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.
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
III. In the days after his wife's back- from-the-brink victory in New Hampshire, Bill Clinton was full of righteous indignation. The former president had amassed an 81-page list of all the unfair and nasty things the Obama campaign had said, or was alleged to have said, about Hillary Clinton. The press was still in love with Obama, or so it seemed to Clinton, who complained to pretty much anyone who would listen. If the press wouldn't go after Obama, then Hillary's campaign would have to do the job, the ex-president urged. On Sunday, Jan. 13, Clinton got worked up in a phone conversation with Donna Brazile, a direct, strong-willed African-American woman who had been Al Gore's campaign manager and advised the Clintons from time to time. "If Barack Obama is nominated, it will be the worst denigration of public service," he told her, ranting on for much of an hour. Brazile kept asking him, "Why are you so angry?"
CHAPTER 1
How He Did It
11/5/2008 12:00:00 AM
Barack Obama had a gift, and he knew it. He had a way of making very smart, very accomplished people feel virtuous just by wanting to help Barack Obama. It had happened at Harvard Law School in the mid-1980s, at a time when the school was embroiled in fights over political correctness. He had won one of the truly plum prizes of overachievement at Harvard: he had been voted president of the law review, the first African-American ever so honored. Though his politics were conventionally (if not stridently) liberal, even the conservatives voted for him. Obama was a good listener, attentive and empathetic, and his powerful mind could turn disjointed screeds into reasoned consensus, but his appeal lay in something deeper. He was a black man who had moved beyond racial politics and narrowly defined interest groups. He seemed indifferent to, if not scornful of, the politics of identity and grievance. He showed no sense of entitlement or resentment. Obama had a way of transcending ambition, though he himself was ambitious as hell. In the grasping race for status and achievement—a competition that can seem like blood lust at a place like Harvard—Obama could make hypersuccessful meritocrats pause and remember a time (part mythical perhaps, but still beckoning) when service to others was more important than serving oneself.