Don’t Panic: Can foreign countries bribe the U.S. Secretary of State?
January 27, 2009 at 11:05 am by Andisheh Nouraee in Don't Panic
The list of important things I don’t understand is long, and growing.
Why, for example, do my dog Mathilde’s feet always smell like Fritos? My other dog Sarah’s feet never smell like anything. They live in the same house and go on the same walks. Their feet should smell the same.
And would anyone buy the Mamma Mia! movie soundtrack?
Fun movie, yes. But why would you listen to Pierce Brosnan singing ABBA songs if you’re not also looking at him. Why not just listen to ABBA?
On a slightly different topic, why oh why oh why did Barack Obama select Hillary Clinton to be Secretary of State? And why did only two U.S. Senators vote against her confirmation?
I’m not a knee-jerk Hillary-hater. I sincerely believe that most of the public anger directed at her over the years is misogyny masquerading as informed opinion.
I nevertheless have two big problems with Obama picking Clinton to run the American diplomacy shop.
First, despite her obvious intellect, Hillary Clinton is a proven failure as a political leader.
Clinton has been in charge of two major projects during her political career: her husband’s healthcare reform initiative in 1993 and 1994, and her presidential campaign in 2007 and 2008.
On both occasions, she started with strong popular and institutional support. Yet she still bungled both efforts because she failed to anticipate the skill and intensity of her opposition and was unable to manage her own team’s competing interests and giant egos.
I’ve never managed a 20,000-person, $35 billion international diplomacy bureaucracy, but I’m pretty sure anticipating opposition, balancing competing interests, and managing egos are essential to the job.
Secondly, her husband’s William J. Clinton Foundation accepts huge donations from foreign governments. It’s a serious conflict of interest and it disqualifies from her the job.
In December, the Clinton Foundation disclosed the names of its donors and the general range of their donations.
Saudi Arabia donated between $10 million and $25 million to the foundation, according to the disclosure.
At risk of ruining my chance to ever vacation in Saudi Arabia, I’ll go ahead and ask this awkward question: Does anyone actually believe the ruling family of Saudi Arabia gives a camel’s ass about Clinton Foundation initiatives like “Fighting childhood obesity” or “Combating climate change”?
Don’t you think they may have coughed up the cash to stay the good side of an American political dynasty? The Saudis control ¼ of the world’s petroleum reserves. If they really wanted to do their part to fight climate change, they can turn a couple of knobs.
If the Saudi royal family “donated” $25 million to Laura Bush’s literacy or breast cancer awareness campaigns while her husband was President, no one would doubt donation’s true motives.
Also, consider Taiwan, one of nine foreign governments to donate more than $1 million to the foundation.
Every few years, tensions rise between the U.S. and China over the political status of Taiwan. China believes Taiwan is a renegade Chinese province. The U.S. arms Taiwan and has warned China not to try to take Taiwan back by force.
When the next Taiwan flare-up flares up, is it in the best interests of the U.S. that our chief diplomat’s husband has received a seven-figure check from Taiwan? Or course not. It will be a dark cloud over any negotiations.
And do you think Clinton’s financial ties to Taiwan make China more or less likely to cooperate with the U.S. on important multi-lateral diplomatic initiatives in North Korea or Sudan?
Those are just two of the conflicts of interest we know about. There might be more, but the foundation did not, and will not reveal pledges for future payment. Obama is even allowing the Clinton Foundation to continue to accept foreign donations, provided it discloses its donor list annually? Not immediately. ANNUALLY.
If my wife got fat checks from people I wrote about and I didn’t reveal it immediately and unambiguously, I’d be fired. Shouldn’t a U.S. Secretary of State’s ethical requirements be at least as strict as those of an alt-weekly newspaper columnist?
January 27th, 2009 at 11:14 am
So, you are a mysogonist too? :-o
Hypothetical – if she were running against McCain, you would have voted for McCain?
January 27th, 2009 at 11:23 am
I would have voted HRC over McCain. I wouldn’t have been happy about it though.
January 28th, 2009 at 7:05 am
Umm. failure as a political leader? I will remind you that she as a very successful Senator. I will also remind you that she actually got more votes than Barack Obama in the primary. It was a very close election. One historic campaign falling just sort of another historic campaign does not qualify her as a massive failure as a political leader.
I would also like to point out that the suggestion that she alone is responsible for the healthcare failure in 1993 is rather unfair. Quite a few people other than her bear responsibility for that, including the people of this country who didn’t really support the idea in the first place. I’m not even sure why they attempted to do something that so few people in middle class America supported at the time. As I recall, it wasn’t very hard for insurance companies to scare the public about the plan because they were already so suspicious in the first place.
Some smart person also pointed out that it is really very silly to think her husband’s past work with foreign countries will lead to favoritism since foreign policy decisions are made by a team led by the President, not Hillary Clinton herself. NOT that there is any legitimate reason to doubt her integrity or to believe that Bill Clinton isn’t creative enough or connected enough to find money somewhere else under any circumstances. In fact, that is the piece of this people miss the most. The Clintons don’t have to take bribes. People WANT to give them money, want the prestige just of being in their company. That is why Bill Clinton has raised so much money.
January 28th, 2009 at 10:48 am
“no reason to doubt her integrity”…. thanks, I needed a laugh.
January 28th, 2009 at 10:51 am
You are now the second person I know to describe a dog smelling like Fritos. My wife says the same about Jessie aka The Notorious D.O.G.