the actual experts on the subjects. How do you discuss abortion without women? But the Sunday shows often ignore women, especially progressive women as main guests, with a flood of men usually the fare.
As Rothkopf proves today, however, as do the amazing articles in the New York Times Magazine, in the 21st century it will likely be women and girls who could actually tilt the balance of the world. This leaves new media outlets that market that they cover all the news, while choosing to ignore women’s issues, in the dust, proving that “new media” has nothing to do with understanding the changing role of women as leaders across the globe.
This is critical to cover, though it’s not popular to do so, because it’s a reminder of just how neglected women’s issues are by some of the most respected progressive new media news sites. I’m not talking blogs who cover issues, or smaller blogs who cannot, but big news clearinghouse sites. Progressives who also missed completely and continue to ignore the foreign policy aspect of what Clinton’s State Department means to Obama’s foreign policy, but also countries around the world, especially where women’s roles are concerned. Some sites choosing to focus soley on the Maureen Dowd political porn of anything Clinton.
It’s also critical that a simultaneous nod is given to Obama for thinking of Clinton in the first place, which gives me great pleasure to do, which I do often. Something that’s never been hard for me (which includes enthusiastically supporting his candidacy the second he won the nomination). I cannot say the same for the grace of the CDS crew, which has tried at every moment to minimize the Secretary’s work by not covering it or diminishing it, and by ignoring what Nicolas Kristoff continues to report. At every turn, I’ve done my best to cover the real parts of Clinton at State, including mistakes. But from the start of Obama’s candidacy and throughout his presidency, even as I’ve rightly analyzed his domestic weaknesses, I’ve been able to see his foreign policy clearly, backing him strongly, including on Afghanistan up until recently when my questions outweighed Obama’s mission creep strategy, but particularly on the Middle East.
This is personal to me, not because of Hillary Rodham Clinton, but because women and girls around the globe need the U.S. now more than ever; the writing I do on the subject part of 21st century feminism, which I am committed to continuing, against all odds, it would seem so far. If U.S. foreign policy is to turn towards the 21st century we all need big progressive news outlets to take our issues seriously, particularly when we have Sect. Clinton and her team at State, along with Obama’s foreign policy leadership (with new hopes in the Middle East), focusing like a laser on them when the opportunity arises.
It’s the partnership of Pres. Obama and Sect. Clinton that makes this all possible, something that was easy to recognize from the start if you understood Clinton at all. The CDS crew actually believing and preferring to promote that Hillary would mount a challenge in 2012 against Obama, as ignorant an idea as the unhinged puma fringe was for not believing what an Obama presidency would mean once he won, especially around the world.
Rothkopft’s piece outlines what I have titled “revolutionary” vision at State, which includes Clinton’s understanding that women and girls can save the world, but that’s not his only focus. G8? Try G20. North Korea, too. And just look at Clinton on the Middle East, that infamous “back channel” people hypothesized would undermine Obama non-existent. Rothkopft explains it all, as Clinton’s contributions stand today, taking on his own website, Foreign Policy for its fluff.
… Even venerable publications — such as one to which I regularly contribute, Foreign Policy — have woven into their all-Hillary-all-the-time coverage odd discussions of Clinton’s handbag and scarf choices. Daily Beast editor Tina Brown, while depicting herself as a Clinton supporter, has been scathing and small-minded in discussing such things as Clinton’s weight and hair, while her “defense” of Hillary in her essay “Obama’s Other Wife” was as sexist as the title suggests.
Indeed, sexism has followed Clinton from the campaign trail to Foggy Bottom, as seen most recently in the posturing outrage surrounding the exchange in Congo when Clinton reacted with understandable frustration to the now-infamous question regarding her husband’s views. Major media outlets have joined the gossipfest, whether the New York Times, which covered Clinton’s first big policy speech by discussing whether she was in or out with the White House, or The Washington Post, where a couple of reporters mused about whether a brew called Mad Bitch would be the beer of choice for the secretary of state. [...]
… [...] So far, according to multiple high-level officials at State and the White House, the two seem aligned in their views. In addition, they are gradually defining complementary roles. Obama has assumed the role of principal spokesperson on foreign policy, as international audiences welcome his new and improved American brand. Clinton thus far has echoed his points but has also delivered tougher ones. Whether on a missile shield against Iran or North Korean saber-rattling, the continued imprisonment of Aung San Suu Kyi in Burma or rape and corruption in Congo, the secretary of state has spoken bluntly on the world stage — even if it triggered snide comments from North Korea.
It is still early, and a president’s foreign policy legacy is often defined less by big principles than by how one reacts to the unexpected, whether missiles in Cuba or terrorism in New York. Promising ideas fail because of limited attention or reluctant bureaucracies, and some rhetoric eventually rings hollow, as the self-congratulatory “smart power” already does to me.
Nevertheless, there is evidence that, seven months into the job, Obama’s unlikely secretary of state is supporting and augmenting his agenda effectively. Not as Obama’s “other wife,” not as Bill Clinton’s wife, not even as a celebrity or as a former presidential candidate — but in a new role of her own making.
David Rothkopf is the first op-ed columnist to get the breadth and depth of the Obama-Clinton partnership, but also the groundbreaking work of Secretary of State Clinton, which many of Obama’s die hard supporters missed and still ignore, but Pres. Obama sensed would manifest from the start.
