Tuesday, November 18, 2008 - Posts
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And now on to a different Obama Cabinet post: At Newsweek, Michael Issikoff is reporting that Eric Holder will be tapped as Obama's attorney general, assuming he vets well. What I like about this choice is that it's bold but not crazy bold. The strike against Holder is that he signed off on Bill Clinton's pardon of Mark Rich, a crackup wherever you are on the ideological spectrum. On the other hand, Holder has a solid-to-gold reputation as a federal prosecutor. And he served as a not-fancy judge in the District of Columbia's Superior Court. When the right tried to tar him with the Rich screw up when he was on Obama's vice-president selection team, it didn't much stick--at least, not enough to fell him. The Obama folks must be making a similar calculation here.
I don't know enough about Holder's particular role in the Rich episode to know for sure whether they're right to look beyond it, but taken as a whole, Holder's record shows that he knows his stuff and should be able to run the Justice Department well. On national security, his rep is not hard left. That's of a piece with the move to the center that Obama made on wiretapping by the National Security Agency over the summer. It could mean that he's going to disappoint liberals who want to rip up every Bush administration DoJ order. This is the test of governing as opposed to criticizing from the outside. The Democrats are about to own the war on terror. Holder will be nothing like Alberto Gonzales; that I think we can count on. It's harder to know how many degrees apart he will be from the current attorney general, Michael Mukasey, who was sent in to clean up the Gonzales mess. For example, what will Holder do with Mukasey's recent order expanding the FBI's powers to infiltrate and investigate? May the tests begin.
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At this point, I think we are arguing just to keep our skills up, because Hillary as Madame Secretary seems to be a done deal. But, my mother always said I would rather argue than eat, so: Whoa, Hanna, how is it that "in every way it is petty to want to deny her" the top foreign policy job when her views on foreign policy are not compatible with Obama's. (At least, that was my understanding when I voted for him.) As McCain campaign blogger Michael Goldfarb says in a post for the Weekly Standard, "On the issues, Clinton's a hawk ... Clinton flipped on the war, but as the nomination slipped out of her reach last spring she spoke of the threats this country faces, and of the prescriptions offered by Obama, in language that would warm the hearts of neoconservatives. ... She threatened to 'obliterate' Iran in response to unprovoked aggression against Israel, she spoke of unconditional meetings with the leaders of rogue states as 'irresponsible and, frankly, naive,' and she castigated Obama's transparent saber-rattling on Pakistan. ... On matters of diplomacy, Clinton's views are not so different from those held by John McCain and most Republicans [big fat bold letters mine]—and they are certainly well to the right of Obama.''
I fail to see why it is "right-minded, in a feminist way'' to appoint someone whose views were rejected by the majority of Americans. And though I understand the impulse to aw, just go ahead and give it to her, this job is too important to be anybody's consolation prize, and that she has suffered does not mean she has earned it. To me, her trippy Tuzla flashbacks, or whatever those were, do not suggest a firm grasp of even her own life. Emily B., you imagine that though she's been a lousy manager in the past, she's "too smart not to figure out (finally) how to successfully delegate the management of this'' State Department. But isn't history a better predictor than IQ?
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My fellow Emily, as usual I read your acerbic post and find myself about to disavow my own previously held views. Why did I find myself aflutter over the prospect of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton again? Oh right: She could ace this job! You are right that she has not proved herself as an administrator. But here are three quick retorts: That is only part of the state job, three's the charm, and she is too smart not to figure out (finally) how to successfully delegate the management of this. Plus the bonus: She must be through with some of her worst campaign managers. On the soap opera front, for once I don't want Bill drama to disqualify her. I hated the idea of the retread of the two of them back in the White House. But this would be her work, her office, and I can't believe the Obama people haven't made it clear that Bill's role should be limited to the cheery star-power glad-handing he is so good at. If they think that they can work with her, then like Hanna says, I'm ready to trust them. Also, I want the Democrats' rival houses to come together this way. This president is taking over with all the world in economic shambles. It's the right time for putting aside past differences, for our most prominent politicians to act like their biggest and best selves. That's what Secretary Hillary would signify to me, on both sides of the détente.
Also, while I resist the idea that Hillary Clinton deserves this, in the sense that no one deserves any incredibly prestigious plum of an office, the Tracy Flick fan in me wants her to have it. And wants her to shine. Yes, she could also just go on being a good senator. But this gives her the opportunity for a grander next act. I want her to keep the pantsuits and the toughness but lose the brittle edge of her image that the campaign left us with. She should be the bitch who gets stuff done, as Tina Fey put it, but less bitchy.
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Dana, I second Hanna's welcome, but I can't agree with either of you on Hillary. There's a lot to admire about her, but can't we just all admire Sen. Clinton? The two times she has run large organizations—health care reform and her campaign—she has shown herself to be a execrable administrator. And I can't see how having the Clintons back (How do you separate out his foreign activities from hers?) will do anything but create drama and distraction. Talk about As the World Turns! I agree with both of you about Obama making international women's rights a priority, but he doesn't need Hillary to do that. I listened to the campaign interview you linked to Dana, in which Hillary goes on and on about her unfair treatment. You quote her remark, "Oppression of women and discrimination against women is universal." It sounded more to me like what she really meant was, "Oppression of woman and discrimination against woman is universal." What a bunch of Clintonian self-pity for her to compare her experience in what I think was a surprisingly unsexist presidential campaign to the lives of women who in some parts of the world can't show their faces or choose who they marry.
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Dana, welcome. I accept your scolding. In every way it is petty to want to deny Hillary this opportunity. It's right-minded, in a feminist way, not just because of her fabulous speech in Beijing but also because Hillary could rewrite the job to her own qualifications. For long it's been a job that, if not quite symbolic, was awarded to women who would be loyal seconds (Condi, Madeline Albright). Hillary is a person with stronger, surer instincts on foreign policy than her boss (see Jeff Goldberg's analysis in The New Yorker). And Obama is a person who, one imagines, would allow her to shine. Rethinking my earlier complaint: The Clintonites would do the most damage on domestic policy, where the country has moved far past 1992. So let's just feed the beast and give them this one, and then maybe they'll stop angling for everything else.
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Yes, the Bill factor is irritating. But this story about forced abortion in China reminds me why it might be pretty neat to have Hillary as secretary of state—despite Emily, Hanna, and Melinda's convincing articulations of Clinton fatigue. Arzigul Tursun is a Muslim Uighur woman living in rural western China. A mother of two, Arzigul and her husband fled their village after learning she was again pregnant, in violation of Chinese law. When government officials threatened to seize their home unless Arzigul submitted to an abortion, the Tursuns returned. Due to international outcry, the situation is now in deadlock, with the 26-week pregnant Arzigul currently under watch at a municipal hospital.
So what does this have to do with Hillary Clinton? In short, with sexual and gender oppression at the root of so many global conflicts, I'd welcome a secretary of state not only aware of these problems, but with a history of speaking out on them. One of Hillary's most famous speeches as first lady was at the United Nations World Conference on Women in Beijing, where she declared "human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights." On the campaign trail in July 2007, Clinton said, "When I traveled to China in 1995 ... I thought it was absolutely essential that I speak out against the practice in China of one child per one family. Because what that meant for women's lives was often forced sterilization and forced abortion."
Of course, we have a female secretary of state currently, and we've had one in the past. But Condi Rice has hardly pursued a feminist agenda, and Madeleine Albright, though she had a history of working on women's issues, didn't come with the platform and celebrity Hillary would bring to the job. If anything, Hillary became more comfortable with playing the role of feminist icon over the course of the long 2008 campaign. Partly, that was a purely political choice; she learned after that choked-up moment in New Hampshire that appealing to women delivered more votes than some of her more hawkish advisers had assumed. But only her fiercest critics could accuse Clinton of not having real feminist convictions. In a Washington Post interview as her primary campaign faltered, Clinton said, "Oppression of women and discrimination against women is universal."
As secretary of state, Hillary would be Obama's chief diplomat. And indeed, it would be strange to see her directing negotiations with Iran, for example, after harshly attacking Obama for wanting to speak directly to that nation's leaders. But if Obama gave Hillary some latitude to develop a platform on international women's issues, it would send a powerful message. Maybe that doesn't outweigh all that Clinton fatigue—but it's at least something to consider.
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