You know, I felt like the nation sort of dodged a bullet when Susan Rice fell out of contention for secretary of state.
Not because of the Benghazi thing, but because of all the other stuff we learned about her while she was in the news. Just one foreign policy mess in her background after another.
WASHINGTON — President Obama announced on Wednesday afternoon that Susan E. Rice, the American ambassador to the United Nations, would replace Tom Donilon, who is resigning, as national security adviser in a major shakeup of his foreign-policy inner circle.
The appointment, which Mr. Obama made in a Rose Garden ceremony, puts Ms. Rice, 48, an outspoken diplomat and a close political ally, at the heart of the administration’s foreign-policy apparatus.
It is also a defiant gesture to Republicans who harshly criticized Ms. Rice for presenting an erroneous account of the deadly attacks on the American mission in Benghazi, Libya. The post of national security adviser, while powerful, does not require Senate confirmation.
In his announcement, Mr. Obama referred to Ms. Rice’s role as an adviser during his 2008 presidential campaign and praised her work as a key diplomat during his first term…
So… she was advising him back when, for instance, he was against the Colombian Free Trade Agreement, before he was (happily) for it?
Why is the president so high on having this woman in the front ranks of his foreign policy team? The NYT excerpt above makes it sound almost like petulance on his part. I haven’t figured out what it is that recommends her, or at least, what there is that outweighs all the negative…
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Obama heard that G.W. Bush had a black lady named “Rice” as his national security advisor, and so, not to be outdone, he wanted one too?
It’s a political payoff, for taking the fall on Benghazi, covering for Obama and Clinton. Putting her in this new post may also restrict some lines of questioning in future congressional inquiries.
Only problem with that theory Silence is that the Benghazi thing has pretty much run it’s course. Not really much more to say and the public has clearly moved on.
But that doesn’t mean my theory is wrong at all, bud. You take care of your friends, especially if they have the goods on ya.
Most of the points you cite about Rice have to do with the events of the 1990s. Most observers indicate that the events of that decade in Africa and other humanitarian crises (and her own missteps) were in fact decisive in formulating the way she has looked at the world in the past decade or so. In fact, you should be happy, because both she and Samantha Power are considered to lean towards the side of “liberal interventionism.” Rice was a key advocate for the Libya intervention, for example. Also, you’re forgetting her record at the UN, where she has had some key successes, including tightened sanctions on Iran and North Korea. I don’t think Obama appointed her to “stick it in the eye” of the GOP, that’s not his style, especially considering how many Republicans he keeps appointing to key posts (FBI most recently). Ultimately, I think BHO just trusts her and respects her intellect. With her, Samantha Power, and John Kerry now at the heart of the foreign policy team, he has surrounded himself (for these remaining three years of his term, filled with difficult challenges in the world arena) with a team he feels a close connection to. Sometimes that doesn’t work out especially if they just tell the President what he wants to hear, but I think those three strong intellects like Kerry, Power, and Rice, will be anything but yes-men-and-women.
I saw something in the Post this morning, along the very lines of what you’re saying, Phillip. I didn’t get a chance yet to finish reading it, though.
The tension here seems to lie in this: Ms. Rice is someone in whom the president has confidence. Meanwhile, there’s no particular reason for the rest of the country to have confidence in her. The latter is unfortunate, but this position is more about the relationship with the president. Which is why the position doesn’t have to be confirmed.
I suppose we of the Great Unwashed out here would be more comfortable with somebody like Henry Kissinger. You know, a white guy with a German accent, to scare the hell out of any country that wants to give us a hard time. 🙂
Speaking of which, I see a Fox commentator who once worked for Kissinger is trashing the Rice appointment:
Yeah, that last graf sort of speaks to my own uneasiness, but…
Normally, a National Security Adviser doesn’t do all of those things. It’s just that Kissinger functioned more like a secretary of state in that position, and was more public, which is WHY he did all those things. Which isn’t necessarily what you need in this position…
“Why is Obama so high on Susan Rice?”
For those of us with a preference for hard facts, including those not yet apparent to the masses, Susan Rice has been a close personal friend of both Michelle Obama and senior adviser Valerie Jarrett.
@Phillip,
Not a poke in the eye to Republicans by Obama because that is not his style? C’mon Phillip. When the president uses sweet little comments like “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun,” or “I need you to go out and talk to your friends and talk to your neighbors. I want you to talk to them whether they are independent or whether they are Republican. I want you to argue with them and get in their face.“ or “If Latinos sit out the election instead of saying, ‘We’re gonna punish our enemies, and we’re gonna reward our friends “, are a pretty good indication that he is more than willing to “poke” anyone in the eye given the opportunity if they don’t agree with him. Of course, later on he tried to parse his words by clarifying he intended to say “oponents” instead of enemies. Slip of the tongue? Fruedian slip? – not.
Bart, once you get out of the Fox echo chamber, I think you’ll see things a little more clearly. In Foxworld, Obama’s mere existence is an unacceptable provocation. I’m not sure that any President in American history faced the monolithic and nihilistic opposition across-the-board that Obama faced from day one, proclaimed with admittedly great honesty by Sen. McConnell among others. So by your reckoning, Bart, holding any positions that do not agree with Roger Ailes pretty much constitutes a “poke in the eye.” So be it. As conservative non-insane-person David Frum put it the other day, “I appreciate that conservative reformers must pay lip-service to shibboleths about Barack Obama being the worst president of all time, . Dissent too much from party orthodoxy, and you find yourself outside the party altogether. Still … conservative reformers should admit, if only to themselves, the harm that has been done by the politics of total war over the past five years…There will be a Republican president again someday, and that president will need American political institutions to work. Republicans also lose as those institutions degenerate.” I think the record on the size of the initial stimulus, the nature of the health care reform, and a variety of Cabinet and other appointees speak for themselves.
It’s Obama’s centrism that won him two terms as President, not any poke-in-the-eye aggressive liberalism. This is not a liberal country, by and large. My larger point though was simply that he wouldn’t make this appointment just for the satisfaction of angering right-wingers, more because he seems to have had long-term confidence in Susan Rice. After all, if anything Rice should be more palatable to the pro-interventionists among the GOP than some of Obama’s other staff.
Obama is pragmatic, at times infuriatingly so. He chose Susan Rice as his adviser because he wanted her advice!
@Phillip,
I am sure Brad will edit this response but I sincerely hope he doesn’t.
Frankly, I am getting pretty damn tired of your dog whistle reactions when a conservative’s negative response to Obama is mindlessly equated to being a Fox News automaton. In your haste to convict me of being a mindless adherent to anything broadcast on Fox News, it brings your reaction down to the lowest level of elitist bigotry and then you are no better than a narrow-minded bigot who actually holds racist opinions of Obama. If anything, I can say the same thing about you being in the echo chamber of the opposite of Fox, MSNBC and the far left wing liberals who spew their venom with the same enthusiasm as the right wing ones do on Fox. Are you a mindless robot who watches MSNBC with breathless anticipation for the next attack on a conservative?
Without having the guts to openly call me a racist because Obama is black and I do not agree with his politics or most of his positions, you cloak your words in an attempt at nuance and they won’t work with me. At least be honest because that is apparently what you think of me when it comes to Obama, isn’t it?
I took my rose colored glasses off when Kennedy was assassinated and I heard some people cheering.