Clinton Strays From Script

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton only partly repeated herself Wednesday at a news conference. Some saw that as significant.

February 5, 2010
Bit of a Stir as Clinton Strays From Script on Mideast Peace
By MARK LANDLER


WASHINGTON — With an inadvertent bit of shorthand, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton set off a buzz in diplomatic circles on Wednesday, and may have offered a glimpse into how the Obama administration hopes to revive the stalled peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. Answering a question at a news conference about how the talks might be revived, Mrs. Clinton said, “Of course, we believe that the 1967 borders, with swaps, should be the focus of the negotiations over borders.” Such a concept is not new. For a generation of Middle East peacemakers, Israel’s borders before the Arab-Israeli war are the obvious starting point for negotiations over the shape of a Palestinian state.

But Mrs. Clinton’s mention of them went farther than the Obama administration’s standard script on the Middle East: that the positions of Israel and the Palestinians can be reconciled. Analysts said it could augur a new American emphasis, after a frustrating year in which President Obama failed to jump-start the peace process by pressuring Israel to halt construction of settlements.


In particular, Mrs. Clinton’s reference may appeal to the Palestinians, who have long declared that the 1967 borders should be the basis for negotiations. The United States is trying desperately to persuade the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, to return to the bargaining table.


“The reason why this is important is the context,” said David Makovsky, director of the Project on the Middle East Peace Process at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “To have it formulated this way, at this sensitive juncture, gives it a kind of significance.”


A spokesman for the State Department, Philip J. Crowley, said that Mrs. Clinton had not been signaling a shift in policy. She has mentioned 1967 borders before — notably in a statement after Israel announced a 10-month moratorium on settlement construction in the West Bank — though always in the context of the Palestinian position. This time, he said, she was merely speaking in shorthand. “The secretary was reiterating our established policy on borders,” Mr. Crowley said. “She was not sending a signal.”

Earlier in the same news conference, with the foreign minister of Bahrain, Mrs. Clinton recited the full version of the policy. In addition to referring to the 1967 borders, “with agreed swaps,” she mentioned Israel’s goal of a “Jewish state with secure and recognized borders.”


“Agreed swaps” mainly refers to Jewish settlements in the West Bank, some of which would be legally granted to Israel in return for Israeli territory that would become part of a new Palestinian state. The Israeli government has resisted entering negotiations on the basis of 1967 borders because it believes that would constrain its room for negotiation. On Thursday, Israeli diplomats said they had taken note of Mrs. Clinton’s words but did not want to jump to any conclusions. “There’s an intense effort being made with the administration to resume negotiations, but we’re still at a preparatory stage,” said Jonathan Peled, a spokesman for the Israeli Embassy in Washington.

Mr. Abbas, who is also known as Abu Mazen, has refused to enter negotiations with Israel until it freezes all construction of settlements, including in East Jerusalem, something it has refused to do. Some Palestinians said it was unlikely that Mrs. Clinton’s comments, by themselves, would bring him around. “Abu Mazen seems to be averse even to getting U.S. commitments,” said Ziad J. Asali, the president of the American Task Force on Palestine. “It will take commitments that are credible.”

In the absence of a breakthrough, the United States is trying to encourage indirect talks between the sides, with its special envoy for the Middle East, George J. Mitchell, serving as intermediary.

Failing health

“In the longer term, reform would have been better for them,” said Les Funtleyder, the health care strategist for Miller Tabak & Company, a New York investment firm. He acknowledged that insurance stocks might benefit in the short run as investors expressed their relief over the diminishing odds of a health care bill. The health care legislation under construction in Congress would force the insurers to conduct business very differently, but the companies had already agreed to some of the most fundamental changes. One was their pledge to offer coverage to everyone, regardless of medical status, if the government could ensure that people, even the young and healthy, would have to sign up.


In return, Mr. Funtleyder noted, Congress was potentially delivering as many as 30 million new customers to the insurance market — many of whom would be able to afford coverage because the government would subsidize the cost of premiums. “That’s real revenue, even for Wall Street,” he said.

So why were Republicans so opposed to the bills in Congress? Because they hadn't written them. Opposition to everything Obama has been their credo and mission.


If the health overhaul is indeed dead ... the critical question becomes “how do you grow these businesses?” The insurers say they understand the need for change in their business, particularly so they can offer more affordable coverage to people who must buy insurance on their own and are in poor health.

 Industry analysts say insurers may end up having to adopt some of the changes that the legislation envisions, either on their own or as state regulators demand changes. To be sure, not everyone agrees that the health care legislation would be worse for the industry than the current situation. Some analysts say it is unclear how many of the tens of millions of people without coverage would have actually become customers under the legislation, given the weak federal financial penalties if they did not enroll and questions over how generous the government subsidies would eventually be. 

 The biggest cost of the failure to pass health care reform will accrue to the Administration. For a year the Democrats had the votes to pass legislation, and after the ugliness of the sausage-making process of creating legislation out in the open, of the legislation hostage-taking perpetrated by Senators Lieberman and Nelson, there is nothing.

Not only did legislation not pass, not only did it fail to pass, but the entire process looked ugly, and during the process the President looked detached, aloof, disinterested.

If the Clinton health legislation debacle is a case study in overinvolvement, the Obama health legislation debacle is a case study in underinvolvement.

Hillary Reborn

Illustration by Andy Friedman










The sudden Clinton clamor in the media strikes the ear as especially cacophonous in light of how quiet she has been for most of her nine months in her new job. And the sound of silence out of State, in turn, has given rise to a clear conventional wisdom about Hillary’s role in Obamaville, which is part of what she was reacting to in her interviews with NBC and ABC this week. The CW, put succinctly, is that Hillary is a virtual nonentity in the administration: that in terms of political status, she ranks in the second tier, and that when it comes to policy sway, she has been out-barked and out-bitten by the pack of alpha dogs that the president has installed around her.

She is keeping a very low profile.

It’s easy enough to understand this interpretation of Clinton’s standing. After her soap-operatic campaign, the absence of drama around HRC creates cognitive dissonance for the punditocracy and other Beltway tea-leaf readers. Yet the truth is that the conventional wisdom is wrong, I think, in both its particulars and its overall verdict. And not just wrong but illustrative of a set of misapprehensions about how the woman thinks and operates—or, at least, how she’s learned to do so, especially with respect to the navigation of new terrain. Indeed, one need only look back as far as her time in the Senate to understand how she now sees and plays the game, and why, on everything from the battle over U.S. policy in Afghanistan to the shaping of her future, she’s perfectly likely to win.

It’s possible, of course, that gender studies is the appropriate prism through which Clinton’s behavior should be viewed. But for my money, history provides more insight—in particular, the history of Hillary’s ascension to the upper chamber on the Hill in 2001.

To the outside world, all this laying low has made Clinton look like less of a player. But the reality is almost exactly the opposite. From the outset, Hillary recognized that she could only exercise influence inside the administration if she were trusted by Obama and the people close to him. And although the president himself and Emanuel never had much doubt that she could be a team player, many others in the Obamasphere were supremely skeptical. But no longer. “In terms of loyalty, discretion, and collegiality,” says a senior White House official, “she’s been everything we could have asked or hoped for.”

Has Clinton seriously ruled out another presidential run? I have no idea. What I do know is that her statements on the matter are perfectly meaningless. In the old days, of course, going back on such unequivocal renouncements carried a high political price. But Obama—who renounced his own renouncement of any chance he would run for president in the space of nine months in 2006 and incurred no penalty—may have put an end to that convention. If he has, it may be yet another thing for which Hillary, by an irony, finds herself tossing a bouquet to her former rival, oh, around 2015.

Mi sombrero, por favor

Manuel Zelaya, right, the ousted Honduran president, before a news conference Monday at the Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa.







First, depose a president. Second, hire a lobbyist.

In the months since soldiers ousted the Honduran president, Manuel Zelaya, the de facto government and its supporters have resisted demands from the United States that he be restored to power. Arguing that the left-leaning Mr. Zelaya posed a threat to their country’s fragile democracy by trying to extend his time in office illegally, they have made their case in Washington in the customary way: by starting a high-profile lobbying campaign.

The campaign has had the effect of forcing the administration to send mixed signals about its position to the de facto government, which reads them as signs of encouragement. It also has delayed two key State Department appointments in the region.

Costing at least $400,000 so far, according to lobbying registration records, the campaign has involved law firms and public relations agencies with close ties to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Senator John McCain, a leading Republican voice on foreign affairs.

A tangled web, indeed.

In addition to the support of such cold war veterans — and partly because of it — the de facto government has mobilized the support of a determined group of Republican legislators, led by Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina. They are holding up two State Department appointments as a way of pressing the Obama administration to lift sanctions against the country.

“We have made a wrong call here,” Mr. DeMint said in an interview with Fox News after returning from a trip to Honduras last Friday. Referring to the de facto government, he said, “This is probably our best friend in the hemisphere, the most pro-American country, but we are trying to strangle them.”

I favor the ouster, and don't see it as a coup, and dislike seeing Chávez and Ortega and Morales and Correa gloating in the company of the man with the sombrero, but DeMint gives me the creeps.

Chris Sabatini, editor of Americas Quarterly, a policy journal focusing on Latin America, said the lobbying had muddled Washington’s position on the coup. The administration has said publicly that it sees the coup in Honduras as a dangerous development in a region that not too long ago was plagued by them, he said.

But, he added, to placate its opponents in Congress, and have its nominations approved, the State Department has sometimes sent back-channel messages to legislators expressing its support for Mr. Zelaya in more equivocal terms.

“There’s been a leadership vacuum on Honduras in the administration, and these are the people who’ve filled it,” he said of the Micheletti government’s backers. “They haven’t gotten a lot of support, but enough to hold the administration’s policy hostage for now.”

Certainly the Administration wishes the problem would just go away, for supporting Zelaya is a slimy business.

In Africa, Clinton Balances

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton greets Liberians as she arrives at the presidential palace in Monrovia on Thursday. Mrs. Clinton offered support for Liberia's President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, who has faced calls to resign.
Slideshow


Mrs. Clinton's seven-nation trip through Africa, which ends Friday, has been a balancing act between calling for good governance, while protecting U.S.-African economic ties. Those relationships are especially important now, as China, a U.S. economic competitor in Africa, has increasingly invested in the continent, offering loans, building roads and striking deals for commodities.

The US has neglected Africa for decades, only stepping in during times of crisis, and then in a rather perfunctory way -- although George W. Bush did provide a major contribution to fighting AIDS. Africa will become more valuable as a market and of greater strategic importance in the years ahead, dn it behooves the US to act.

Mrs. Clinton's Africa trip is the latest example of her push for so-called personalized diplomacy, which focuses as much on meeting businessmen and civil-society groups as heads of state and diplomats. In her speeches, the secretary underscored the Obama administration's commitment to "soft power" and using trade, technology and aid in addition to military power to protect American interests.

The shift in strategy may improve relations with African governments that chafe at Western criticism, but win less support from Africans themselves. Mrs. Clinton's trip comes as Africans have begun to question their leaders, even under oppressive regimes, more openly.

Cape Verde is a major US aid recipient.

The approach is a stark departure from that of the Bush administration, which in some cases openly challenged close allies. But the soft approach may cause problems of its own. Human-rights organizations could seize on the strategy as a waning of American resolve to exert influence. President Barack Obama's political critics could claim the approach places economic interests over moral obligations.

Such stentorian lecturing of waning political resolved does much to mollify the consciences of the lecturers, yet accomplishes little in practical terms. Moral obligations? To do what? Lecture? Pontificate? How about practical accomplishments?

Clinton Says Liberia Making Progress

Clinton Says Liberia Making Progress in Fighting Corruption

Voice of America - Scott Stearns - ‎1 hour ago‎

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf's government is making significant progress in the fight against corruption.

Preaching reform, Clinton wins African hearts The Associated Press

Clinton Backs Liberia's Leaders New York Times

BBC News - Bloomberg - TIME - NPR

Clinton’s Flash of Pique in Congo

Hillary Rodham Clinton in Africa


It was hot. She was tired. And it had been a long day in Africa.

And the media has made her remark the story. All the other things she has done have been buried under the trivial.

After the forum, her aides told the traveling press corps that there might have been a mistranslation, and that the student actually wanted to know the opinion of her boss, not her husband. But that interpretation did not dispel the controversy either, since it gave new life to the nagging question of whether Mrs. Clinton felt marginalized in the Obama administration.

Palace intrigue seems more important than substantive issues.

Her talk with the students had started out friendly enough, with questions about human rights and the environment. But it got a little edgy when several students pushed her on why Congo, whose first prime minister was ousted with the help of the C.I.A., should now trust the United States. She then became a little prickly.

the hubbub seemed to drain Mrs. Clinton. Until then, she had seemed impervious to the jet lag that was stalking her entourage from the moment they plopped down in Kenya. But on Tuesday, especially after meeting Congolese rape victims and touring a squalid refugee camp where thousands of people lived cheek by sunken cheek, Mrs. Clinton seemed enervated. Perhaps it was the sight of so many civilians suffering from a conflict the world has failed to stop. She said a few words on the plane ride back from Congo, but her language was not as emotional as it had been, or as urgent.

No matter the issues she was talking about — encouraging good governing, ending Africa’s wars, lifting women up from their lowly position in a place like Congo. The interest in this trip, it seemed, was not about the problems facing Africa. It was about her.

As one journalist covering her trip put it: “She is a celebrity. We have a celebrity secretary of state. When you have a celebrity, you get celebrity coverage.”

What does say about the media covering her? Nothing good about that media covering her.

Hillary meets Mandela

Day four of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's 11-day tour of Africa has landed her in South Africa, where she met with former South African President Nelson Mandela, a meeting she said left her with "admiration for his public work but an even greater affection for the man." She is scheduled next to meet with President Jacob Zuma, the current South African president, to discuss reform, business and health in Zimbabwe. She will leave for Angola on Sunday, before heading to Nigeria, Liberia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Cape Verde.



















Hillary's Gutsy Mission
by Eliza Griswold
August 7, 2009 | 12:47am

Hillary Clinton AP Photo Hillary Clinton met with Nelson Mandela in South Africa Friday, which she said left her with "an even greater affection for the man." But her trip isn't just friendly encounters. The Daily Beast's Eliza Griswold writes that instead of paying lip service to Africa’s woes on her 11-day trip to the continent, Hillary is courting controversy by meeting a Somali leader Bush deposed and taking on rape in Congo—and it’s a major step forward.

There’s a cynical kind of math that comes along with reporting on Africa. Forget positive, or complex coverage; the bottom line is death tolls have to be high for anyone to care at all, or for any news outfit to foot the bill on a given story.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s 11-day trip to Africa is a promising indication that may be changing. First, it’s the longest venture she’s taken out of the country thus far. Second, it comes on the heels of her boss’ trip to Ghana three weeks ago. Such heavy hitters so early on in Africa? It’s unheard of.

And then there’s the nature of the business at hand. In Kenya, Clinton has called out the wobbly-at-best coalition government over the deaths of 1,000 people during last year’s election. She is also risking the conservative political fallout at home to meet with the soft-spoken, smoky-eyed president of Somalia, Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed. (The Bush administration helped to oust him three years ago in the name of anti-terror.)

This is an aggressive agenda for the secretary of State, who could use such a trip to bolster approval ratings.

Clinton also is not shying away from addressing the horrors unfolding in Zimbabwe. And she’s taking up an age-old unpopular issue of rape as a crime of war in eastern Congo. Nigeria is yet to come—a country the State Department has called “probably the most important in Africa.” (Read: It’s our fifth-largest oil supplier.) And to round out the itinerary, she’s stopping in Angola, Liberia, and Cape Verde.

This is an aggressive agenda for the secretary of State, who could use such a trip to bolster approval ratings, but in a way it’s uncontroversial foreign policy that pays lip service to Africa’s woes without having to do much but promise American money for intractable far-away problems—malaria, AIDS, global poverty. This on a continent where most people nearly deify the Clintons, and almost all American presidents. (Even George W. Bush was popular here.) But she’s taking on controversial issues and desperate problems without easy solutions.

Two examples: Somalia and Congo.

In Somalia three years ago, under Bush, the U.S. backed an invasion by neighboring Ethiopia, which ousted a popular Islamist government headed by the man Clinton met this week. America was then looking—and in the right place, it turned out—for three suspected al Qaeda members, but the fallout of that invasion was that it created a popular militant insurgency, the very enemy America was seeking to defeat. As Somalis put it: In the hopes of getting three bad guys, you supported the attack of 7 million people? Bad math.

It’s true that the U.S. initiated low-level talks before Barack Obama took office. But people who have urged such a high-level meeting in the past have been scoffed at as idealists, or simply idiots. Clinton’s choice to meet Sheikh Sharif not only will lend him the tremendous legitimacy he needs to try to bring peace to his country, it’s also a very smart move of trying to separate friends from foes, and not letting the foes borrow the too-easy banner of religion to mask an increasingly brutal insurgency. Now, thanks to this meeting, it’s indisputable that the U.S. is willing to work with those who want an Islamic state in Somalia. That will be hard for the militant thugs to spin on the sandy streets of Mogadishu. It is a major step forward.

While rape as a crime of war is hardly a new issue, for Clinton to stop in eastern Congo to address this seemingly intractable problem—from which millions of Congolese women suffer—is an important move toward establishing accountability for the perpetrators. One might think, oh, really, what does it matter that Hillary speaks out against rape? But if ragtag militias fear they might be thrown in jail—or even brought before the International Criminal Court—they will think twice about perpetrating these crimes. Such measures may sound theoretical here in the United States—and in truth, they are mostly bureaucratic nightmares—but sometimes the threat functions as a deterrent. People do think about consequences.

Several years ago, I met three rape victims—euphemistically called bush wives—in a priest’s home not far from the eastern Congolese town of Bunia. They had been held captive for months, and escaped their enemy’s camp by sneaking away in the middle of the night. There was no electricity, so we sat around a wooden table in lantern light, as one woman spoke of overhearing her captors’ instructions on how to handle the United Nations peacekeepers—the blue helmets—patrolling near their camps.

“Just don’t point your guns at them,” one of her captors had said. Meaning: The U.N. peacekeepers in the area—mostly Bangladeshis at the time—would not intervene if Africans were only killing, or raping, each other. They would react only if they themselves were physically threatened.

That was the U.N. mandate, and everyone knew it. The woman’s heart sank as she realized that no one would care; that her life was limitlessly inconsequential to the rest of the world.

It is idealistic to think that Clinton’s visit might turn America’s eye more sharply on Africa. But it is also possible. Six months ago, it was utter lunacy to think that someone as high-ranking as Hillary would meet with the likes of the Somali President Sheikh Sharif. And yet today, it’s yesterday’s news.

Eliza Griswold is a New America fellow and a recipient of the 2010 Rome Prize. Her book, The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches from the Fault Line between Islam and Christianity, will by published by FSG this spring.

Bubba does it again

Conservative right wingers are already criticizing the actions of ex-President Bill Clinton, of course (the WSJ editorial supposes worst-case scenarios), but this is a coup for both him and the Administration. Pictures and words tell a story of diplomatic triumph for ex-President Clinton.





A private plane carrying former President Bill Clinton and two journalists, Laura Ling, 32, and Euna Lee, 36, landed early Wednesday morning in Burbank, just outside Los Angeles. During Mr. Clinton's dramatic 20-hour visit to North Korea, he won the freedom of the American journalists, opened a diplomatic channel to North Korea's reclusive government and dined with the North's ailing leader, Kim Jong-il.

Administration officials said Mr. Clinton went to North Korea as a private citizen, did not carry a message from Mr. Obama for Mr. Kim and had the authority to negotiate only for the women's release.

They're not going to admit it; diplomacy doesn't work that way.

The North Korean government, which in June sentenced the women to 12 years of hard labor for illegally entering North Korean territory, announced hours before the jet's departure from North Korea that it had pardoned the women after Mr. Clinton apologized to Mr. Kim for their actions.

One of the North Koreans who met President Clinton at the airport was a top nuclear negotiator. Useful for internal consumption.

Mr. Clinton’s wife, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, said Wednesday that the administration was “extremely excited” that the women would be reunited with their families. But she denied that her husband had apologized.

Internal consumption. O, and the New York Post's headline at the bottom of page 1: Bubba gets the chicks. Real style, no? Inside, and its website, the headline was BILL CAN STILL GET THE WOMEN.

The negotiations catapulted Mr. Clinton back on to the global stage, on behalf of a president who defeated Mrs. Clinton in a bitter primary campaign last year, and who later asked her to be his secretary of state.

And for journalists who work for the firm founded by his Vice-President. O, he's gotta be loving this.

Mrs. Clinton was deeply involved in the case, too. She proposed sending various people to Pyongyang — including Mr. Gore — to lobby for the release of the women, before Mr. Clinton emerged as the preferred choice of the North Koreans, people briefed on the talks said. About 10 days ago, these people said, Mr. Gore called Mr. Clinton to ask him to undertake the trip. Mr. Clinton agreed, as long as the Obama administration did not object. In an interview Wednesday with NBC’s “Today” show in Nairobi, Kenya, Mrs. Clinton said the final request to Mr. Clinton had come from the White House.


Mr. Clinton embraced his former vice president, Mr. Gore. Given Mr. Clinton's stature and his long interest in the North Korean nuclear issue, experts said it was likely that his discussions in North Korea ranged well beyond obtaining the release of Ms. Ling and Ms. Lee.

The riveting tableau, of a former president jetting into a diplomatic crisis while his wife was embarking on a tour of Africa in her role as the nation’s chief diplomat, underscored the unique and enduring role of the Clintons, even in the Obama era.

They are not going away.

Mr. Clinton has sought to find the right place in the Obama era, eager to play a role without stepping on the toes of the new president or, certainly, the secretary of state.

The last time the two had spoken, said the White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, was in March, when Mr. Obama invited Mr. Clinton to a ceremony in Washington for signing legislation expanding the AmeriCorps program created by Mr. Clinton.

In interviews last spring, Mr. Clinton said that he would be happy to do anything Mr. Obama asked him to do, but that “I try to stay out of their way.”

Mr. Clinton’s mission may be less of an issue for Mr. Obama than for Mrs. Clinton. The same day he landed in North Korea, she arrived in Kenya, beginning an 11-day journey through Africa — a visit now largely eclipsed by her husband’s travels.

Sarah and Hillary

This is a good column from Dowd.


July 29, 2009 - Op-Ed Columnist
Sarah Grabs the Grievance Grab Bag From Hillary
By Maureen Dowd

WASHINGTON

The woman who was prematurely counted in is out. And the woman who was prematurely counted out is in.

Goodbye, Sarah. Hello, Hillary.

Palin should not be counted out.

In their vivid twin performances Sunday — Hillary on “Meet the Press” in Washington and Sarah at her farewell picnic in Fairbanks — two of the most celebrated and polarizing women in American political history offered a fascinating contrast.

Hillary, who so often in the past came across as aggrieved, paranoid and press-loathing, was confident and comfortable in her role as top diplomat, discussing the world with mastery and shrugging off suggestions that she has been disappeared by her former rival, the president.

She is almost 62; in politics, that's middle age.

Sarah, who was once a blazingly confident media darling, came across as aggrieved, paranoid and press-loathing in her new role as bizarre babe-at-large, a Nixon with hair extensions ranting about “American apologetics,” which sounds like a cross between apologists and Dianetics.

Her bizarro followers probably clapped and cried.

Sarah once criticized Hillary for being a whiny presidential contender, arguing that women who want “to progress this country” should not complain about being under a “sharper microscope,” but instead should just work harder to prove themselves capable. Now Sarah is a whiny presidential contender, complaining about the sharper microscope that women wanting to progress this country are under and rejecting advice to work harder to prove herself capable.

Clips of Nixon after losing the California governorship have been played in the last few days; he looked awful, but, then again, the quality of the film is terrible. The voice is unmistakable. 6 years after telling the press they wouldn't "have Nixon to kick around any more" he won the presidency. That must be kept in mind.

The Alaskan who shot to stardom a year ago as the tough embodiment of Diana the Huntress has now stepped down as governor and morphed into what the Republicans always caricatured Hillary as — preachy, screechy and angry.

And Hillary, who is at long last in a job that she earned on her own merits, has lost that irritating question mark she used to carry around above her head like a thunder cloud: What is Hillary owed because of what she gave up, and went through, for Bill?

During the campaign, Hillary got in trouble for pretending to be more than she was, for bragging about dodging bullets in Bosnia and making peace in Northern Ireland. Just so, Sarah got in trouble for pretending to be knowledgeable about foreign affairs just because she lived across the Bering Strait from Russia.

But now Hillary does not have to tell stretchers. She’s fully qualified for her job and doesn’t sound defensive. Now Sarah has taken up Hillary’s old habit of keeping grudges and playing the victim and blaming the press for her own mistakes in judgment and gaffes.

If Sarah’s problem on the trail was that she knew too little, Hillary’s was that she knew too much. Before her misty turn in New Hampshire, Hillary’s wonkiness got in the way of her ability to make people comfortable.

Sarah, lacking Hillary’s cerebral side, has decided to wing it, Quayle-style, and go only for the visceral. That’s why she now sounds like a demagogue, embodying grievances and playing to people’s worst impulses.

Some people love it. Not many, but some.

Hillary’s radiant robustness, on the other hand, even with a sore elbow, makes the dictators in Iran and North Korea we’re so worried about seem like frail, little creatures.

Obama advisers say privately that the president truly respects the woman he ran against, and that they have a good relationship, so good it has even surprised Hillary. Certainly, she doesn’t have to worry that this president’s gaze is going to drift over her shoulder to some pretty thing behind her. In this White House, Barack Obama is the pretty thing who is taken with Hillary’s serious, smartest-girl-at-Wellesley aura. In a funny way, he’s the man of her dreams.

His support of her has allowed her to keep her paranoia in check — even with Richard Holbrooke and Joe Biden biting off parts of her portfolio.

Just to make sure it stays that way, Obama advisers told Hillary that she could not bring on board Sidney Blumenthal, her former aide de camp nicknamed G.K., “Grassy Knoll,” for his tendency to stoke her grievances.

In her cuckoo speech in Fairbanks, Sarah warned Alaskans to “be wary of accepting government largess. It doesn’t come free.” Funny coming from a woman who charged the Alaskan taxpayers every time she worked from Wasilla.

And in a state with a socialist slush fund, er, a royalties fund.

She also went after that old conservative villain Hollywood, saying, “They use these delicate, tiny, very talented celebrity starlets” for “their anti-Second Amendment causes.”

The Second Amendment, guns, is the conservative favorite these days.

Sarah seems happily oblivious that she benefited from Hollywood casting techniques. Just as movie directors have beautiful young actresses playing nuclear physicists and Harvard professors, knowing the fusion of sex appeal and a heavyweight profession will excite, the novelty of a beautiful former beauty queen and TV reporter cast in a powerful role that has featured dour, gray old men like Dick Cheney was thrilling. At first.

As McCain pal and Republican strategist Mike Murphy so sagely observed recently: “If Sarah Palin looked like Golda Meir, would we even be talking about her today?”

Hee, hee.

Sarah should follow her own advice to Hillary and work harder to be capable. Until then, she’s all cage, no bird.

Yanqi (help me) go home

Honduran police on Sunday stopped Manuel Zelaya's wife, Xiomara Castro, as she tried to get to the border with Nicaragua and join her husband.

This is rich: Zelaya criticizes Secretary of State Clinton for not interfering enough.

President Manuel Zelaya stepped up a growing war of words with Washington, too, accusing the Obama administration of not acting forcefully enough to restore him to power.

And Micheletti's camp criticizes the North American administration for supporting Zelaya. As do right-wingers, of course.

Mary Anastasia O'Grady, the Wall Street Journal's resident Latin American right-winger criticizes: Mr. Zelaya appeared somewhat disappointed that his theatrical re-entry did not provoke a shoot-out. A few hours later he jumped back into Nicaragua where Sandinista President Daniel Ortega has given him shelter.

Seemed?

If Mr. Zelaya keeps this up, the crisis could drag on. But however the standoff is resolved, it is likely to be remembered as a defining moment for U.S. Latin America policy under Barack Obama.

Already?

Mr. Obama’s insistence that Mr. Zelaya be restored to power has strengthened the image of an arrogant and patronizing Uncle Sam disconnected from the region’s reality.

Funny how that works in the collective mind: the same exact words are used by the left for the directly opposite viewpoint.

Hondurans might be more amenable to an Obama democracy lecture if the U.S. showed any interest in standing up to Mr. Chávez and his antidemocratic allies or any grasp of the dangers they present. Instead, since taking office in January the American president has embraced the region’s bad actors only to be subsequently embarrassed by revelations that his new “friends” are actually enemies of liberty and peace.

Embraced? He has stopped being hostile, yes. O'Grady simply supports the Bush doctrine, and considers all else wrong and dangerous.

Having established that making nice with the region’s troublemakers is a priority, Mr. Obama now wants Mr. Zelaya—who was endorsed by the FARC last week—reinstated. If Honduras does not comply, the U.S. is threatening to freeze assets and revoke the visas of interim government officials.

Posturing and diplomacy?

Some Washington watchers figure this bizarre stance is due to the fact that Mr. Obama is relying heavily on White House Counsel Gregory Craig for advice on Latin America.

Some, not all.

Mr. Craig was the lawyer for Fidel Castro—er, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, the father of Elian Gonzalez—during Bill Clinton’s 2000 repatriation to Cuba of the seven-year-old. During the presidential campaign when Mr. Craig was advising Mr. Obama, the far-left Council on Hemispheric Affairs endorsed Mr. Craig as “the right man to revive deeply flawed U.S.-Latin America relations.” In other words, to pull policy left.

Er? Craig is supposed to be soft on communism, then, a dupe.

There is plenty of speculation that Mr. Obama is making policy off of Mr. Craig’s “expertise.” It is not too much to believe. Indeed, if all policy is now being run out of the White House, as many observers contend, then the views of the White House counsel may explain a lot.

Off of? May? Back on the border, meantime, the minuet continues.

Mr. Zelaya did get one piece of good news over the weekend. On Saturday, Honduras's military said in a statement that it would abide by whatever legal solution was reached by civilian powers, leaving the door open to a return by the man it ousted.

But the exiled president, a close ally of Venezuela's populist Hugo Chávez, didn't seem hopeful on Sunday. As he sat with aides and journalists in Nicaragua, a few hundred yards from the Honduran border, he called on U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to stop "avoiding the issue" and to pressure what he called the "dictatorship" in Honduras.

Curious he uses the term dictatorship.

"Secretary Clinton should confront the dictatorship with force," he said, according to Reuters. He said he wasn't sure he would attend a meeting with U.S. officials about the crisis in Washington on Tuesday.

So the US should intervene, confronting the government in Honduras with force? O, that would be really smart, and play well. Would Chávez perhaps loan that force a helicopter, or two? For his friend's sake, of course.

Ousted Honduras President Manuel Zelaya talks to his supporters upon his arrival at the land border between Nicaragua and Honduras on Saturday. Mr. Zelaya returned for a second day to Honduras' land border to put pressure on the coup leaders.











Negotiations backed by the U.S. and overseen by Costa Rican President Óscar Arias appear to have hit a stalemate. Honduras's interim government, led by Roberto Micheletti, a former head of Congress, said it would step down and accept a third person to act as interim leader for the remainder of Mr. Zelaya's term. But Mr. Zelaya's camp wants him to return to power and finish his term.




Women carried food for supporters of ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya at a military road blockade in El Paraiso Sunday.







View Slideshow

Clinton warns on N. Korea and Iran

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton during a meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Phuket, Thailand on Wednesday.



July 23, 2009
Clinton Issues Warnings on North Korea and Iran
By MARK LANDLER

PHUKET, Thailand — Stiffening the American line against two nuclear-minded countries, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton warned Wednesday that the United States would not offer North Korea any sweeteners to return to talks and would consider extending a “defense umbrella” over the Middle East if Iran does not heed calls to halt its nuclear weapons program.

Mrs. Clinton clarified later that her comments on Iran, delivered in advance of a regional meeting here, did not represent a change in the Obama administration’s policy, which is to prevent Tehran from obtaining a bomb. But her words suggested that the administration is at least contemplating how to cope with a nuclear-armed Iran, should all efforts at negotiation fail.

After meeting the foreign ministers of China, Russia, Japan and South Korea, Mrs. Clinton said they were united in demanding that North Korea undertake a “complete and irreversible denuclearization” before receiving any economic or political incentives from these countries.

She did not detail the steps that would be part of such a process, though she confirmed they could include the disabling of the Yongbyon nuclear facility, where the North Koreans are reprocessing fuel rods to recover plutonium, and the surrender of its plutonium stockpile.

“We do not intend to reward North Korea just for returning to the table, nor do we intend to reward them for actions they have already committed to taking and then reneged on,” Mrs. Clinton said at a news conference in this island resort, where Asian and other countries are meeting.

The United States has had an uncharacteristically visible presence at this gathering of the Association of South East Nations, or Asean. It signed a friendship treaty with Asean’s 10 members and called on one country, Myanmar, to release the imprisoned pro-democracy leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.

But nuclear tensions overshadowed talk of human rights and climate change. Mrs. Clinton’s reference to a defense umbrella in the Middle East, which came during a televised town hall meeting in Bangkok, raised some eyebrows because it could be interpreted as an implicit acknowledgment that the international efforts to stop Iran from developing a bomb may fail.

Mrs. Clinton’s invocation of a defense umbrella is reminiscent of the so-called nuclear umbrella that Washington extends to its Asian allies — implicitly, the promise of an American reprisal if its allies are attacked by nuclear weapons. But she did not use the term nuclear, and a senior State Department official cautioned that her remarks should not be interpreted to mean that.

Israel’s minister of intelligence and atomic energy, Dan Meridor, told Israeli army radio, “I was not thrilled to hear the American statement from yesterday that they will protect their allies with a nuclear umbrella, as if they have already come to terms with a nuclear Iran. I think that’s a mistake.”

Mrs. Clinton, however, denied she was signaling any change in the American position. Rather, she said, she was trying to make even starker the choice that Iran faces if it does not agree to abandon its program.

Speaking to an audience at a former royal palace, Mrs. Clinton said, “We want Iran to calculate what I think is a fair assessment that if the U.S. extends a defense umbrella over the region, if we do even more to support the military capacity of those in the Gulf, it’s unlikely that Iran will be any stronger or safer, because they won’t be able to intimidate and dominate, as they apparently believe they can, once they have a nuclear weapon.”

The administration has talked about bolstering the military capacity of Iran’s neighbors in the Persian Gulf so they could better meet the threat of a heavily armed Iran. It has also defended the proposed missile defense system in Eastern Europe as a potential shield against Iran.

“It faces the prospect, if it pursues nuclear weapons, of sparking an arms race in the region,” Mrs. Clinton said. “That should affect the calculation of what Iran intends to do, and what it believes is in its national security interest.”

The administration has said little, if anything, publicly about a defense umbrella, though Dennis B. Ross, a senior White House adviser on Iran and the Gulf region, endorsed the concept of a nuclear umbrella before he joined the administration. As a presidential candidate, Mrs. Clinton called for a security umbrella to be extended over Israel and Persian Gulf nations.

On North Korea, Mrs. Clinton tried to project a united front, saying that China, Russia, Japan and South Korea had pledged to carry out the United Nations sanctions adopted against the North after its recent nuclear and missile tests. These include banning arms shipments and squeezing North Korea’s financing for nuclear and missile technology.

Mrs. Clinton also reiterated concerns that North Korea may be transferring nuclear technology to Myanmar, which American officials refer to by its former name, Burma. North Korea sent representatives to this meeting, but American officials declined to say whether they had any contact with them.

Mrs. Clinton is to deliver a statement on North Korea on Thursday. In an excerpt provided to reporters, the tone remained unyielding, but the United States pledged to give North Korea “significant economic and energy assistance” if it undertakes a verifiable denuclearization.

Mrs. Clinton was stern at the foreign ministers’ meeting, where she demanded that Myanmar release Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi, who faces the possibility of years of prison time on charges that she violated her house arrest.

After Mrs. Clinton finished, a senior official said, she fixed the representative from Myanmar with a long gaze.

“It’s so critical that she be released from this persecution that she has been under,” she said later at the news conference. “If she were released, that would open up opportunities, at least for my country, to expand our relationship with Burma, including investments in Burma.”

Mr. Obama extended a ban on American investments in Myanmar in May, but an official said the president could rescind it.

You want irony?

How is this for irony?

When President Óscar Arias of Costa Rica set out to find a negotiated solution to the Honduran political crisis, he hailed it as an opportunity for Central Americans to show they could resolve their own problems, and he established some simple ground rules.

Arias won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1987. He seemed a good candidate to mediate the Honduran mess.

The ousted president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, and the man who leads the de facto government that replaced him, Roberto Micheletti, were each to show up at his house with just four of their closest Honduran advisers.

Simple enough.

On Thursday morning, Mr. Micheletti showed up with six, adding an American public relations specialist who has done work for former President Bill Clinton and the American’s interpreter, and an official close to the talks said the team rarely made a move without consulting him.

Well, now, a public relations specialist at the negotiations?

Then on Friday, with the negotiations seemingly going nowhere, Mr. Arias reached out for American support of his own, telling Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton that pressure from the United States was crucial to ending the stalemate.

Por favor, Tía Hillary.

In the two weeks since the coup against Mr. Zelaya, the Obama administration has taken great pains to distance itself from the crisis as part of an effort to make the United States just one of many players in a region that it has long dominated. And Latin American leaders have publicly expressed support for what they describe as Washington’s new spirit of collaboration.

Uncle Sam is now Cousin Sam, in effect, no?

Privately, and not so privately, however, it has become clear that leaders on all sides of this crisis see the United States as the key to getting what they want.

No, still Tío Sam, but avuncular now.

In recent days, Mr. Zelaya and his allies, who include some of the most vocal critics of United States policy in the region, have repeatedly called on Washington to increase its pressure on Mr. Micheletti by recalling its ambassador — the United States is one of the few countries in the region that continues to keep its envoy in Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital — and by imposing tougher sanctions.

How richly ironic.

Even Venezuela’s president, Hugo Chávez, made a rare call to Assistant Secretary of State Thomas A. Shannon Jr. on Friday to directly make an appeal he had issued earlier on television.

“Do something,” Mr. Chávez had said to reporters. “Obama, do something.”

Coz I can't do nuthin' sez Hugo. Que rico.

Meanwhile, Mr. Micheletti has embarked on a public relations offensive, with his supporters hiring high-profile lawyers with strong Washington connections to lobby against such sanctions. One powerful Latin American business council hired Lanny J. Davis, who has served as President Clinton’s personal lawyer and who campaigned for Mrs. Clinton for president. And last week, Mr. Micheletti brought the adviser from another firm with Clinton ties to the talks in Costa Rica. The adviser, Bennett Ratcliff of San Diego, refused to give details about his role at the talks.

Surely Davis and the Secretary of State are not talking about details; it wouldn't be proper.

“Every proposal that Micheletti’s group presented was written or approved by the American,” said another official close to the talks, referring to Mr. Ratcliff.

Maybe Hugo should hire Ratcliff's partner. Bluster on both sides, and negotiations behind the scenes, yet little progress.

The officials said Mr. Arias told Mrs. Clinton that the United States had to make clear to Mr. Micheletti that elections held by an illegitimate government would themselves not be considered legitimate. However, one official said that the United States wanted to be careful “not to take a huge public role.” He said the United States indicated that it would quietly make clear to Mr. Micheletti that the $16.5 million it has already suspended in military aid could be expanded to include $180 million in other economic development assistance that is still under review.

Mr. Micheletti’s supporters are pushing back in part by paying hundreds of dollars an hour to well-connected Washington lawyers who have initiated a charm offensive from Washington. On Friday, Mr. Davis was testifying on Capitol Hill in support of Mr. Micheletti’s de facto government.

And on Saturday, Mr. Davis called reporters close to midnight to notify them that Mr. Micheletti had fired Enrique Ortez, whom he had appointed as his foreign minister, for having outraged American officials by referring in a television interview to President Obama as “that little black guy who doesn’t even know where Tegucigalpa is located.”

But Obama does know where power is located.

I'll be back ... somehow

Secretary of State Clinton will meet with deposed Honduras President Manuel Zelaya, emphasizing US support for his return to office.

In response, Mr. Zelaya was heading to Washington on Monday night -- and after meeting with Mrs. Clinton, will announce plans to try to enter Honduras again, said his housing minister Luis Roland Valenzuela, who was ousted with Mr. Zelaya. "It could be by air, sea or land," Mr. Valenzuela said. "We are not going to say where."

Once inside, what do they propose to do?

Deputy Foreign Minister Martha Lorena Alvarado said "We can talk about anything else but Mr. Zelaya's return to power. If he returns, he would have to be arrested and tried." She said Mr. Zelaya faces charges including treason that could bring a heavy prison sentence.

Perhaps they shoul;d have arrested him rather than exile him. Had they done so, his coterie of supporters surely would have raised a storm of protests.



What a coterie, n'est-ce pas?

Correa of Ecuador, Zelaya himself, Mauricio Funes of El Salvador, Cristina Kirchner of Argentina, Fernando Lugo of Paraguay, and OAS secretary-general José Miguel Insulza.










Honduras has been diplomatically isolated since soldiers, acting on a warrant from the Supreme Court, burst into Mr. Zelaya's house and arrested him in a predawn raid June 28. The court had ruled that Mr. Zelaya had illegally pushed forward on an effort to rewrite the constitution to remain in power.

That's the irony of it: he was breaking the law, defying congress, defying the Supreme Court.

Honduras today

Supporters of ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya clash with soldiers near the presidential palace in Tegucigalpa on Monday.
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Dealing with the first Latin American crisis of his presidency, Barack Obama sought a swift, clear response that would not be interpreted as U.S. interventionism in a region that loathes it. So he condemned a coup in Honduras by turning to the most reliable of friends: democracy.

And is on the same side as Hugo Chávez: opposing the removal of Zelaya. Of course, their opinions differ: Mr. Chávez cast the dispute in Honduras as a wider rebellion by the region's poor against elites. Mr. Chávez threatened to "overthrow" Mr. Zelaya's replacement, Mr. Micheletti. In response, Mr. Micheletti told local Honduras radio: "Nobody scares us."

Overthrow?

Mr. Obama found himself in the unusual situation of siding with Mr. Chávez to a point, describing the situation as a "coup" that was "illegal" and would set a "terrible precedent" were it allowed to stand.

Of course there is a lot of bluster and expressed indignity; yet the actions taken, or not taken, speak louder than the torrents of words. Ten Latin American countries agreed to withdraw their ambassadors from Honduras until Mr. Zelaya is returned to power. Perhaps that could be qualified as only ten.

Of course, right wing opinion in the US is indignant that the Administration is defending the concept of democracyt, rather than exulting in Zelaya's overthrow and exile. Mary Anastasia O'Grady, the WSJ Latin America opinionator, as right-wing as her paper's editorial board, condemns Secretary Clinton, lumping her with Fidel. First, some sarcasm, then, criticism.

Hugo Chávez's coalition-building efforts suffered a setback yesterday when the Honduran military sent its president packing for abusing the nation's constitution. It seems that President Mel Zelaya miscalculated when he tried to emulate the success of his good friend Hugo in reshaping the Honduran Constitution to his liking.

Mel? Perhaps Mary is a good friend of Manuel. Honduras, she states, is being pressured to restore the authoritarian Mr. Zelaya by the likes of Fidel Castro, Daniel Ortega, Hillary Clinton and, of course, Hugo himself.

Mary concludes: The struggle against chavismo has never been about left-right politics. It is about defending the independence of institutions that keep presidents from becoming dictators. This crisis clearly delineates the problem. In failing to come to the aid of checks and balances, Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Insulza expose their true colors.

True colors? [OAS Secretary General José Miguel Insulza] The US can not support an overthrow of an elected president; it is called diplomacy. Columnists don't need to exercise it, but nations do.

View Slideshow

More nuanced analysis does exist. Jose Raul Perales, a Latin American scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center, said Obama's response to the crisis was prompt and in unison with leaders of the hemisphere and beyond. Obama can bring considerable leverage to the matter and add credibility to an emerging regional response, he said.

But there are still bigger problems in Honduras — the failed democratic institutions that led the nation to resort to a military coup. The conflict came about after a referendum Zelaya had called in defiance of Honduras' courts and Congress, one seen as a way for him to stay in power beyond his term limit. That means even if Obama can help lead a brokered peace, deeper issues remain. "The tensions will persist regardless of the outcome," Perales said.

The fact remains that Zelaya was subverting democracy from within.

Isolation from the international community may not be enough to create cracks in Honduras's political establishment, which appeared to be solidly against Mr. Zelaya. But some analysts said his forced exile was a political mistake by his opponents. "Zelaya did not have overwhelming support to begin with," said John Carey, a Latin America expert at Dartmouth College. "Now the military has alienated every other country in that hemisphere."

More than the military is involved: the Congress and the Supreme Court, too.

Now, a question so far unanswered is: who is Manuel Zelaya?

Roberto Micheletti, a 63-year-old businessman and stalwart Liberal Party member, took the oath of office Sunday to replace another Liberal politician, Manuel Zelaya, 56, a rich rancher who was deposed in a predawn raid that day and exiled to Costa Rica.

A rich rancher? He, then, is part of the elite Hogo Chávez condemns.

Mr. Zelaya is a tall man who sports a trademark Stetson. He studied industrial engineering, but dropped out of college to manage his family's ranches. He served in Congress before running for president in 2006 on a populist platform that blasted the rich and promised to fight crime, corruption and poverty.

His family's ranches. And he blasted the rich?

Mr. Micheletti calls himself a "right-wing progressive" and says he is a good friend of the U.S., which he said has always helped Honduras. Mr. Micheletti has served in political and party posts in five Liberal governments.

Right-wing progressive is indeed a curious phrase.

That's Madame Secretary to you

Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, President George W. Bush, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Jordan's King Abdullah, June 4, 2003.










Mr. Abrams, a senior fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, handled Middle East affairs at the National Security Council from 2001 to 2009.

He was also a Reaganite.

Don't bother

Iran Diplomats Uninvited to Party

Well, the Iranian diplomats probably would have been party-poopers anyway. The State Department has rescinded its invitation to Iranian envoys for its July 4 wienie roast, saying that the Iranians are no longer welcome. The invitation, approved by Hillary Clinton herself, was given a great deal of press several weeks ago, as it was a concrete sign of improving relations between the two countries. President Obama said Tuesday that it was up to the Iranians to decide if they still wanted to attend. But today, a State Department spokesman told the Associated Press that "the U.S. saw little reason for them to (attend) given the political crisis over their disputed presidential election."

Read it at The Associated Press

Clinton Settles Into New Role

Hillary Rodham Clinton in Baden-Baden, Germany, in April. Her days have become a whirl of talks, meetings and travel.

In this, the latest mutation in a career of many changes, Mrs. Clinton’s days have become a whirl of diplomatic talks, White House meetings and foreign travel: 74,000 miles and 22 countries as of last Sunday, when she returned from Iraq and Lebanon.

State Department officials, and others in the administration, say less-than-generous things about Mr. Obama’s national security adviser, Gen. James L. Jones, suggesting there is some jockeying among the top officials around the president. General Jones, these people say, has struggled with his transition from Marine commander to senior staff person, speaking up less in debates than Mrs. Clinton and not pushing as hard for decisions.

Office politics.

Friends acknowledge that Mrs. Clinton herself was initially swamped by the challenge of taking over the sprawling State Department bureaucracy — management being one deficit in her career. She likens it to being “mayor of a good-sized small city.”




May 2, 2009
Her Rival Now Her Boss, Clinton Settles Into New Role
By MARK LANDLER

WASHINGTON — Hillary Rodham Clinton insists her transition from presidential contender to secretary of state has been seamless, and in one respect, it is hard to argue with her: she still hustles like a candidate down a few points in the polls the week before Super Tuesday.

But in many other ways, Mrs. Clinton has shed her candidate’s skin. Her campaign staff is largely gone, replaced by a broader circle of advisers. Her husband, who stood behind her at countless campaign stops this time last year, has resumed his globe-trotting life, seeing her on rare weekends at their home in Chappaqua, N.Y.

In this, the latest mutation in a career of many changes, Mrs. Clinton’s days have become a whirl of diplomatic talks, White House meetings and foreign travel: 74,000 miles and 22 countries as of last Sunday, when she returned from Iraq and Lebanon.

By all accounts, Mrs. Clinton has worked hard to be a good soldier in an administration run by the man she spent much of last year trying to defeat. She and President Obama have developed a respectful rapport, several officials said, and she has emerged as an influential voice in the great policy debates of the day, notably Afghanistan and Pakistan.

But State Department officials, and others in the administration, say less-than-generous things about Mr. Obama’s national security adviser, Gen. James L. Jones, suggesting there is some jockeying among the top officials around the president. General Jones, these people say, has struggled with his transition from Marine commander to senior staff person, speaking up less in debates than Mrs. Clinton and not pushing as hard for decisions.

Friends acknowledge that Mrs. Clinton herself was initially swamped by the challenge of taking over the sprawling State Department bureaucracy — management being one deficit in her career. She likens it to being “mayor of a good-sized small city.”

But Mrs. Clinton has turned a corner in recent weeks, these people say, both as a manager and as a diplomat. Her stern public warnings about the recent Taliban offensive in Pakistan put her on center stage as the messenger of American unease.

“I love the job; I mean, it’s really hard,” Mrs. Clinton said in a recent interview. “We’ve inherited so many problems.”

As a former first lady, senator, and presidential candidate, Mrs. Clinton enjoys rarefied status, even for a secretary of state. She has not hesitated to put this to use, whether in rock-star-like appearances in South Korea and Turkey, or in positioning herself at home.

Even before she was confirmed, Mrs. Clinton summoned Richard C. Holbrooke, now the special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, for a fireside chat at her Washington home with Gen. David H. Petraeus, the commander who oversees the region.

In an unusual arrangement, Mrs. Clinton is protected by both the State Department’s diplomatic security and by the Secret Service, which has protected the Clintons since 1992. As a candidate, Mrs. Clinton was criticized for poor management of her campaign. She appears determined not to repeat her mistakes. Mrs. Clinton said she had sought fresh voices; mindful that previous secretaries of state have been criticized for cloistering themselves on the building’s seventh floor, she has made a point of dropping in at its bureaus.

Few of her campaign officials were offered posts, though Mrs. Clinton has brought over aides from the Senate and from her years as first lady. She has also drawn on veterans of the Clinton inner circle, like Cheryl Mills, who is her chief of staff.

“I don’t know anybody in politics who doesn’t have a group of people,” Mrs. Clinton said. But she added, “A lot of people who I hired, I never worked with, and have just taken on faith and reputation.”

There are other vestiges of Mrs. Clinton’s political life: her Senate campaign committee remains in existence and will hold on to a list of donors to her presidential campaign, a tantalizing clue that she contemplates a use for them in the future.

Mrs. Clinton tries to get to New York once or twice a month, she said, but it has been hard because of her foreign travel. But she said she talks to Mr. Clinton regularly, and exchanges e-mail messages with her daughter, Chelsea, on her BlackBerry, which she is not allowed to use, for security reasons, at work.

Mrs. Clinton turned to her husband, the former president, in planning a recent trip to Haiti because he had been there two weeks earlier. But she said Mr. Clinton had also weighed in with advice to General Jones or Mr. Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel. “He’s always value-added,” she said.

These days, Mrs. Clinton has a regular Thursday afternoon meeting with the current president. People who have been in meetings with them say their relationship is comfortable, if not warm.

On a recent afternoon, at Mrs. Clinton’s suggestion, the two moved their meeting outside to a picnic table on the South Lawn, next to a new swing set installed for Mr. Obama’s daughters. “We just had the best time,” she said.

Mrs. Clinton’s influence as secretary has been somewhat obscured by the choice of highly visible emissaries for two of the world’s hot spots: Mr. Holbrooke and George J. Mitchell as special envoy for the Middle East.

Some foreign-policy experts say the arrangement poses a long-term risk to Mrs. Clinton. “I understand the logic of creating an empire of talented envoys,” said Aaron David Miller, a former Middle East peace negotiator. “But to be a consequential secretary of state, you must put yourself directly in the middle of the mix.”

Mrs. Clinton, however, described the envoys as “force multipliers” and said that enlisting them “has bought us time.” She also said she had the “highest esteem” for General Jones, according to her adviser, Philippe Reines, who added in a statement, “Anyone asserting otherwise is speaking for themselves, not the secretary.”

In recent weeks, Mrs. Clinton has stepped up on key issues: warning Pakistan about the Taliban; orchestrating the first face-to-face contact between the Obama administration and Iran; and throwing Cuba off balance with warm words about restoring ties with Havana.

For Mrs. Clinton, the biggest challenge has been mental: absorbing a mountain of information on issues ranging from the Middle East to the race for fossil fuels in the Arctic Circle.

At 11 p.m. last Saturday, after 13 hours of meetings in Baghdad, Mrs. Clinton’s aides dozed on the military transport plane flying back to Kuwait. She sat alone at the front of the plane’s dimly lighted cargo bay, squinting as she plowed through a pile of briefing papers.

“I lug them everywhere,” Mrs. Clinton said, noting that she had not had time to watch a movie or read a book in the last 100 days.

No messin' around

RELACIONES DIPLOMÁTICAS La secretaria de Estado estadounidense, Hillary Clinton, y el presidente de Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, analizaron la reinstalación de sus respectivos embajadores, durante una charla informal en Trinidad y Tobago

Don't mess with me, Hugo; I'm serious. Imagined dialogue. Madame Secretary says she's serious, says the translator. I know she's serious, thinks Hugo.

Can anyone imagine Condy Rice putting a hand on Señor Chavez? Not me.

Clinton Scores Points

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke during a press conference in Santo Domingo, on Friday.







SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic — It has become a recurring theme of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s early travels as the chief diplomat of the United States: she says that American policy on a given issue has failed, and her foreign listeners fall all over themselves in gratitude.

On Friday, Mrs. Clinton said here that the uncompromising policy of the Bush administration toward Cuba had not worked. That, she said, is why President Obama decided earlier this week to lift restrictions on travel and financial transfers for United States residents with relatives in Cuba.

Like other leaders around the world, Mrs. Clinton’s host, the president of the Dominican Republic, Leonel Fernández, responded effusively on Friday, hailing the secretary and her boss, Mr. Obama, for their view on Cuban policy, which he said took “great courage” and could utterly transform the political landscape of Latin America.

A new diplomacy, a new diplomat, a new administration.

“President Obama is paving a new road,” he said. “It is recognition of the fact that previous policies have failed. Fifty years of a policy that has not generated the originally sought purposes can be called a failure.”

Nice metaphor: paving a new road.

For a senior American official — someone who almost became president — to declare that the United States had erred, makes a major impact on foreign audiences.

There are holdouts, of course: North Korea has greeted the Obama administration by testing a missile, ratcheting up its language and threatening to pull out of multiparty talks on its nuclear program. Mrs. Clinton, in turn, has had few warm words for North Korea’s reclusive leader, Kim Jong-il.

But in many countries, her statements have elicited an almost palpable sense of relief. And she suggested that the Obama administration’s drive for warmer relations with old foes was just getting started.

Asked whether the United States would build bridges to hostile Latin American leaders, like Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, Mrs. Clinton said, “Let’s put ideology aside; that is so yesterday.”