In the gestation and infancy of the Obama presidency, one of the favorite points of the president’s media admirers was his ability to turn Hillary Clinton from rival into teammate.
But there are signs that the secretary of state is striking out on her own as the president grapples with what shape his own foreign policy will approach.
Clinton, who famously said, “Barack Obama, you are naive if you think you can sit down with people like Ahmadinejad in Iran or Chavez in Venezuela,” has not followed the president’s lead so willingly as the regimes in Iran and Venezuela have been flexing their muscles.
On Iran, Clinton confidantes let it be known to the New York Times that the former first lady was one of the voices urging Obama not to wait a week to summon his indignation over the crackdown in Tehran. The White House dismissed any differences, but the Times like was perhaps the start of an effort for Clinton to cast herself as the more realistic, more grownup voice on foreign policy.
On Honduras, though, the president acted fast to denounce the moves by the country’s supreme court and legislature, calling the expulsion and impeachment of the Chavista President Manuel Zelaya was “not legal.”
Clinton, on the other hand, withheld legal judgment and said that the situation evolved into a coup, but didn’t start as one.
Insiders say Clinton wants to get Zelaya to agree not seek an unconstitutional vote to extend his power, a la Chavez, as a condition of the U.S. backing his return to power. While Obama, who recently restored U.S. diplomatic relations with the Chavez’s regime, seems to be looking for the solution that will least upset the tenuous relationship between America and the Chavista governments in Latin America.
It’s possible that Obama and Clinton have decided to follow good cop, bad cop roles, but that seems unlikely for two reasons — Public dissent invites critics foreign and domestic and the two have switched sides. While Obama took the go-slow approach on the unrest in Iran, he was for speedy denunciation of the expulsion of Zelaya. Clinton, meanwhile, pressed for movement on Iran but now counsels for restraint in Honduras. Clinton looks to advance America’s interests in times of turmoil while Obama is more eager to preserve the chance for parley, and that is more than just theatrics for the sake of being the international version of Ed Exley and Bud White.
But one domestic move also makes me think that Clinton is trying to turn up the heat on Obama.
When the president offered the domestic partners of same-sex federal employees limited benefits to quell a riot among gay activists that was and is threatening to limit the president’s fundraising clout, it came three weeks after someone at the State Department had leaked Clinton’s intention to offer more expansive benefits to her gay employees.
Clinton ended up waiting for Obama to make his peace offering to put the plan into place, but her move and the leak put him in a much more difficult situation with a constituency that favored Clinton last year.
I think we can expect more differences to emerge as Clinton solidifies her control at State — where I am told that she is hugely popular — and the President keeps fumbling on foreign policy.
