Here’s Hillary
Betty Cracker’s done a great job knocking down the recent “Where’s Hillary?” stupidity here and here. Hopefully this New York Times article will finally put a rest to this nonsense:
The injury to Mrs. Clinton’s elbow — she fractured it in a fall last month, and it is being held together with pins and wire — has compounded the challenge. Her recuperation from surgery sharply curtailed her schedule, forcing her to cancel two overseas trips, including one to Russia with Mr. Obama.
Though she departs Thursday for India and Thailand, she is in constant pain and faces grueling physical therapy five times a day, according to people close to her. Among the exercises: repetitively squeezing a gelatinous ball.
Still, her aides and people at the White House dismiss suggestions that Mrs. Clinton has been shunted to the sidelines. Her relationship with Mr. Obama is strong, they say, and she remains an influential voice in all key debates.
The recent personnel issues are part of the pull and tug of any administration in its early days, they argue, and say little about Mrs. Clinton’s broader role.
“Secretary Clinton is a key member of a very strong team,” said Denis R. McDonough, a spokesman for the National Security Council. “The president values her inputs, her team’s inputs.”
Mrs. Clinton is said by her aides to brush off the scuttlebutt about her low profile. They note that she kept her head down early in her Senate career, too.
She professes to be amused, if baffled, by a recent column on the blog Daily Beast in which Tina Brown wrote, “It’s time for Barack Obama to let Hillary Clinton take off her burqa.”
Other foreign affairs experts say the doubts about Mrs. Clinton’s role reflect an unrealistic view of the job of secretary of state, particularly in an era when the White House usually drives foreign policy.
“There’s a reflex assumption on the part of a lot of people that the secretary of state is going to be out there, on every conceivable issue,” said Strobe Talbott, a deputy secretary of state under President Clinton.
“But to do that on every conceivable issue is way too much, particularly when we have so many issues,” said Mr. Talbott, who is now president of the Brookings Institution and once wrote about sidelined secretaries of state, in the Nixon and Carter administrations, for Time magazine.
Mrs. Clinton has told colleagues about a recent phone conversation with Henry A. Kissinger, a secretary of state who was not sidelined, in which he told her he could not recall a time when there appeared to be less friction between the State Department and the White House. Mr. Kissinger confirmed the account.
Posted by Kevin K. on 07/16/09 at 11:33 AM • Permalink
Categories: News • Politics • Barack Obama • Hillary Clinton •
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