What I wasn't expecting was in Clinton’s prepared remarks. Sure, she has a tin ear and she delivers speeches exactly the way her husband doesn’t, emphasizing the parts of the sentence that are intended as lubricant while gliding along the portions that should be emphasized, but, while her public speaking continues to startle and surprise the unwary ear, after suffering through her primary campaign’s stump speeches this is hardly astonishing. What was astonishing was the immense amount of slight-of-mind in the speech – she alluded to nearly known opportunity and vexation that the world faces today, but every time she veered dangerously close to making a prescription she slipped sideways into the sort of generalities and pabulum that any fourteen-year-old girl in front of her civics class might have advocated when required to give a political speech. And it really was an assigned but otherwise meaningless speech, as CSPAN long ago converted public hearings into the toilet politicians use to communicate with their masses. The masses this time around are from the Left, who have a “don’t bother me with the details – I trust your good intentions” mind-set, so this was all spot on for the audience at hand. Meanwhile I’m was trying not to run off the road because of how violently my gorge kept rising….
But then it hit me: what a stroke of genius on Obama’s part. After the Clinton machine insisted on torturing all thinking listeners for over a year, Obama has managed to give us at least four years peace, in which Clinton can take her crash-course in rhetoric overseas. To paraphrase General Patton, “our job is not to have Clinton melt our minds melted like cheap Velveeta, our job is to let Clinton melt the other poor dumb bastards minds like cheap Velveeta!”. For four years at least, the only speeches we’ll hear from Clinton will be in quick sound-bytes on CNN. If nothing else, this is truly a triumph of the Obama regime.
But then I thought: “Wait a minute! To confidently speak at length in tones of grand significance while actually saying nothing – isn’t this truly the heart and soul of diplomacy?” In addition to saving our poor scalded minds from her speeches, Obama may have achieved an even grander triumph even before being sworn into office: he may have figured out something Hillary Clinton’s good for!
19 comments:
This is indeed brilliant. For the Clintons (as I understand their behavior), politics is primarily a means to wealth and status, not power per se.
Hillary guaranteed four years of doing what she loves to do, travel abroad pronouncing popular yet vague shibboleths before the adoring CNN cameras, is indeed a perfect move by Obama. It fundamentally neutralizes her as a political threat.
I guess I wasn't looking at this the same way as the two of you. Sure it neutralizes her as a political threat (not something I saw), but it instead ensures she's around to annoy the living tar out of the few friends we have left.
I honestly do not think she is a good diplomat. Her husband on the other hand was a good diplomat because he could schmooze. In fact, he's really damn good at it and if he wasn't a former president he would be a good choice for this role. The ability to smooth talk someone and then convince them to help you out in a good deal is REAL diplomacy. She can talk and talk and talk until foaming at the mouth and falling over backwards, but while this would be desirable behavior for her alone, it doesn't exactly help us repair damaged relationships from the past 8 years.
Of course she's not a good diplomat -- never was! I meant what I said as sarcasm, scorn and derision. :)
Christ, I hear any more about "damaged relationships" I am going to get really annoyed. Can you tell me one that has happened? What Russia? I would put that one on Putin. The Arab world? You are kidding me right? Europe? Please. China? S Korea? Japan? Not much change there. Hell, South Korea is now actually in charge of its armed forces with the US falling under them in time of war instead of the other way around, they like that a lot.
I really haven't noticed any change in eight years on how other people really view us, the only change I see is that the press seizes on every little protest and vaguely anti-American comment to make the hourly news. I would actually go so far to say that we are going to have a tougher time with Obama as President in some cases. It has offically become much harder to lable us racists. It has become a very public proof that yes in the US you can make it from more or less humble roots or being immigrant offspring. In Europe especially (where they love to beat on us as racists but are ten times worse in reality) Obama could be a bit hard to swallow.
Of course, if he starts kissing up to the UN and makes nice socialist jibber jab, he could pull it off.
Madeleine Albright was a disaster. Her predecessor, whose name I forget, was mostly known for dressing well. Rice has been moderately successful.
State just isn't where you go in order to get serious stuff done anymore, folks. It's very much its own bailiwick, and Clinton does not have the personal discipline required to make it any more or less effective than it's been since then.
Well Mike, if you discount our relationship with Europe as being important, then no, there have been no damaged relationships over the past 8 years. Europe is only part of NATO so who cares, right?
I have noticed huge differences over the past 8 years in how the US is viewed, and it's not just a mimic of media sound bites. I see this all the time with all the foreign scientists I work with, and, how their governments fund working relationships with US scientists. For the most part the EU has told the US to fsck off scientifically and they've funded their own work alone. Not necessarily the end of the world, but, it does make some scientific progress slow to a crawl in some fields, or, cause some areas of US technical research to slip to #2-3 worlwide. I view the "damaged relationships" as two fold. 1) International cooperation at the non-govt. level has dropped off due to poor perception about the US (for right or for wrong) 2) The US doesn't have the ability to convince/coerce/persuade other nations to step up and do their parts when needed - either militarily or economically.
Now you could argue that #2 was never there because we never needed it, but with some aspects of our economic power waning, #2 might be much more important in the coming decades to ensure our military power stays strong. You can't keep our military strength high if you can't pay for it. It's even more tenuous when you consider how little of a manufacturing base we have left in the US.
So going back to why I think Clinton is REALLY wrong as a chief diplomat - she's abrasive, loud, and fits way too many bad US stereotypes. Certainly all the real foreign policy deals are done by the President, but if your figurehead diplomat is a constant media annoyance, it does make it hard to get things done.
Judging from some things I've read on GlobalSecurity.org in the past hour doing a search for work I take back my comment about relationships. Militarily they're fine and no damage from the past 8 years. I still stand by my early comment though that a lot of goodwill in non-military government relationships has been lost. And I definitely stand behind my comment that Sen. Clinton will make an awful secretary of state - she's way to abrasive and annoying for such a role.
Or so I think.
Yeah, but compared to whom: Madeleine "The Little Princess" Albright, Gen. Collin "My Boss Don't Have My Back" Powell, Dr. Condoleeza "You Must" Rice?
The race to the bottom was completed a while ago; Secretaries of State are just rolling around there like marbles nowadays.
Albright, Powell, and Rice were at least not abrasive and had the ability to charm - which is what you want in a diplomat. However this is part of the problem - what exactly does Dept. of State do anymore? Does it even serve a viable function or is it strictly our world PR organization? If it's just PR then you want a talking suit, but a nice one, in the role, and you let the career diplomats work out the deals behind the scenes to be finalized by the actual heads of state. If its not a PR firm and is actually attempting to be a diplomatic arm of US foreign interests then you are absolutely correct, nothing good has been going on with each of the secretaries and the whole branch is a waste of taxpayer dollars.
Hmmm....history time. I wonder if we've ever had a really US good secretary of state. One that really was able to advance US interests through diplomacy alone. I'm thinking maybe (note I say maybe) Kissinger, but otherwise I can't think of any. Certainly we have a long history of presidents coming from Secretary of State role, but that hasn't happened in a long time. Presidents we remember, but good secretaries that ran departments....this is harder. It's not like the foreign ministers of old who still pop up in the history books as REALLY shaping policy.
Rice, charm? Are you kidding, she comes on like a bear at a fish fry.
I personally think it's no accident that when things are crucial a specific envoy is always named rather than the Secretary, as the latter is a political appointment. The Secretary's real affect is the internal running of the department, much more than the external diplomacy -- by the time the Secretary shows up somewhere, the diplomacy's already over.
You don't give Rice enough credit. She can be personable, and not surprisingly, her piano skills do break the ice at parties. Now the policies she brings to the table - that's a different story. Those are what turn people off.
But let's go to your other point...and I think you're right. I didn't see it that way but you're absolutely correct that this is way its being done and has been done for awhile. So with that I have to question the internal running of the department and if Dept. of State is really doing us any good anymore or the ability of State to do any good has been greatly hampered by one poor secretary after another.
Okay Alex, I'll give you the science part as I will readily admit I know squat about that. I was more focused on the military angle since that is my area. I just don't really see a change in how Europe has viewed us. Even in the Cold War there was a lot of footdragging and "well the US can foot that bill" mentality. Now its just more obvious due to the press' anti-Bush wagon. Okay, I might be going overboard on the GWB victimization thing, but I am just sick of hearing about this. Yes, we have issues. How is this different from any OTHER time in our history. We always have them.
Are we losing power or are we ust moving back into a bi- or multi-polar world? Hard to say. The world has been there before and we are still stumbling along, so again I shake my head at the lack of people really looking at history.
Sorry if I came across as rude earlier, I had what would be qualified as a hellish day at work and even got my credit card number stolen (I was able to stop it before it got out of hand though).
As for your SecState question. Truman had a really good one and as a VMI grad you should hang your head in shame that you forgot George Marshall. SecState Stewart under Lincoln was pretty good (he patched up the Trent Affair). But after that, I run out of names.
Clarification: by lack of people looking at history I am talking general American Masses, not the usual commentors here on the site.
Gaah...I am embarrassed about missing Marshall and the Marshall Plan. Right outside my window for so many years too.
I'm familiar with the credit card number problem - happened to me several years ago. Luckily the credit card company caught it since the theft was created with an actual hard copy of the card. The company figured someone had access to very sophisticated counterfeiting equipment and was able to make a fake card with my number and the correct magnetic strip. Glad you were able to minimize the damage.
Thanks. In my case, it appears that a basic trainee snuck into my office during PT and copied the number down and then used a cellphone/PDA to order stuff online. So now I have to lock my office to guard against the guards...
Whaaat!!! Sweet Jesus that's wrong.
When you say trainee do you mean someone out of boot camp (private) or someone still in boot? In either case I do hope the idiot got what is coming to him.
I mean a straight up basic Trainee Private, one who was on the front deak probably. Part of the incentive program we have for doing jobs and giving extra efforts is allowing trainees access to their cellphones and PDAs at certain times after the first 4 or 5 weeks. They can sneak them if they want to try to buck the system (some do, some get away with it). I can't backtrack it since all the purchases were online. I could get some info if I filed a police report, but I am not sure I want to really waste any time with that. The card is cancelled and I stopped all the purchases (they will go through, but USAA covers the cost). I might do it, but I am not sure. I can't prove it was the privates. It could have been good old fashioned internet theft, but the sites I hit are very reliable. Eh, what can you do but be paranoid?
I see. Yes, what can you do but be paranoid...so you can't prove it was the privates in which case you have to be sneakier than them I guess. Leave out fake cards and/or put crystal violet on your items and then have all privates get their hands scanned with a UV light at the end of the day. Unless you know to wash your hands with rubbing alcohol, it will show up.
Or as you say, guard your stuff from the guards and lock the doors/desk. Again, my condolences and I know its not fun to deal with.
Eh, it happens. Locking the door is no big deal and really I should have known better. Thanks though.
I have been thinking about other SECSTATES and I really can't find any others that were really that amazing unless you go back to start of the Republic. Up to John Quincy Adams, every President started as the SEC of State. So you had six (Washington obviously didn't do this) Presidents who were Sec of State. Monroe Doctrine started when Monroe was Sec State, but became law when he was President. The aquisition of New Orleans which morphed into the Louisiana Purchase was started when Jefferson was Sec State and pushed through when he was President.
Hmmm, I am seeing a trend here. A good idea that deals with foreign powers starts with a Sec of State, who then spends his time getting it properly set up and when he became President he could finish off a properly thought through project that he is totally in the loop on. Not a bad way to do things.
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