They Have Their Reward
Posted on November 22nd, 2008
by Daniel Larison |
|
Michael Crowley quotes a pro-Obama Democratic foreign policy staffer:
With General Jim Jones looking a strong bet for National Security Advisor, Hillary Clinton slated for State, and Bob Gates staying on at DOD, it appears increasingly likely that the three senior foreign policy positions in the Obama Administration will be filled by people who were not active Obama supporters during the campaign. Moreover, these principals are likely to bring their own hanger-ons – Hillary alone is likely to absorb into State the foreign policy advisors from her primary campaign, not necessarily their Obama counterparts.
So how do you think that makes the “Gang of 300” who staffed Candidate Obama on foreign policy issues, wrote white papers, served as surrogates for him, etc. during the long campaign feel?
Well, they probably feel like chumps. What surprises me about the Jones pick is that it takes away a slot that seemed as if it would be the obvious job for Susan Rice, who was one of the earliest and most prominent of Obama’s advisors. An important thing to remember about most of those 300 is that a lot of them were lower-level people during the Clinton administration, and so in this sense were also holdovers from that era, but among them were not any of the high-profile people who were closely tied to the Clintons and who genuinely represented a more hawkish Old Guard. Now Clinton herself returns with her entire entourage, and the people who risked being shut out all together in the event that Hillary had won the nomination are not repaid with much of anything. It seems to me that at some point this pattern of forgetting about the people who helped get him where he is, which Obama has tended to do quite a few times over the years, will blow up in his face.
P.S. The greater significance of this is that it means that the conduct of foreign policy in the Obama administration at a high level will probably not include most of the people who advised Obama during the campaign. This was the time when he laid out the foreign policy differences with Clinton that his supporters hang so many hopes on, and these were the people who helped formulate and defend those differences, while their counterparts did their best to frame some of Obama’s main positions as reckless and naive.
Filed under: foreign policy, politics
I hate when you’re right.
Let’s just leave it at that. Dammit.
Oh, and,
Bastard!
Lemme get this straight. You think Susan Rice should be NSA? I thought you hated the woman? Are you setting things up so you can criticize Obama regardless of what he does? I’m sure if he did pick Rice, you would write a post about what a terrible choice she is, and how this means Obama is going to support “humanitarian” military interventions around the world. When he doesn’t, you write a column about what a disloyal bastard he is. This is your way of making a joke, right?Like you really care whether Susan Rice feels properly rewarded or not.
He’ll keep Susan Rice in reserve somewhere, perhaps as Ambassador to the UN, in case (or until) Hillary implodes. Actually, it is quite brilliant, even Machiavellian, strategy as he neutralizes HC (and gets her out of the Senate) and her failures will be blamed on her not being in sync with POTUS. He can always do to her what Bush did with Colin Powell, undercutting him as he makes overseas visits.
Hate Susan Rice? I don’t remember having given particularly strong views on her one way or the other. Condi Rice, on the other hand….Seriously, though, *I* am not displeased with his selection of Jones. I should think that the people who risked a lot by supporting him over Clinton and showed loyalty to him early on would be displeased by being passed over. Then again, maybe they simply want him to make the best selections and have no problem with any of it. That quote from the staffer suggests that some of his loyalists are unhappy about the situation. That’s it. Do I “care” whether his loyalists are rewarded? Not especially. I assume his loyalists care, and that’s why it could be a problem. It seems to me to be a mistake to fail to reward any of the people who took a chance on you with a top-level post. Backing him last year wasn’t obviously the smart career move to make. It’s not as if they all got into this just so they could stay at lower-level jobs.
It’s strange that you think a Susan Rice selection would necessarily imply a focus on humanitarian interventions. As I understand it, she is generally not regarded very well among the more extreme interventionists because she had partial responsibility for Africa policy during the genocide in Rwanda.
Politically, it may all end up proving to be as masterful as everyone keeps saying. I do think it is odd that the people who mocked Obama’s foreign policy views as folly, or who, in the case of Jones, apparently voted for the other guy, will be in charge of carrying out his foreign policy and advising him.
I thought you had written critical words about Susan Rice a while back. Maybe it was Samantha Power. Not that there’s a huge difference between the two.
Anyway, of course some loyalists are going to be unhappy. There’s 300 of them, and only one can be SoS. Giving it to Hillary is actually a better way to deal with them than rewarding one faction over the other. But the top cabinet spots aren’t really where payback for loyalty traditionally goes. It’s all the small, bureaucratically important slots that exist all through the administration that usually get filled with these types. If Obama completely ignores his loyalists in those kinds of slots, well then yes, he’s going to have a problem, but I don’t think he will.
Hillary got her slot because she earned it on the field of battle. We’ll never know, but I thought back in June that some kind of quid pro quo was reached by Obama and Hillary guaranteeing her one of the top slots at State, DoD, or HHS. In any case, her not fighting Obama to the convention, but endorsing him with quite a lot of gusto back then was more valuable to his efforts than anything any of the 300 did, so she even earned the slot politically in regards to the “what have you done for me” category. She did a helluva lot, and gave up a helluva lot.
As for Jones, I’m not sure why you dislike the guy. From what I’ve read, he seems to have been about as totally opposed to Bush’s policies in Iraq as anyone can be and still remain in the military. Whether Jones voted for McCain or not, he certainly had complete contempt for Bush, and declined every top spot Bush offered him, including Petreaus’ job. But Obama said he’s perfectly happy to reach across the aisel and work with people who may have opposed him personally, as long as they are willing to work towards similar ends. Jones seems like a perfect guy to help bring an end to the Iraq war, seeing as how Obama is going to need lots of cover from the military and neocon critics. Which is another reason to keep Gates on at DoD for another year, until Zinni is eligable. Getting out of Iraq without being accused of “surrender” is going to require guys like Jones, Gates, and Zinni.
Maybe there isn’t a huge difference between them, but while I cannot think of anything especially objectionable about Rice beyond the usual things I am not sorry to see that Power was not appointed to a major position. Power has distinguished herself by saying rather historically obtuse things about how the United States should have intervened to stop the Armenian genocide (how would that have worked exactly?) and by deriding non-interventionists as “Copperhead isolationists,” to name two annoying things off the top of my head.
I don’t dislike Jones. When did I say I disliked Jones? Just one comment ago, I wrote, ” *I* am not displeased with his selection of Jones.” But then I was never an Obama loyalist who stuck his neck out when there were safer options a year and a half ago.
Okay, glad to see you like Jones. But isn’t that the point? You can’t really knock Obama for not appointing Rice or Powers, when you prefer Jones. Nor, really, can Rice or Powers knock him. They’ll get appointed somewhere, in some capacity, just not the senior positions. I guess the main point I’m making here is that when Obama appoints top level people who seem to be generally approved of across the board to the top positions, and some progressives whine about it, it makes them look rather stupid and narrow-minded. Are they saying that ideological loyalty should trump competence? If they are, how are they any different form Bush? Wasn’t that part of the change Obama promised? So he’s delivering on that count, and most people seem happy that he is doing so. Look at his economic team. Looks very solid and reassuring to the markets. Is it a problem that he didn’t appoint a “progressive” to that economic team? Is there even a competent progressive who could handle those kinds of jobs? As I said, most progressives are supportive of Obama, and those they are not look like whiners who put their own personal “reward” above the interests of the country.
In any case, Obama has appointed only a handful of the thousands of political appointees he’s going to put in place over the next few months. Clearly he wants top quality people in top positions. That doesn’t mean he’s going to shut progressives out. But let’s remember, they are not some huge percentage of the Democratic party as conservatives are in the GOP, nor have they taken the time to develop a cadre of high level progressive movers and shakers who can handle high level positions in government. That’s not Obama’s fault, it’s the fault of progressives themselves, and he’s under no obligation to begin an affirmative action program for progressive underachievers, certainly not at the highest levels of government.