CFR: Hillary Clinton, U.S. Secretary Of State Nominee | Newsweek The Council on Foreign Relations

Travel Advisory
Katie Paul 8/5/2009 12:00:00 AM
A single scene in the movie Dave, a political comedy about an imposter in the White House, probably does the best job of summing up most American political trips to Africa. In his first appearance, halfway through the movie, a dour-looking Ben Kingsley, playing the vice president, appears in the Oval Office bearing fertility beads from Togo and a giant hat from the people of Burundi. He had been sent on an extended tour through the continent by a president determined to strip him of all power and influence. "They know hats in Burundi," the president responds. Africa is a punch line. It may be a place where do-gooders can make a difference; it's just not where the big dogs make their mark.
W. Doesn’t Live Here Anymore
Jacob Weisberg 8/1/2009 12:00:00 AM
Politicians, like generals, suffer from a tendency to fight the last war. Having meticulously studied the mistakes of their predecessors, they take care to avoid repeating them and make the opposite ones. They fortify Maginot Lines. They overcompensate for past errors. They overcorrect.
THE GLOBAL ELITE
The Clintons
Jonathan Alter 12/20/2008 12:00:00 AM
They're baaaack!!! Just when you thought the Clintons had gone the way of the Macarena and John Wayne Bobbitt—consigned to the dustbin of the 1990s—Hillary and Bill Clinton are about to blast into our lives again, with all the excitement that might mean for them, for us and for the world. Like major movie stars, they may find second acts in high-quality supporting roles that might just display their talents better than when their names had top billing on the marquee. (Story continued below...)
THE BIG IDEA
The Price of Loyalty
Jacob Weisberg 11/29/2008 12:00:00 AM
Critics of Hillary Clinton's possible appointment as Secretary of State have focused on the issue of whether she'll be faithful to her new boss. The senator, we are reminded, has her own interests and a tendency to put her own ambitions first. Perhaps so, but I doubt President Obama will have much trouble with disloyalty in his administration, from Clinton or anyone else, for the same reason it wasn't a problem in his campaign: he doesn't spend a lot of time worrying about it.
CHAPTER 3
The Long Siege
11/5/2008 12:00:00 AM
The former president was restless and petulant; that was obvious. Exactly why was a psychologist's guessing game. He seemed anxious that his wife was blowing the chance to get the Clintons back in the White House. At some deeper level, the armchair shrinks speculated, he was jealous of her. Or, in some strange way, he may have been envious of Obama. Clinton was proud of the fact that some blacks called him "America's first black president," because of his comfort and empathy with African-Americans. Obama was upstaging him by threatening to truly become America's first black president. More vexingly, Obama, in remarks to some reporters in Nevada, had praised Ronald Reagan as a true change agent and seemingly dismissed Bill Clinton as an incidental politician. It was always hard for Clinton to be anything but the most amazing person in the room, the "smartest boy in the class," as author David Maraniss had once described him. Clinton wanted to be a major player in his wife's campaign, and he used an office sometimes inhabited by Mark Penn or Mandy Grunwald at Clinton headquarters in Arlington, Va., just outside Washington. But the staff, including the campaign manager, Patti Solis Doyle, found his presence, complete with Secret Service, to be uncomfortable, sometimes intimidating. They were happier when he was on the road—that is, as long as he stayed on message, which was never for very long.
CHAPTER 1
How He Did It
11/5/2008 12:00:00 AM
Gregory Craig, a lawyer in Washington, D.C., was one of those Americans who wanted to believe again. Craig was not exactly an ordinary citizen—he had served and worked with the powerful all his life, as an aide to Sen. Edward Kennedy in the 1980s, as chief of policy planning at the State Department in the Clinton administration and as a lawyer hired to represent President Clinton at his impeachment trial in the U.S. Senate in 1999. He had seen the imperfections of the mighty, up close and personal, and by and large accepted human frailty. But, like a lot of Americans, he was tired of partisan bickering and yearned for someone who could rise above politics as usual. A 63-year-old baby boomer, Craig wanted to recapture the youthful idealism that he had experienced as a student at Harvard in the 1960s and later at Yale Law School, where his friends included Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham. In the late fall of 2003, he was invited to hear a young state senator from Illinois who was running for the U.S. Senate. Craig was immediately taken with Barack Obama. "He spoke 20 to 30 minutes, and I found him to be funny, smart and very knowledgeable for a state senator," Craig recalled. Craig was so visibly impressed that his host that evening, the longtime Washington mover and shaker Vernon Jordan, teased him, saying, "Greg has just fallen in love."