You think so? To be honest, from what I read of her, she never struck me as being particularly good at negotiation, management, or the various sundry skills needed for the Secretary of State job. She's good at making good arrivals, ceremonies, and photo-ops, but that's to be expected - she was First Lady.

Well the president needs to stop beign a media hog and pulling PR stunts like having having a rose garden meeting the same time your sos is giving a speech on your policy.

But it seems to me there is a simple truth here. If the president and his inner circle thought it best to have her out front on the major portfolios right now, she would be there, at least so we'd hope. Is that incorrect? (That's an honest question, and this reasoning does fully leave open the possibility that the president and his inner circle just flat out don't know what's good for them or the country. It's possible...) That they evidently don't feel that's what's best at this point may signal something of a problem and at least raises the question of why it's the case.

Here are some possibilities. First of all, the view that the Secretary of State should be a strong figure that clearly runs foreign policy is a totally respectable position and makes a ton of sense. But one has to acknowledge that this is not the first president who has chosen effectively to be his own Secretary of State in the early going, and to put an administrator at Foggy Bottom. Does one not (JFK)? Just as one also has to acknowledge that that doesn't always work out so great. (JFK).

Secondly, Obama's star power in the world is simply a fact. And given that fact, it seems that between trying to downplay it in deference to Clinton (or for other reasons) and trying to capitalize on it to the benefit of America, it is clearly better to try to capture whatever benefits it can bring as long as it endures. Many of us had doubts about this marriage from the start, to adopt Tina's formulation. (And btw, I don't think it's sexist unless we're operating on an outmoded view of marriage. These days a marriage is an equal partnership, which actually overstates Hillary's role here even in the best of circumstances.) But we didn't doubt Clinton's ability to do the job, rather we questioned how the interrelation of the roles of two very high-profile figures would be managed.

And there I think David hit on a plausible answer. The Obama star will certainly fade as the administration makes decisions that favor U.S. over multilateral interests. As he settles in to a profile more typical for a U.S. president (more or less popular, depending, but mortal and somewhat unexceptionally ubiquitous), I think we can expect Hillary's profile on the international stage, as well as her authority on her territory, to rise in accordance. That is if she sticks around long enough for that to happen. (Reading through those plotting her 2012 presidential run in the comments to Tina Brown's piece, most of the scenarios seem to involve her leaving Foggy Bottom sometime in 2010-early 2011.)

In any case -- in the early months of a new president's administration (up through Congress' August recess at least) the president owns any and all major international (and domestic) policy successes (pirates!) and failures (Iran[??--by my lights no, but CW says probably]). It makes some sense that during that period, if there are going to be errors on which he takes a critical early hit, that he would want them to emanate from him and his inner circle, and therefore that he would want to centralize major decisions. Accountability never fully drifts from the Oval, but as things settle down (I suppose I should say if they do) and the president settles in, he naturally will, I suspect, feel comfortable delegating larger and larger portions of responsibility. I would claim that this pattern is natural, even if we saw a departure from it in the last administration, for obvious reasons.

As a fun little thought experiment, an interesting topic for discussion might be whether Hillary Clinton has more power over U.S. government decision making today in 2009 as Secretary of State than she did as First Lady in 1993 . . . or not. What do folks think?

I always thought that the brilliance in pick Hillary Clinton as Secretary State was what she could do for the State Department rather than simply what she could do for the Obama Administration’s foreign relations. I subscribe to the idea that there needs to be a rebalancing in the institutions that handle American foreign policy, because the Department of Defense has come to have too much control over U.S. foreign policy. The decline of the State Department wasn’t just a problem of the Bush years, although he and his team certainly exacerbated the issue, it’s a decades long decline that extends all the way back to the National Security Act of 1947.

We need a revamped and strengthened State Department and there is no one better to do that than one of the most savvy and well-connected politicians of our time. While everyone was fretting over how the special envoys would sap Clinton’s power and influence, I thought the envoys were a good idea because it meant that she can focus on reforming the State Department. I think we are starting to see that with the proposed Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR). If she can bring real reform to the State Department and help rebalance American foreign policy that will be a bigger accomplishment than almost any treaty or negotiation with a foreign power.

....I always had doubts that Hillary Clinton was a good choice as Obama's Secretary of State.

Can she do the job? What does that mean? If you go by modern Secretaries of State who had conspicuous success -- Marshall, Acheson, Kissinger, Baker -- obviously you see men with sophisticated understandings of international relations in their day as well as the confidence of the Presidents they served. Sec. Clinton is a little short of that group in the first category, and as Rothkopf notes here is well short in the second. How could it be otherwise? President Obama keeps domestic policy close to his office also, and no one in his domestic policy Cabinet spent two years trying to deny his life's ambition.

I don't mean to draw conclusions as to how effective Clinton can be at State. As she herself rightly points out, it's too early. Besides that, at least one of the most important things she can do is strengthening the State Department's institutional position; this means drawing more resources for the Department from Congress as well as reorganizing the Department internally, neither of which is a task suited for the headlines. It wasn't in Marshall's day either, and his modernization of the State Department was one of the best things he did.

I do agree with Rothkopf that the early signs are not good. Doubtful as I am that foreign policy ought to be entrusted to Hillary Clinton, I am at least as doubtful that people like Rahm Emmannuel and David Axelrod are the best advisors for the President in this area.

I'm a bit biased in favor of Hillary given I blog about what she's doing as SOS, but I really think that some in the MSM don't want to let go of their safety blanket, which is this contrived rift between the WH and State Department- that is so much more *exciting* than following boring old foreign policy!

Also, bad luck for Clinton having to interfere with the Media's non-stop, repetitive coverage and analysis of the GOP dog-and-pony show called the 'Sotomayor Confirmation Hearings'. Don't get me wrong- those hearings are very important regardless of one's political persuasion but lets be honest, was the media following it 24/7 at the exclusion of Secy Clinton's CFR speech, because they and the American people are interested in the finer points of constitutional law? Or were they perhaps more interested in watching Lindsay Graham and the other members of the boys club put that "Wise Latina Woman" in her place?

And here's an idea- how about the MEDIA take some responsibility for THEIR role in Clinton's so-called diminished visibility- day in and day out she's doin' her diplomacy thing but with the exception of the press which follows the State Dept, they don't cover it.

As for the CFR speech not making a big splash and not outlining any new policies, I actually wasn't expecting it to- I expected it to be a broad-brush outline of US foreign policy and it's goals for both an international and domestic audience. But I guess it's a good thing Secretary Clinton *didn't* drop any bombshells regarding brand new policies and strategies given that according to RothKopf, NOBODY covered the speech (except CSPAN, CNN and MSNBC online who had live streaming coverage) in any real headline grabbing way.

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Secretary Clinton Blog

But yesterday itself was not a watershed. It was a cry for help dressed in a press stunt shrouded in serious spin. Nothing calls into question your relevance like having to assert how relevant you are.

Yes, and for sure, nothing calls into question your attempts to neutralize someone like having to assert how neutralized they have become! "A cry for help!" Wow, "Hillary supporter" dude! Hillary Clinton sure does scare unholy hell out of you, doesn't she!

How about a reality check? Here's an intelligent and insightful post by a real Hillary supporter over at No Quarter. Yeah, that's right. NO QUARTER. That blog is run by a Reagan Republican named Larry Johnson who used to be a CIA operative and a State Dept. employee during the Reagan-Bush I era:

Hillary Clinton Delivers A Major, Action-Focused Foreign Policy Speech
http://www.noquarterusa.net/blog/2009/07/16/hillary-clinton-delivers-a-major-action-focused-foreign-policy-speech/#more-28155

That post was written by an NQ blogger named Bronwyn's Harbor. And here's blog owner Larry Johnson's post from July 12, 2009 on Hillary's influence at the State Dept. and her intelligent and artful handling of the Honduras crisis, in opposition to Obama's clueless public statements on the coup:

Hillary Rescues Honduras
http://www.noquarterusa.net/blog/2009/07/12/hillary-rescues-honduras/

Thankfully, there really are people out there who are paying attention and telling it like it is regarding Hillary's efforts at State. Too bad none of those people work at Foreign Policy Magazine!