Sec. of State Clinton? The Bill factor.

[Vehicle]

So if you're from the country, and maybe if you're not, you can't help but hear about Obama's possible choice of Hillary Clinton for Secretary of State. And, with that, comes all the conservative rabble rousing over Bill Clinton and what his role would be in an Obama administration with Clinton as the #3.

Now, the New York Times and the Washington Post have been having an editorial hay day with all this shit. My question to you guys is how relevant is it?

People are bitching because his foundation has gotten a shit ton of money from foreign dignataries/governments, including Saudi royalty and the government of Dubai.

My personal feeling on this is that the Clinton's need to fully disclose any contributions they've received, which they've yet to do because it isn't legally required, and allow for them to be properly vetted. The problem here is that Bill has previously been a little bitch about it and has refused to give up a list of contributors which leads one to be suspicious of who exactly could be on that list. But, with that aside, I think if she is picked it would have to be done for confirmation purposes.

Then there are the brow-beaters who are like 'Well Bill Clinton does all these foreign country speaking gigs.' So what? Why does that matter? Yes, he is an ex-President, yes people abroad do listen to what he says, yes he is a highly visible politician, but he isn't going to be SoS. Hillary would do better to come out and say 'hey guys listen, I'm not my husbands bitch and I do make my own decisions.'

For some reason, though, not even the Obama administration has been saying that. They've been saying that Bill Clinton would be a great resource as a psuedo-diplomat, which could be true, but why does he even have a role?

And lastly people are picking apart their campaign differences on foreign policy. But I think we could all agree that these differences were mostly trumeped up?

I dunno, the fervor over all this is just mind-boggling to me. I don't even really see why it's an issue. And then there's always the possibilty that Clinton won't even get tapped (LOL,) but I think it's pretty clear that so long as the Obama team doesn't dig up any serious skeletons in her, or Bills, closet that she'll get the nomination at least. Does anyone really want Bill Richardson or John Kerry doing it?

[Vehicle]

Speak of the devil:

Source: http://www.boston.com/news/nation/ar...ssociates_say/

Associates of Senator Hillary Clinton said yesterday she is weighing whether to leave Congress and become secretary of state in the Obama administration, a job they say she believes is hers if she wants it.

"I'll do whatever they want," [Bill] told reporters yesterday.

Bill Clinton has shifted a longstanding policy and agreed to publicly disclose the names of all donors who have given more than $250 to his presidential library and foundation.

The former president has also agreed to submit future foundation activities and paid speeches to a strict ethics review

So I guess I was right. WINNER

[Vykromond]

obama's people have proven their intelligence and political acumen time and again but i still can't help but wonder at this decision. the woman who ridiculed his foreign policy and called it "naive" gets to be secretary of state? what the fuck? put her in HHS

[Kolar]

Isn't giving her the role more symbolic? I don't think it carries a lot of weight these days. Rice has a lot of influence but tends to be marginalized by the neo-conservative establishment whenever she goes off script, and she has done so more often lately. I mean if HHS was fourth in line of succession she'd probably get that. That's all that the Clinton people and I think the party wants right now.

I think the Democrats have learned that long elections cycles are tough, they cost too much money and political capital on both sides. And most of all I think they learned that the Senate might not be the best launching pad into the presidency. Added to that is the reality of removing otherwise good candidates from the Senate for cabinet positions may cause the Senate to become unbalanced as every vote counts without a majority situation (there's nothing that says a State Governor has to replace her or anyone leaving the Senate with a Democrat, or anyone close to their positions or ideology). A lot of Republicans on the other hand want to replace Ted Stevens with Palin if they are able to expel him, giving her a place on the national stage.... again

[Vykromond]

no cabinet position that high up is truly symbolic, just because rice gets marginalized doesn't mean her position is meaningless. for one thing, rice does a lot of DIRECT DIPLOMACY with other countries, and obama would want to expand direct diplomacy to countries that hillary doesn't really want to talk to (at least according to her debate performances).

i can't imagine that the clintons really care about 4+ in the line of succession. are there rumours to that effect? do you have a link? that just seems ludicrous to me, what are the odds the first 3 would all die... staying out of the administration altogether would be better for presidential ambitions than hoping for a terrorist attack or something

i think on balance the long primary cycle probably helped obama. no one gave a shit about or paid attention to john mccain during that whole time, which meant that when he did get in the picture he had to make sweeping gestures to get people to care about him... gestures like nominating palin... and we know how that went.

plus it gave obama tons of time to raise trillions of dollars or whatever

also ted stevens lost the alaska election so no worries there. -> http://voices.washingtonpost.com/sle...news-col-blogs <- what an assbag

[Vehicle]

Well it turns out Ted Stevens lost, so thank God.

I read something Henry Kissinger wrote yesterday and no matter how you feel about what he did as Secretary, you have to admit he did at least DO something. (Nudge nudge Condi)

He said that with the backing of the President, world leaders who are speaking to the SoS see it as if they are 'speaking through them directly to the President.' While, such as in Condi's position, SoS's that don't really have that much clout back in Washington are pretty much brushed off as useless.

So I think that how effective she would be is dependent on how much the Obama administration wants her to be able to do. And, as far as I can tell, they're taking these cabinet positions pretty seriously but you do have to consider that Joe Biden is probably going to run the foreign policy show.

[Kolar]

no cabinet position that high up is truly symbolic, just because rice gets marginalized doesn't mean her position is meaningless. for one thing, rice does a lot of DIRECT DIPLOMACY with other countries, and obama would want to expand direct diplomacy to countries that hillary doesn't really want to talk to (at least according to her debate performances).

I think the idea of giving it to her is more about giving her a place to stand for 2016 then anything else. In the Bush Admin I would say the position has become less important given that they've opted for the Bush doctrine and military intervention in almost every single crisis, how that will effect Obama's and the State Department's ability to manage current conflicts and future ones will be interesting to see. Somalia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq... I'm probably missing some but North Korea seems to be the only country they've gone for the diplomacy card. They've refused direct diplomacy with Iran and Sudan was pretty much on the back burner if it was a consideration at all. I don't think the line of succession matters much I just mentioned it since it indicates Obama and the party wants her somewhere high up for a run in 8 years, but like I said it could be 4th in line as Secretary of Education And she would still be considered.


I think the Republicans knew they were toast (no pun intended) before going into the election. The party was split on who to go with so they picked a fall man, John McCain. I'm not saying he was the worst of them or would be as bad as Bush but he's probably the one who the party thought they could do without, not wanting to waste a potential good candidate for the future in a winnable election. The long election cycle did help Obama but it can be very taxing on party coffers, man power and on the public. They just like the Republicans probably prefer a shorter cycle and that's why they will likely go with Clinton in 2016.

That's interesting I didn't know he lost. I thought he had it. Thanks Vyk.

[Epinephrine]

Man this thread is so behind the times.

Not only was Bill saying he'd do anything including revealing his donor list all yesterday's news, so was the fact that Ted Stevens lost.

[DankNuggets]

when you say 4th in succession, I assume you mean after VP, Speaker of the House, and then Pres. Pro Temp Senate?

No way that has any bearing on picking the position. Not only would all 4 ppl have to die, they'd have to die pretty much at once.

I think they want to put her in a very public position in the cabinet. I aslo think even if she's the SoS, she'll have very little direct say in what happens. It might even be "on the job training" for potentially running in 2016, since she hardly had more senatorial experience. Also, like you said, the senate might not be the best place to be in a Presidential election (though we had both candidates from it this year). However, I've heard that she's in line to get a pretty good comittee position in the senate if she stays there.

Looking down the line too, if she does become SoS, I'm betting she'd be running as VP for the 2012 election. I don't know if it was played up or not, but I have a "sense" of a pretty big rift between her and obama. I think that rift had a lot to do with her being left out of the VP nomination. Four years as SoS might do a lot to bring them together as far as being on the same page policy wise.

I think Bill Clinton's only going to be as involved as Hillary lets him, which if I have to go on the historical fiction of the past decade, she's one stone cold bitch and he's not going to get a word in. Some people have gone so far as to say she had a lot, i mean a lot, to do with bill's presidency in the first place.

[Kolar]

when you say 4th in succession, I assume you mean after VP, Speaker of the House, and then Pres. Pro Temp Senate?

No way that has any bearing on picking the position. Not only would all 4 ppl have to die, they'd have to die pretty much at once.

I didn't say the line of sucession is important or anything. They want her somewhere at the top for a run at the presidency in 2016, I only mentioned the line of succession because Secretary of State is high up there in Cabinet and thus the line of succession.

[DankNuggets]

I didn't say the line of sucession is important or anything. They want her somewhere at the top for a run at the presidency in 2016, I only mentioned the line of succession because Secretary of State is high up there in Cabinet and thus the line of succession.

There's a thick line between succeding someone's term as president, and succeding in position because someone died ahead of you. I was confused. Secretary of State is so far from being president, that I would never consider that an aspect of the job.

[Kolar]

You're not getting what I am saying. The party wants her in a good position to run for president in 2016. SoS is a good position for her to do that. That's all. I am not talking about her taking over for Obama's first term, or take over or run in 2012 if he is removed or dies.