Booman wrote an overall approving piece today regarding Hillary Clinton’s appointment to the office of Secretary of State by President-elect Barack Obama and her obvious efforts to ramp up that position to greater power than it has held during the Butch administration.
In it he wrote:
I’m still not enamored with Obama’s decision to retain Bob Gates as his Defense Secretary or his decision to hand the State Department over to Hillary Clinton. But I’m beginning to see some positives. Ever since John Foster Dulles resigned from office in 1959, the Secretary of State has, much more often than not, played second fiddle to others in foreign policy. In the JFK/LBJ era, Robert McNamara was dominant. In the Nixon era, Kissinger dominated the Secretary of State until he took the position over for himself. As a general matter, Republicans don’t trust the State Department and prefer to use the National Security Council, the intelligence agencies, and the Pentagon to make important foreign policy decisions.
Democrats are more culturally attuned to the State Department, but Carter and Clinton had weak secretaries. Hillary Clinton is not going to be a weak secretary. She is looking to expand the job and take over as much turf as possible. Ordinarily that might be a bad thing, but her power is going to be coming at the expense of the Defense Department (and to an indeterminate degree, the Treasury Department). Secretary Gates is voicing his support for an expanded diplomatic service, and his lame duck status and Republican roots make him institutionally incapable of competing with the former First Lady.
Why do I see this as good? Because it will mark a restoration of the State Department as the premier department of government. And that means that we won’t shoot first and ask questions later. It means we will put a kinder face forward to the rest of the world. It means that State Department will regain its morale and that they’ll be able to recruit the best minds. It’s just good overall.
My initial reaction was one of the-laughter-that-does-not-mean ha-ha.
But then I got to thinking.
Read on for more if you so desire.
Laughter-that-does-not-mean ha-ha. As in:
And so the leftiness Hillary Restoration begins.
‘Bout time, people.
‘Bout time.
I don’t like her but I want her to succeed.
Now that’s some funny shit!!!
Since when does a queen have to be likable? Or a king, for that matter.
Watch. As Obama assumes his kingly role, y’all are going to “like” him less and less.
And respect him more and more.
Watch.
AG
But then Quentin wrote:
I’d think the departments of labor, agriculture, etc., which directly affect the lives of the people who the government is working for, would be ‘the premier departments’ of the U.S. government.
And I got to thinking some more.
Here is what I came up with.
In an ideal world Quentin would be correct. But this is not an ideal world. Or better, if it is an ideal world it functions on a level of “ideal” that is so far beyond general human comprehension as to be essentially a non-functioning concept in human affairs.
So what have we got instead?
We have a pushme-pullyou system of competing nations and power blocs, each trying to grab the lion’s share of the booty. Without some sort of parity on that level there is no possibility of success regarding the quality of life within a given nation. Now there are basically three ways to achieve that parity: Militarily, diplomatically (coupled with trade), and some sort of total neutrality usually coupled with a militarily and/or geographically enforced isolationism.
The isolationist option is all but over except in truly rugged areas of the world, areas where the quality of life is in truth never very high. Air travel (and military force that uses the air) puts the kibosh on that idea.
So the U.S. has two options left in this regard.
Endless war or diplomatically achieved peace, a peace which is essentially enforced and informed by trade and defended by adequate military options.
The Butch regime tried the first idea, as did the Reagan and Nixon regimes before it, really.
Didn’t work. Look at where we are today for all you need to know on that subject.
So now Obama has been (s)elected by the business as usual crowd to try the second option. Repair the country from within so that it has something to offer in trade …even if what it has to offer is mostly as a consumer of others’ goods, at least for starters…but do so without suffering a nearly total collapse of its international positions that will render the repair effort next to impossible.
A hard job, folks.
A hard, tricky job.
And what is the trickiest part of that job?
The transition from military power/world cop to strong but peaceful trading partner. Peaceful but not to be fucked with.
Why that first?
Because we still have a functioning internal infrastructure here. There is enough food; the delivery systems are still working and there are enough jobs to keep us afloat. It’s dicey, this position, but the residual wealth of this country plus its undeniably vast work force can and will….if properly propped up, which is what the whole “bailout” idea is supposed to address…survive during the transition.
Thus the emphasis on the Department of State.
And thus the appointment of the strongest Dem power after Obama to head that department. I mean…what was the final vote tally during the run for the nomination? 51%-49%? Something like that. The meaning of this appointment is quite clear.
HERE is where I am going to put the most emphasis. For now.
End of story.
Should he succeed in traversing this particular gorge…on the other side lies the possibility for extensive infrastructure repair.
Until then…?
It’s survive, baby, survive.
Let us pray that he is correct and that his correctness becomes pretty damned clear pretty damned quickly, because if he what he is trying to do does not begin to be plainly, visibly successful in less than 4 years I believe that we will see a violent swing to the right here that will have us looking back on poor ol’ bumbling Preznit Butch with the fondness now reserved for silent movie characters like the Keystone Kops.
Bet on it.
Let us pray.
And let us support him in this effort.
Peace.
It’s what’s for dinner.
If there is going to be a dinner, of course.
Later…
AG
