U.S. Secretary of State Hillary, who over the last four years has
transformed herself from President Barack Obama's political rival into his
tireless representative abroad, has long maintained that one term as the U.S.
chief diplomat is enough.
Here she was answering questions
from CNN moderator Wolf Blitzer in March 2011:
Blitzer: If the president is
reelected, do you want to serve a second term as secretary of state?
Clinton: No.
Blitzer: Would you like to serve
as secretary of defense?
Clinton: No.
Blitzer: Would you like to be
vice president of the United States?
Clinton: No.
Blitzer: Would you like to be
president of the United States?
Clinton: No.
Having visited at least 111 countries
and traveled about 1.5 million kilometers as secretary, Clinton might have an
understandable point.
Equally understandable, Obama is
reluctant to see her go. The president has said publicly that he is doing his
best to persuade her to stay on, particularly to help guide U.S. policy on the
Arab Spring and events in Syria.
"I don't think the
secretary's plans have changed," spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told
reporters at the State Department following Obama's November 6 election
victory. "You've heard her say many times that she intends to see through
a transition of a successor and then she will go back to private life and enjoy
some rest and think and write and all those things."
The key to a good secretary of
state is his or her relationship with the president, says former White House
official Lawrence Haas, who is a senior fellow on U.S. foreign policy at the
American Foreign Policy Council.
"The secretary of state is
carrying out the policy of the president of the United States, and that is going
to be true no matter who is in that position," Haas says. "And I
think that Secretary Clinton has done a very good job in that realm. There has
been no daylight between what Obama has said and what Clinton has tried to
do."
So if Obama is unable to get Clinton
to change her mind, who will fill her shoes?
Several names have been mentioned
as possible successors. The one that pops up most frequently is Senator John
Kerry of Massachusetts, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He
has been praised for his wide-ranging international contacts and his broad
expertise in foreign-policy issues ranging from the Middle East to China to
Russia.
The U.S. Constitution requires
that cabinet appointments be approved by the Senate, which should present no
problem for Kerry, who has served in that chamber since 1985.
But that strength is also his
weakness. With the opposition Republican Party controlling the House of
Representatives and Obama's Democrats holding a slim majority in the Senate,
Obama would certainly think twice about appointing a senator to the cabinet and
taking the risk that a Republican might win that Senate seat in the resulting
special election.
Also reportedly in the mix is
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice, a position that Obama
elevated to cabinet-level status.
However, Rice has been sharply
criticized for comments that she made following the September 11, 2012 attack on
the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, which left U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens
and three other Americans dead. Conservatives in the United States have called
for her resignation for allegedly misleading the public about the nature of the
attack. If Obama nominated her, she would face tough questions during Senate
confirmation hearings.
In addition, she has been on the
front lines of some tense interactions in the UN Security Council with Russia
and China over issues like Iran, Libya, and Syria, which could mean there would
be tensions for her to overcome if she became the top U.S. diplomat.
Obama's national security
adviser, Thomas Donilon, is also frequently mentioned as a possible successor
to Clinton. He served as the secretary of state's chief of staff in the
administration of President Bill Clinton, playing important roles in negotiating
the agreement that ended the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina and the expansion of
NATO in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
"He's got broad experience
in issues of foreign policy, national security policy, and I think, probably,
compared to the other two, he is the best-qualified," Haas says of
Donilon. "He doesn't quite have the gravitas of somebody like Senator
Kerry, who would come to this job as the former chairman of the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee, but he is widely respected and he would have all the tools
to do a good job, I believe."
Robert Coalson
Business & Investment Opportunities
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