One of my Homegirls at L_J brought this article to my attention, and I must protest! Paul Reynolds, World affairs correspondent BBC News website, are you for real?
It was never going to be easy to be secretary of state in the shadow of a president who won the Nobel Peace Prize within months of taking office.
And that is what Hillary Clinton has perhaps found. President Obama has made such an impact on the world, partly from not being George W Bush, that she is sometimes left as an also-ran. Just as she was in the presidential elections.
It is the president who has re-fashioned American foreign policy from one widely seen as confrontational, into one in which he says he seeks engagement.
1 That is the administration she, after much deliberation, chose to, decided to join. She knew the stakes.
He, not Hillary Clinton, has set the agenda for America.
It was he who insisted on taking time with his advisers to debate sending reinforcements to Afghanistan.
It was he who reached out to the Muslim world.
It was he who insisted to the Israelis that they had to freeze settlements if there were to be further Middle East peace talks.
It was he who held out his hand to Iran, hoping for an unclenched fist. It will be he who will determine whether at some stage to move from sanctions to military action.
It was he who led the US negotiations over global warming, an issue which has not enthused her much.
Hillary Rodham Clinton (as she prefers to be called, emphasising her own family name as well as that of her husband) is finding it a hard task to fashion a distinctive diplomatic role for herself.
2. Of course she has “enthused” over global warming! Have you seen/ read/heard about her valiant attempts to save Copenhagen?
She has also had to accept that the infamous “0300 call” election advertisement was an empty, and unedifying, threat, which diminished her.
The ad was hardball stuff and attacked her election rival’s lack of foreign policy experience. Over pictures of sleeping children, the commentary said: “It’s 3am and your children are safe and asleep. But there’s a phone ringing in the White House… who do you want to answer the phone?”
The ad was hardball stuff and attacked her election rival’s lack of foreign policy experience. Over pictures of sleeping children, the commentary said: “It’s 3am and your children are safe and asleep. But there’s a phone ringing in the White House… who do you want to answer the phone?”Hillary Rodham Clinton is now happy for Barack Obama to answer that phone.
3 . I cannot find the text reference, but in April, when Obama was storming Berlin and North Korea fired off their missiles, he DID contact the SOS in the middle of the night, and she DID respond much like the SNL predictive skit.
The administration is only a year old. Secretary Clinton will not be dissatisfied with her image. It is her achievements that remain in doubt.
4 . How about these?
(From Secretary Clinton blog) Please go there and read about that visit.)
And then there is this.
In the “shadows”? Hardly. In charge of foreign policy, no. Effective? Where she can be – pretty visible, I would say. (And pretty – it gets us friends. )
In the “shadows?” Can we put that one to rest? I do have a silver cross. I also have garlic . Who has a nice sharp stake? (Refs for above are welcome.)
Was that BBC article a poor attempt at satire? Seriously? While America is finally starting to ask what if Hillary had won (and realizing to ask the question is to answer it!), Paul Reynolds is still stuck on stale old talking points.
Nice response, still4hill.
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I am sooooo tired of this one. I need it to go out into the sun and burn up.
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still: Hillary’s reaction to this stuff is probably like water rolling off a duck’s back. The impression generated by these kinds of attacks is not one where Hillary is in anyone’s shadow, but where the other person is a small man casting a large shadow.
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True. It also has the effect of making the writer look uninformed like someone in a bell jar. Seriously Look at last weekend – her trip to Haiti and her Internet Freedom speech on Thursday. Maybe I have amnesia. does anyone remember Condi or Colin making policy speeches like this?
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This Reynolds chap is obviously still very much in love with Obama, and probably hates the fact that Hillary is wiping the floor with him. She is the one that is still receiving high grades and accolades from those that matter. Obama, on the other hand has finally been flushed out into the light of day, and people aren’t liking what they are seeing. The press is having a very hard time covering for him anymore, and so the knives have to come out to take Hillary down a peg or two. Little does Reynolds know that people are no longer buying into the Hillary bashing. Better luck next time butthole.
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If the Hillary bashing stops, this blog no longer has a purpose, and I would love nothing better in life!
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I think Condi tried, especially toward the end, but she wasn’t able to break as much headway as I’m sure she herself would have liked–the world had gone sour on Bush. The reason for her visibility over Bush’s was because Bush didn’t go around with a teleprompter everywhere and get called a genius and peace laureate for it. She had to be more visible on foreign policy. It’s not exactly saying much that Obama doesn’t need Hillary the way Bush needed Condi! Really would be a strange standard to judge Hillary by. And, Colin Powell’s big defining achievement was to go in front of the UN and sell the WMD rationale for Iraq war. Hillary certainly doesn’t need to follow the already traveled road of the good soldier. She’s paving her own!! There will be those who can’t grasp the enormous scale of what Hillary is doing integrating women and girls (and all children really) into every layer and corner of foreign policy, but she keeps doing it anyway. She is building up a framework every time she diligently lays out her vision of smart power and principled pragmatism in terms of a global architecture of cooperation, women’s rights and women’s health and women’s roles in lifting up everyone, a human rights agenda for the 21st century, the full integration of development! and diplomacy! with defense concerns, and yes now a Clinton Doctrine on internet freedom. And, there’s more to come I’ve no doubt. It’s important work, made even more important by the ground lost in the 8 years before her tenure.
Wow, LOL! sorry! You got me going!
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Wow! Hmmmmm. “Clinton Doctrine on Internet Freedom” – I very much like the title.
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got it from this WSJ piece–“Web Access is New Clinton Doctrine”
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Then it’s official!
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[…] Vampire Tales V: I have a silver cross. Does anybody have a stake? Some garlic? Anything? […]
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