Hillary Clinton’s Foreign Policy Speech

by CKR

My friends have been grousing that none of the candidates are really talking about foreign policy, and that the media probably wouldn’t cover it if they did. I think I saw at least one op-ed to that effect over the weekend, too.

Among the reams of advice that Hillary Clinton is now receiving was the suggestion that she make a couple of serious and bold policy speeches before the next primaries. She scheduled a foreign policy speech for yesterday, February 25. I was wondering why it was in Washington rather than one of the upcoming primary states, but I guess that’s where foreign policy’s Very Serious People reside.

I checked the major news outlets over the day for the speech. It didn’t make the Washington Post, but it did reach the New York Times’s “The Caucus” blog and The News Hour. Here’s the text from Clinton’s website. Oddly, the video clip I saw on The News Hour didn’t track with the website text.

I’ve got several questions about that speech. I was expecting a bold statement of a new vision. President Bush has made that easy to do, having botched foreign policy in most dimensions. The possibilities are many: Demilitarize foreign policy. Move toward a world without nuclear weapons. A new vision for the Middle East.

I would have liked to hear an overarching theme and how that would change the United States’ approach to the rest of the world. That’s the best way to do foreign policy. The thousands of specific decisions them must flow from that.

On reading the text at Clinton’s website, I have to wonder who her speechwriters are and why she puts up with them. It’s titled “Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's Remarks on Foreign Policy at George Washington University.” Informal remarks are often transcribed as they are spoken and cannot be expected to be as tightly constructed as a formal speech. But what I read beforehand indicated that this would be a major policy speech, not informal remarks. The inconsistency with The News Hour’s clip makes me wonder about this, but if there was a formal speech, I would expect it to be posted at Clinton’s website.

There was no overarching theme, nor much structure to the speech. It is incoherent, topics skipping loosely from paragraph to paragraph, and paragraphs whose sentences appear to have been chosen at random. I had hoped to pull the noteworthy points, as I did with the candidates’ articles in Foreign Affairs, but it’s not possible, and I am too tempted to pull some of the more egregious incoherencies. So read the speech and see what you think.

It was easy to review Clinton’s Foreign Affairs article. She had the bullet points down in logical order. I don’t understand why a major foreign policy speech couldn’t do that, even if it didn’t present an overarching vision.

Last night’s News Hour presented a contrast: Senators Joe Biden and Chuck Hagel reporting on their trip to Central Asia and Turkey. Biden and Hagel are clear and specific as to how they see the problems and possible solutions. I recommend it to Clinton’s speechwriters as a model.

Comments

[pls]

Thanks for directing me so efficiently to Hillery Clinton's speech,which I hadn't got around to reading. I thought it was extremely informative and certainly more comprehensive than anything Biden and Hagel attempted, since the latter were simply answering a battery of questions. As for the Foreign Affairs article, agree it's first rate, but only for reading. A wonk piece and a speech are two entirely different genres.

[CKR]

As you say, Biden and Hagel were answering questions. Also as you say, a written piece and the spoken word are different genres.

But both should be the product of clear thinking, which is not evident in Clinton's speech. Where were her advisors? I've heard much better from Joe Wilson, who is one of them.

It might have been expected that she would take bold steps to provide a positive vision that could turn her campaign around. She criticizes President Bush for having no such vision. It's not essential, certainly, in campaigning. It's mostly us wonks that would like to see a conceptual framework. I agree with her that the absence of such has been part of the Bush foreign policy disaster. Shall we go another four years careening from one mistake to another?

The speech is not even a laundry list. About a quarter of the way through, she says that a new strategy is needed. One might have thought that this would be followed by bullet points on what that strategy might be, or a concise statement of America's place in the world, but it's not. A sort-of list appears toward the end, but it doesn't hang together. As I said, Biden and Hagel identify the problems and what might be done about them. No such from this speech.

[CKR]

Steve Clemons registers dismay that Clinton didn't mention Israel and Palestine.

She didn't mention nuclear weapons either. Part of why I say it wasn't even a laundry list.