By Patricia Lee Sharpe
This is the new face of American foreign policy: Hillary Clinton in China (top) and in Indonesia (bottom). We know she’s smart. We know she’s tough. We know she’s well informed and articulate. These are the essential qualities for a Secretary of State. But the woman in these news photos looks radiant, confident, exuberant, optimistic, friendly, energetic and unafraid of close contact with real people. She looks to be everything that Americans are traditionally supposed to be, everything that
used to make us attractive. In this presence you could imagine audiences being hopeful
about the future of the world. You could imagine them thinking, “Hey! America’s back!” Body language counts, and Hillary is on the right track.
Condoleeza Rice was smart, tough, articulate and well informed, too, but her characteristic expression was the off putting school marmish frown, except when she was dealing with Israeli officialdom. Then she relaxed and beamed. Such happy smiles! Everywhere else it was icy self-containment and jaw-clenching faux smiles for the camera, nothing that appeared to have any connection with the heart, if indeed she had one.
The mode of the message has changed, too. Remember how Condi and her boss lectured the world? You should! You must! Or to the woodshed with you! It was absolutely the worst strategy if cooperation was desired, which of course was not the case. The Bush administration wanted dictatorial power at home and abroad.
When Clinton speaks for the Obama administration the pronouns are very different. We have common interests and common problems, she says. We can do good things for both of us, for all of us, she says. Let’s sit down and work it out together. There’s a big difference between invitations and commands, between leadership and coercion. What gets done tends to be more durable. Needless to say, the power’s still there in the background.
There were those who thought that Barack Obama was playing a nasty joke on a stubborn opponent by making her Secretary of State and then naming a pair of very big players as special envoys to the Middle East and Pakistan/Afghanistan, as if he wished to humiliate her by depriving her of all opportunity to shine in critical areas of current U.S. foreign policy. Why, they asked, would she resign a safe Senate seat for this? So what if Edward Kennedy was going to be health legislation czar. Even as she embarked on the Asian tour she has just completed, I and many others looked on the trip somewhat condescendingly. “Well, she has to do something!”
Instead she returns triumphant, without having overstepped the line that makes her a member of the President’s Cabinet, not an actor in her own right: a beautifully calibrated performance. But why should we be surprised? This is the woman who was resented by many New Yorkers as a carpetbagger when she announced a run for the Senate from that state. Up for reelection six years later, she was popular even in normally Republican upstate constituencies. During the White House years Hillary was always in the shadow of Bill Clinton’s extraordinary charisma. Now that she’s a personage in her own right, we see that she too has enormous personal charm and presence. She’s a star, and she’s also been canny enough to embrace the Mitchell and Holbrooke missions. If they succeed, she will be positioned to share in the success. If they fail—well, they really work for the President.
At this point, I find myself thinking that Clinton has the potential to be a great Secretary of State. However, when it comes to making foreign policy, she’s only one among many, and we don’t yet have a clear idea of what the Obama administration’s policies and priorities in the international sphere will be. No matter how adept or charming a diplomat may be, bad or indifferent policy doesn’t make for greatness.