Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Hillary's choice

It's not totally obvious to me whether it would be smarter for Hillary Clinton to remain in the Senate or to become Secretary of State. She could stay in the Senate as long as she wants, and maybe she could wind up majority leader in the not-too-distant future. Yes, some people stay in the Senate for decades without really affecting much, but that doesn't strike me as Hillary's style. On the other hand, Secretary of State is a real legacy job, even if it only lasts a few years. She's already known around the world, and she's not a bad person to represent the country.

I suppose the two main concerns about her moving to State have already been made by others. The first, as Jon Stewart noted, is that the only area of substantive disagreement between Clinton and Obama has been foreign policy. Seems like Obama's just asking for trouble. The other concern was capably expressed by Josh Marshall:
I think we should consider that during her time on the national stage Sen. Clinton has been at the helm in two big undertakings -- had two big executive leadership tasks. One was health care in 1994 and the other was her presidential bid in 2007-08. Each was something of a trainwreck from an executive-level management perspective. And the State Department is a notoriously intractable bureaucracy.
What's so bad about the Senate?

1 comment:

Eric Rubin said...

Shaina - they bought they're tickets, they knew what they were getting into. I say, Let Em Crash!