June 26, 2009 5:14 PM
- Text
Clinton Gains Respect Out Of Spotlight
(The Politico)
This story was written by Ben Smith
Back last fall, when Barack Obama sprang his surprise about naming former rival Hillary Clinton as his secretary of state, many people assumed she would be the Cabinet's brightest star - a celebrity at large on the world stage, the face of American foreign policy while the president was consumed back home by domestic issues and a troubled economy.
Few commentators predicted the reality: an era of grindstone leadership at the State Department.
But that's exactly what Clinton has fashioned at Foggy Bottom. She has become a disciplined loyalist who jostles for White House influence just like any Cabinet secretary and who has advanced her cause by striking some key internal alliances.
Most surprisingly, she has about as low a news-making profile as is possible for someone who is arguably the most famous woman on the planet. When she slipped and broke her elbow last week, it was the most press coverage she had gotten in months. A Nexis database search showed she had fewer mentions last month than any time since she launched her presidential bid in January 2007.
It is an arrangement that, by all appearances, seems to suit Clinton and the Obama White House just fine, even as it has contributed to increasing chatter in foreign policy circles about her clout.
By some lights, no one should be surprised by the former presidential candidate's latest reinvention. It is an encore performance - a revival of the same strategy Clinton used when arriving to a chamber of skeptical colleagues after being elected to the Senate in 2000. Then she brushed aside national publicity and immersed herself on such issues as regional dairy compacts while waiting years for the right moment to re-emerge.
But the Cabinet represents a different challenge than the Senate. Like that of all her colleagues in the administration, her power is, in the end, derivative - depending on her relationship and access to Obama himself.
Some close observers think she has not done enough to preserve her department's influence, in part because several key issues-the Mideast peace process, Iran and Afghanistan - are steered by high-level envoys who work directly with the White House, albeit with coordination by State.
"You've got the empire of envoys that she acquiesced in, which sent into motion these little fiefdoms," said Aaron David Miller, a former longtime Middle East negotiator. "The general proposition is that in diplomacy and strategy, all power seems to be flowing away from the State Department."
Both the State Department and the White House are eager to rebut this perception before it takes deep root in either elite foreign policy circles or the news media.
In the reporting for this article, an array of senior officials got on the line - including many who do not ordinarily give interviews or do so on background rules - for on-the-record singing of her praises.
"Her star power has been an enormously effective tool for us," Tom Donilon, the deputy national security adviser with a central role in running foreign policy day to day, told POLITICO, describing the attention she commands abroad and her access to foreign leaders.
"She's a pretty tough customer in private negotiations, as you would imagine, and expects partners to behave like partners and expects people to do what they say they're going to do."
Donilon and other top officials emphasized how well she has fit in among the "alpha males" - as she put it to one of them, Afghanistan and Pakistan envoy Richard Holbrooke - who compose the rest of the foreign policy team. A spokesman for Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Geoff Morrell, noted that those two have emerged as particular allies.
Back last fall, when Barack Obama sprang his surprise about naming former rival Hillary Clinton as his secretary of state, many people assumed she would be the Cabinet's brightest star - a celebrity at large on the world stage, the face of American foreign policy while the president was consumed back home by domestic issues and a troubled economy.
Few commentators predicted the reality: an era of grindstone leadership at the State Department.
But that's exactly what Clinton has fashioned at Foggy Bottom. She has become a disciplined loyalist who jostles for White House influence just like any Cabinet secretary and who has advanced her cause by striking some key internal alliances.
Most surprisingly, she has about as low a news-making profile as is possible for someone who is arguably the most famous woman on the planet. When she slipped and broke her elbow last week, it was the most press coverage she had gotten in months. A Nexis database search showed she had fewer mentions last month than any time since she launched her presidential bid in January 2007.
It is an arrangement that, by all appearances, seems to suit Clinton and the Obama White House just fine, even as it has contributed to increasing chatter in foreign policy circles about her clout.
By some lights, no one should be surprised by the former presidential candidate's latest reinvention. It is an encore performance - a revival of the same strategy Clinton used when arriving to a chamber of skeptical colleagues after being elected to the Senate in 2000. Then she brushed aside national publicity and immersed herself on such issues as regional dairy compacts while waiting years for the right moment to re-emerge.
But the Cabinet represents a different challenge than the Senate. Like that of all her colleagues in the administration, her power is, in the end, derivative - depending on her relationship and access to Obama himself.
Some close observers think she has not done enough to preserve her department's influence, in part because several key issues-the Mideast peace process, Iran and Afghanistan - are steered by high-level envoys who work directly with the White House, albeit with coordination by State.
"You've got the empire of envoys that she acquiesced in, which sent into motion these little fiefdoms," said Aaron David Miller, a former longtime Middle East negotiator. "The general proposition is that in diplomacy and strategy, all power seems to be flowing away from the State Department."
Both the State Department and the White House are eager to rebut this perception before it takes deep root in either elite foreign policy circles or the news media.
In the reporting for this article, an array of senior officials got on the line - including many who do not ordinarily give interviews or do so on background rules - for on-the-record singing of her praises.
"Her star power has been an enormously effective tool for us," Tom Donilon, the deputy national security adviser with a central role in running foreign policy day to day, told POLITICO, describing the attention she commands abroad and her access to foreign leaders.
"She's a pretty tough customer in private negotiations, as you would imagine, and expects partners to behave like partners and expects people to do what they say they're going to do."
Donilon and other top officials emphasized how well she has fit in among the "alpha males" - as she put it to one of them, Afghanistan and Pakistan envoy Richard Holbrooke - who compose the rest of the foreign policy team. A spokesman for Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Geoff Morrell, noted that those two have emerged as particular allies.
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