Scott Helman quotes me going against the grain in his Boston Globe story today. Here's his lead:
If President-elect Barack Obama taps Senator Hillary Clinton to be his secretary of state, he would be giving her oversight of an area where the two former rivals diverged sharply during their prolonged primary battle: foreign policy.
From their first clashes in the summer of 2007 through spring this year, Obama and Clinton fought bitterly over who had a deeper understanding of the world, exchanging sharp words over their international experience and their views on diplomacy, military strikes against terrorists, the right approach toward Iran, and the genesis of the Iraq war.
It is the one arena in which Obama and Clinton articulated significantly different visions. On a host of other issues - taxes, healthcare, jobs, free trade, investments in renewable energy - their positions were often indistinguishable.
And here's my quote:
Daniel Drezner, a professor of international politics at Tufts University, however, disputes the notion that Obama and Clinton differed significantly during the primary race on foreign affairs, arguing that on issues such as diplomacy, their heated rhetoric belied a broad similarity in approach. "A lot of the foreign policy skirmishes between the two were more about style than anything else," he said.
Looking over Helman's evidence, I stand by my quote. In my memory, Obama and Clinton bickered more over health care than foreign policy (though they clearly bickered about both), and their sharpest disagreement was about the Iraq decision in 2002/3. They had to disagree on
something because it was a primary and they needed to differentiate themselves. That does not mean there is a lot of daylight between them on substantive policy questions.
Readers are encouraged to tell me if they think my assessment is wrong.
I have two additional thoughts abut Hillary as SoS:
- Because of her rock star quality, I suspect she would be a diplomatic force multiplier. Countries will be more appreciative of a visit by Hillary Clinton than they would if Richard Holbrooke, Bill Richardson or John Kerry were coming to town.
- Based on her management abilities to date, I fear for the denizens of Foggy Bottom. The State Department is a whopper of a bureaucracy, and I don't know how well she'll do at managing it.
UPDATE:
Politico's Ben Smith has a good story on the nausea a Clinton appointment is creating among some Obama supporters. He quotes
this Matt Yglesias post claiming that, "the specific policy area at issue seems to be one in which the two of them aren’t all that well-aligned," but, again, the biggest difference is over a decision made six years ago.
Smith also quotes Robert Kuttner saying it's a bad idea -- and since Kuttner is one of my anti-predictors, I'm now warming to the idea.
In a follow-up blog post, Smith adds, " there was ever a campaign that took the complaints of liberal bloggers seriously, it was ... well, not Obama's." Heh.
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