Israel Matzav

Does Hillary Clinton want to be Secretary of State?

As I'm sure you all heard, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton 'lost it' on Monday as a result of a mistranslated question at a meeting with students in the Congo.

For those who have not seen it yet, let's go to the videotape.



Jammie Wearing Fool claims that Clinton did not (and probably does not) want to be Secretary of State:

A day after berating a questioner in the Congo, whispers now say she never wanted any part of being Secretary of State under Barack Obama and appears increasingly annoyed at being relegated to the back pages while her notoriously philandering husband parties it up, most recently in Las Vegas.

That's overstating the case. Clinton doesn't want to be Secretary of State in this administration under this set of circumstances. Charles Krauthammer explains:

She lost it. It was not a real good moment. In part, I'm sure it was because she thought she was being treated as an appendage of her husband.

But I think part of it is also the venue. Here you have Richard Holbrooke running Afghanistan and Pakistan — the heart of our troubles in Asia. You have George Mitchell in the Middle East. You have envoys here and there, and she is the secretary of state, and she's sitting in the Congo, in the Congo?

You've got Petraeus running Afghanistan. You've got Odierno running Iraq. She is totally marginalized, sitting in Kinshasa. I'm sure it is a great city — in fact, it's not — but the Congo? Africa is very low on the scale of important interests of the United States.

She was supposed to be the president of the United States at this point. She was going to be queen of the world. Instead, Obama bestrides the world. He gives speeches in the great capitals, in Cairo — and she is in the Congo! You'd be upset, also.

So where do we go from here and what does it mean to Israel? First, I think it's important to point out that President Obama named Clinton Secretary of State in a bid to neutralize her. He named all those envoys to minimize her public exposure for as long as she serves as Secretary of State. And Hillary fell into the honey trap. If she wants to change anything, she's got to leave her current position. I believe that if she sees any chance of beating Obama for the 2012 nomination she will resign as Secretary of State and run for the nomination. I'd look for that to happen in late 2010 or early 2011.

If she does leave, the next question is who would become Secretary of State. Before he appointed Clinton, Obama seemed to be considering John Kerry. But Kerry won't leave his position in the Senate for the tiny power base that Clinton has now. Given how poorly Obama's foreign policy has fared, I'd bet on him looking for an experienced foreign policy hack like Brent Scowcroft - currently head of the National Security Council - or whichever of those 'special envoys' he deems most successful (Dennis Ross, Richard Holbrooke or George Mitchell). None of them will improve Israel's situation. Scowcroft could even make it worse.

From Israel's perspective, we have not gained or lost anything by having Clinton as Secretary of State. If either Clinton has warm feelings for Israel, I would argue that it's Bill. Hillary was the one who infamously embraced Suha Arafat after the latter claimed Israel was poisoning 'Palestinian' drinking water. It was Bill who came here and told us all in a Knesset speech how his preacher warned him not to abandon Israel. For Hillary, Israel was something to which she had to pay deference so long as she was the Senator from heavily Jewish New York. The only thing she has had to do with us as Secretary of State was that very testy news conference with Avigdor Lieberman a couple of months ago.

If Obama had appointed Kerry rather than Clinton, we would have been no better off. Kerry's chief foreign policy adviser during his 2004 campaign was Susan Rice - currently Obama's ambassador to the UN. As an indication of where Kerry might have taken the administration's policies toward Israel, Rice shows that we would have been in no better position than we are today.

Besides, Obama takes a personal (negative) interest in Israel, and is not going to allow anyone else - not even Scowcroft - to make policy where we are concerned.

All in all, another Secretary of State, in this administration, is unlikely to make any difference to Israel.

By the way, as a postscript, Hillary Clinton looks awful in that video. Just in the last couple of weeks, she has really started to look her age (and more). Look in the video at how she slumps in the chair with her stomach sticking out. Look how tired she looks with bags under her eyes. It may be jet lag, but my guess is that it's the frustration over her current situation. With Obama's poll numbers continuing to tank, that frustration may not last much longer. My guess is that if she went back to the campaign trail and ran against Obama, she would find it invigorating, even if many of us would not be thrilled to see her running again.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 10:51 PM