With Iran and North Korea at a boiling point, the White House is taking a more vigorous role in foreign policy, largely eclipsing efforts by the State Department.
If Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is bothered, she hasn’t shown it. Her tranquil working relationship with President Barack Obama has been one of many surprises in the new administration.
“I was skeptical this arrangement would work out, and I was shocked when he picked her,” said Clark Ervin, a former State Department official and member of Obama’s transition team currently at the Aspen Institute. “Now it appears they have a seamless partnership.”
Their first months in office have tossed a profusion of foreign policy challenges at Obama and Clinton: Middle East peace, Somali pirates, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Cuba, and now North Korea’s threats of war and Iran’s violent post-election rioting.
From his first trip overseas to meet with world leaders, Obama has made it clear he is the top banana on foreign policy, cutting a high profile while working on a promise to restore the U.S. image abroad.
Clinton has stayed busy, too — traveling with Obama, and alone to key stress points like China — but always second-tier in terms of visibility and message.
Any disagreements between the two are strictly behind the scenes, but her influence is unmistakable. Clinton has picked her own allies — such as former Ambassador Richard Holbrooke — to serve as key envoys and in top positions at the State Department.
“They seem to be trying to find a division of labor where everyone is comfortable,” said Kim Holmes, vice president of foreign and defense policy studies at the Heritage Foundation. “It looks like many of the lower-level foreign policy issues are the ones he’s giving to her.”
This week, key statements from the administration on North Korea and Iran have come directly from the White House, and it appears Obama is taking steps to bring dealing with Iran closer in-house.
The White House and State Department so far are declining comment on a plan to move Dennis Ross, special adviser for the Persian Gulf and Southwest Asia, from Foggy Bottom to Pennsylvania Avenue.
“The president has enormous confidence, and has for quite some time, in Dennis Ross and what he brings to our foreign policy team,” said White House spokesman Robert Gibbs. But, “the president doesn’t have any personnel announcements to make.”
Stephen Hess, a presidential expert at the Brookings Institution, said that Obama and Clinton have benefited from keeping the experienced, well-regarded Robert Gates on as secretary of defense.
“The minute Hillary Clinton took this job, the die was cast — her place in history would be decided by how well she did,” Hess said.
Clinton told ABC News she never coveted the job before Obama, her one-time political rival, offered it to her.
She said she initially resisted, but the president was persuasive.
“And finally, I looked around our world and I thought, you know, we are in just so many deep holes that everybody had better grab a shovel and start digging out,” Clinton said.
