Obama wants to change the strategic game on Iran, Israel-Palestine, Syria, Cuba, Russia and other challenges, he will need partners who are perceived as tough, smart, shrewd and even skeptical of the deals he wants to do. Clinton is all of these.
Clinton may be the bad cop to Obama's good cop. Because she is trusted by Pentagon-hugging national security conservatives, she may legitimize his desire to respond to this pivot point in American history with bold strokes rather than incremental ones.
He also makes an important point about Obama as his own Secretary of State:
Obama seems like he has no intention of doing something similar. He intends to, in part, be his own secretary of state, focused on re-sculpting America's global social contract and working in partnership with a diverse team of hard-edged policy players like Clinton to make even his rivals do his direct bidding.
This could be a kind of proactive agenda-setting in foreign policy we haven't seen in decades. Obama does not want an ad hoc, reactive presidency -- and he wants to succeed.
HH is feeling it:
The team of Barack “Grandpa Was a Muslim” Obama, Hillary “I’m a Clinton” Clinton, and Rahm “Israel” Emanuel (that’s his real middle name! and he was a volunteer with the I.D.F. during the 1991 Gulf War!), with Joe Biden and Bill Clinton pitching in as necessary, would put the new Administration in an extremely powerful position to apply the kind of pressure that would give Israeli politicians the political cover they need to reach a settlement with the Palestinians. Everyone knows what the deal would look like, including Ehud Olmert. It’s a question of having the political strength and exerting the will to make it happen.
I hope that there is some basis for such a hope....I do however feel that Bill Richardson is the type of negotiator that may be needed in an Obama Administration - the question is how do you get him in?
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