As I write,
this report hasn't been confirmed yet but if Hillary Clinton
is going to be Barack Obama's secretary of state, doesn't that
discredit a major argument in favor of the change agent's
presidential candidacy? During the primaries, and to a lesser
extent during the general election, Obama argued that his lack of
foreign-policy experience didn't matter because he showed better
judgment on these issues than the foreign-policy establishment of
both parties. The main evidence he showed superior judgment was
his early opposition to the Iraq war. In fact, if Obama had not
opposed the war from the beginning he would have been much less
likely to win the Democratic nomination.
It was the equivalent of Ross Perot's rejoinder that he didn't
have any experience running up a $4 trillion national debt.
Barack Obama didn't have experience leading or voting the country
into a $1 trillion war. Obviously, this line of argument wasn't
persuasive to Joe Lieberman but it was in line with most
rank-and-file Democrats' thinking -- and that of many
independents as well.
So who does Obama turn to when he starts hiring people for major
positions in his administration? Joe Biden for vice president,
even though Biden voted to authorize the Iraq war. Rahm Emanuel
for White House chief of staff, even though Emanuel supported the
war and says he
would have voted for it even if he knew there were no weapons
of mass destruction. And now Hillary Clinton for secretary of
state, even though she famously voted for the Iraq war.
Obama now seems to owe Biden and especially Clinton an apology,
given that he used their war votes and his early antiwar speech
against them to great effect. If Hillary had voted against the
Iraq war, it is difficult to see how Obama could have beaten her
in the Democratic primaries without taking stands that would have
doomed him in the general election. In fact, it's hard to see how
he would have beaten her at all.
Again, if this report is confirmed, it will be interesting to see
how antiwar activists react to this. Are they antiwar or just
anti-Republican?
