Good News: Hillary Still Roolz!

Madam Secretary

As Barack Obama continues to flounder, flip-flop and act like a fumbling fool on the issue of health care, Our Girl is doing what she always does: blooming where she’s planted. Aren’t you glad that SOMEONE in the Obama Administraiton is acting like a Democrat?!

Barely six months into her tenure as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton has already made the State Department her own, setting its direction with her usual firmness and clarity.

Clinton’s just-concluded 11-day trip to Africa has sent the clearest signal yet that she intends to make women’s rights one of her signature issues and a higher priority than ever before in American diplomacy.

She plans to press governments on abuses of women’s rights and make women more central in U.S. aid programs.

But her efforts go beyond the marble halls of government and show how she is redefining the role of secretary of state. Her trips are packed with town hall meetings and visits to micro-credit projects and women’s dinners. Ever the politician, she is using her star power to boost women who could be her allies.

“It’s just a constant effort to elevate people who, in their societies, may not even be known by their own leaders,” Clinton said in an interview. “My coming gives them a platform, which then gives us the chance to try and change the priorities of the governments.”

Personal Reasons?

Woooohoooo!

Wow. What a stunner!

Caroline Kennedy has told Gov. David Paterson that she is withdrawing her name from consideration to replace outgoing Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in the U.S. Senate, The Post has learned. 

Kennedy cited “personal reasons,” according to sources.

Her stunning move comes as sources revealed that Paterson had intended to appoint her to the now-vacant seat today.

Really.  He was going to appoint her and she withdrew for “personal reasons?”

Something is, um, a little off about that story. Don’t you think?

Operation Pantsuit: A Play in One Misguided Act

Can't Touch This

THE SCENE: DAVID AXELROD’S conference room. We are witnessing a meeting with the Obama team’s inside-iest insiders. Attending are AXELROD, DAVID PLOUFFE and VALERIE JARRETT. RAHM EMANUEL is attending via teleconference from Paraguay, where he is hiding out from Patrick Fitzgerald and his ongoing investigation. His face is shown on a screen on the far wall of the room. The other three participants are seated in cream leather executive chairs around the black granite table, which is polished to an immaculate sheen. The walls are sage green and covered with pictures of Obama looking beneficent and Presidential.

AXELROD (addressing the wall screen): Rahm, can you hear us? I know things are kinda primitive in Paraguay.

EMANUEL: Not where I am. Our man Barack has made everyone feel so post-partisan that George W. has been hosting me. (a Paraguayan houseboy, wearing a large nametag that reads “Hello, my name is Juan” brings him a tropical drink) Thanks, Miguel! (The houseboy leaves, rolling his eyes; EMANUEL sips his drink) Mmm…nothing like fresh mango.

JARRETT (sarcastically): Gosh, can I be the target of a federal investigation too?

PLOUFFE (looking around) Shhh! For god’s sake, Valerie, don’t jinx it! Everyone, make the sign of the “O”!

(The following ritualized actions are done with a precision that would put synchronized swimmers to shame.)

(ALL raise their arms and make an “O” sign with their hands)

ALL TOGETHER: Obama, protect us! Obama, protect us! Obama, protect us!

(ALL lower their arms.)

AXELROD: Ahhhh, that’s better. It looks like we’re ready to start now.

(ALL put on their “serious” faces)

AXELROD: As you know, today was a big day for our President. Several of his appointments went to confirmation hearings, including…HER.

(ALL nod solemnly)

AXELROD: Now, none of us wanted HER, but thanks to those damn voters in the primary and those idiotic PUMAs, she had the leverage to elbow her way into the Cabinet. A moment of silence, please, for our brother John Kerry, who deserved the Secretary of State position so much more.

(ALL bow their heads solemnly)

Congratulations, Madame Secretary

A Giant Among Giants

I do not have time to write about the Hillary Clinton confirmation hearings today, but if you would like to read some very entertaining and wonderful posts and live-blogging, please do visit The Confluence and check them all out. It’s all Hillary, all the time over there today – and with good reason.

I am so proud that I supported her during the primaries, and I am so proud that I never drank the Kool-Aid. And I am so, so happy for America that despite the fact that she will not be President, we will still have the benefit of her brilliance and compassion as Secretary of State.

I know that she will go far in repairing the damage that eight years of the Bush Doctrine have done to so many countries and so many people across the world.

Tomorrow, I will have a snarkier take. But today, the pleasure of seeing excellence at work cannot be sullied. Hillary Clinton is an Olympic athlete of politics; and today, she was one who took the gold without breaking a sweat.

Congratulations, Madame Secretary.

So, Can She Start Now?

Madame Secretary

President-Elect Barack Obama has finally named Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton as Secretary of State today. I am thrilled, but nervous, since I expect the press to react like this for the next four years, and she will face many challenges in her new position, including – perhaps – other members of Barack Obama’s Administration. 

What I’m wondering is, since Obama has been acting as co-President, can Hillary now act as co-Secretary of State with Condoleezza Rice? Because quite frankly, Dr. Rice has been an unmitigated disaster.

Just think about the history of this woman’s tenure in the Bush Administration. On 9/11, she was the National Security Adviser. She admitted in Congressional Hearings that she had seen the August PDB entitled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” She had taken no action whatsoever on terrorism either before or after this briefing, and on the day itself, she was scheduled to give a talk on missile defense and Russia. The idiocy of wasting time on this billion-dollar Reaganite boondoggle, when they had so much information on terrorism in their hands, is truly mindboggling. The Bushian excuses for missing the significance of the chatter and the foreign intel and the PDB were pathetic; Rice actually called the PDB a “historical document,” which was utterly laughable.

And as for the Secretary of State position, Rice has been all but invisible. Colin Powell was a strong Secretary of State, until he ruined his credibility with the cartoon drawings and vial of flour at the United Nations. After that, Bush should have appointed a person with impeccable credentials and experience; someone who could help erase the taint of the Iraq WMD lies from the SOS position. But who does Bush choose? A loyalist, a crony, the woman who failed to prevent the attacks of September 11, 2001. As a New Yorker, I was shocked and disgusted by this appointment. I knew then that Bush had taken the principle of “failing upward” to a new extreme.

The one time Dr. Rice actually tried to do something – that last-minute effort to hold a Middle East peace conference – she failed miserably. And that missile defense shield, which Rice is so fond of promoting? Well, that’s not working out too well. Who could have predicted that if America planted missiles 100 miles from Russia in Poland, it would be interpreted as an act of aggression? Oh yes – EVERYONE WITH 1/10TH OF A BRAIN.