it's not easy being royalty

And ironically, not with a bang but a whimper.

After generations of dramatic exits, it’s ironic that Caroline Kennedy’s withdrawal from contention for the open Senate seat in New York should be so lacking in it.

It was so obviously a ruse (and a self-serving one at that) to use the timely collapse of her beloved uncle at the Inaugural luncheon as a way out of a hasty and ill-considered decision to seek the seat, that it makes a mockery of the Kennedy reputation for bravery and grit.

Of course, there was much talk of nannies with no papers, and a few other hiccups along the way, such as Caroline Kennedy’s apparent struggles with the English language, but in the end, the idea just petered out. And Governor David Patterson of New York ended up being the last person ever to pander to a Kennedy, and badly denting his reputation in the process.

Because the myth is finally over, Ladies and Gentleman. It seems, that the cult of personality, or in this case, the cult of family, indeed has a limited shelf life. Perhaps the American obsession with aristocracy is finally coming to an end. And not a moment too soon.

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don't fumble my legacy, dude

Among all the other total disasters Bush is handing over to Obama is the small matter of finding peace in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But the current attacks on Gaza are part of an old school of thought. The future of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will have a completely new landscape.

Benny Morris, a prominent historian of Israeli History wrote a superb primer on Israel’s current predicament in the New York Times. To sum it up, Israel faces unconventional enemies in both Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Hamas in Gaza, as well as the looming threat of Iran’s nuclear ambitions, and the demographic ticking time bomb of the increasingly radicalized and fast growing Arab-Israeli population that is likely to outnumber the Israeli Jews by 2040 or 2050.

These days Palestinians might just be playing the long game. They could try to simply wait out the Israelis, keeping up the pressure, sustaining the kind of damage and degradation that will keep their populations radicalized, and then force the Jewish State into either apartheid or a single-state solution, which would be a stepping stone in their eyes to the destruction of Israel. For the Jews, a single state solution would not be a solution at all. Jews would be the minority in an Arab State which would most likely dismantle the trappings of Israeli democracy after securing power, and attempt to assert its power over the Jews perhaps to the point of revenge. It’s hard to imagine Israel giving up its military power, nuclear weapons, and liberal democratic traditions without a fight, even if democracy in its purest form has to take a back seat to their self-preservation.

Israel will do everything in their power to scuttle a single state solution. They have no choice but to seek a two-state solution while there is still time. The Two state approach is a huge advantage for Israel. A Palestinian state is likely to be a client of Israel’s before long, wholly reliant on them economically. Arab states will no longer be able to use anger at treatment of the Palestinians as a cover for suppressing their own populations, and Israel’s demographic problems will be solved for once and for all. They will drop the Palestinians very fast. Not only that, but the inevitable power struggle between Fatah and Hamas for control of the new state (and whether it’s merely a stepping stone to the destruction of Israel or the end of the conflict) will severely weaken the nascent state. With new found peace, Israel can unleash the potential of its technological and economic power.

But the closer the demographic race in Israel becomes without the creation of a viable Palestinian state, the less likely the Palestinians will be to opt for one. By 2020, the year zero of Israeli Democracy might only be twenty years away and the two state solution might seem like second best for the Palestinians. They may be more likely to just stall the idea. It’s an approach that won’t look much different to the one that they use now.

Obama will likely be President until 2016, and it will be on his watch that the defining diplomacy in the region will take place. At its heart, the issue is simple. Can the Palestinians be convinced that a two-state solution is their best bet, or will they hold out for almost certain chaos by waiting for a single state approach?

American Foreign Policy will be far better served if a Palestinian state sits alongside Israel. A single state trajectory is fraught with unpredictable and unpalatable scenarios for the US. But the longer the Palestinians stall, the sweeter the two-state deal will have to be to tempt them, and the more likely the Israeli public will oppose the idea.

Unless the Israeli government succeeds in introducing the threat of a single-state solution as a way of moving the voting public in favor of two-state approach, Obama and his team will have to help to refocus them. And the only serious way to do that is with tough love. It would be a risky move, but removing US military and financial support for Israel might just make Israel realize that its future lies in accommodation.

Among other concessions, Israel will have to share Jerusalem, it will have to link the West Bank to Gaza, it will have to resettle its West Bank settlers in Israel proper (unless they wish to live under Palestinian rule), and it will have to support and supply the new Palestine. It will never agree to the Palestinian right of return – which would be tantamount to capitulating to a single state solution voluntarily.

Israel will be forced to make concessions. Many will regard them as unfair, but the demographic realities trump everything else. Obama has to convince the Israelis and Palestinians that their best deal is now.

Abba Eban, the father of Israeli Foreign Policy, once said famously that “Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.” For many years those words rang true, but it’s frightening possibility that Eban’s wisdom may no longer be relevant. Perhaps the Palestinians’ best opportunity now lies in continuing to miss them.

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you wanna see my resume?

Ted Kennedy, one of the scions of the family, is sadly unlikely to serve much longer in the Senate. Before this week when his niece Caroline decided she’d kind of like to be a Senator too, that would have left only one Kennedy left in Congress, Ted’s son Patrick, elected as a Congressman for Rhode Island in 1994, at the highly qualified age of 27. Since then he’s driven drunk into the Capitol building, and checked in to rehab for an Oxycontin addiction, both sterling qualificiations to be a Kennedy in Congress, no doubt. His signature achievement appears to be, well, being a Kennedy.

To suggest there are double standards for the Kennedys is just too shocking for words to many, but at least the raw political savegery that put Sarah Palin into a position of prominence has nothing whatsoever to do with her name or family. Caroline Kennedy just gets to make a phone call to be considered for an “appointment” to office. Palin at least had to be elected Governor of Alaska. One can understand LBJ’s feelings about the Kennedy’s. He was a poor boy from Texas made good. The Kennedys were America’s blessed, for reasons which to some extent remain a mystery.

Oddly enough, for a first family, they certainly are a blighted lot. One secret lobotomy (how very regal of them), two assassinations and a slew of airplane crashes, as well as a rape acquittal, various stints in rehab, and a fatal car accident (for the passenger that is). The ones that dodged the Kennedy’s usual fate have ended up in mediocre positions at best. And yet, the American Aristocratic myth bizarrely persists. The one President they had among them was famous for a failed invasion of Cuba, the beginning of the Vietnam quagmire, and okay, defusing the Missile Crisis. Not much to speak of at home at all. Why all the fuss? Because his dad was a bootlegger, and social climber, because Jack dated Marilyn Monroe? It’s hard to know. And yet the myth persisted.

But even if Caroline is appointed to be Senator, and it certainly seems possible she will be despite opposition to the idea, the Kennedy mythology should finally begin to fade in the next few years, as America lurches into the future, and the surviving generation of Kennedy’s is astonishing by virtue only of its ordinariness. Of course, the irony is that in Illinois, the sale of a Senate seat is the centerpiece of a scandal. The fact that Caroline Kennedy’s last name clearly could be buying her one too seems to attract little notice. She’s a perfectly decent woman of average charisma, intellect and appeal. It’s a wild guess but if the same woman was named Caroline something other than Kennedy, I doubt Governor Patterson would even be taking her call.

But then who needs qualifications to be a senator these days.

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been there. done that.

It’s been a busy few weeks in the Senate. Apart from the few Republicans that got beat in the November election, other Senators are leaving of their own accord. Headlined by Barack Obama himself, his Vice President, Joe Biden, his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton are all shipping out. Others like Chuck Hagel had had enough. Mel Martinez isn’t standing for re-election in 2010, and Ted Stevens, would like to have stayed but just failed to be the first convicted felon to get re-elected to the Senate. You got to love Alaska’s taste in uncles. As for John McCain, one could easily get the impression that he’s glad to be back, so he can go gently into the night.

Then there are those who are desperate to get in. Everyone from Caroline Kennedy to Jesse Jackson Junior to Al Franken, still counting votes in Hennepin County, Minnesota. The idea that Jesse Jackson Jr. appears at least to some extent to have been prepared to risk the extreme toxicity of Rod Blagojevich to get his shot strikes me as risky in the extreme. But in all these cases, the candidates seem to me to have been captivated by the majesty and history of the place, but forget that the Senate is basically one big, and frankly boring, compromise. It revels in its sham bipartisanship, and unlikely, awkward alliances. It’s no surprise the place is so ineffective in so many ways. A place where Barack Obama can co-sponsor legislation with the most right wing Senators in the Republican Caucus, Tom Coburn, is a place where cooperation trumps the quality of policy making.

All in all, the US Senate is a vainglorious, disappointing place, where the output rarely matches the bluster. Even the best senate resumes seem somewhat thin and massage. It’s a place of rules and procedure, a place where the filibuster and pork rule the day, a place that still places a premium on seniority, as if that is any marker at all of merit. If a company gave the top jobs to the longest serving employees, that company would seen be extinct. The Senate, sadly, cannot go out of business because it’s constitutionally mandated to continue it’s sorry mediocrity for all time and maybe longer. Sure it passes budgets and has hearings, but the former are procedural and the latter are theater. In between, there’s just hot air.

The experience of US Senators tends to fall into a few categories. There are those who revel in the club atmosphere but do little of note, like Larry Craig (well he did something of note but it was in an airport restroom). There are those who become ‘lions’ of the Senate who do a great deal that doesn’t tend to amount to very much except huge federal funds for, say, Alaska (to pick one not so arbitrary example). They also have a minimum age of 75. And finally, there are those like Obama who would have liked to do a great deal but realize that the Senate is a place where getting things done is seen as a middling priority at best.

Obama realized pretty quick that the Senate wasn’t a big enough place for his ambition, and within three years of his arrival he was running for President. For all their fame and profile, both Obama and Hillary Clinton were junior senators who would have had to wait a decade for real senate power. Both of them are too smart for that. Neither of them have the patience to wait it out.

There’s a faint whiff in the air that the Senate is starting to be seen as a jumping off point to somewhere else. Perhaps the new Administration will change that, but I wouldn’t hold my breath. A combination of smarting Republicans, Blue Dog Democrats and the filibuster might be enough to keep the Senate doing what it does best. Not very much.

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regrets, i've had a few.

The man holding a cardboard Hillary Clinton’s breast is Obama’s chief speechwriter, Jon Favreau, 27. This photo appeared on Facebook, and since its discovery has prompted a contrite and totally unsurpising apology by Mr. Favreau to the future Secretary of State of the United States of America.

Youthful indiscretion is something we all go through, but it’s not something we usually expect from the senior echelons of American political life. However, my guess is that scanning Facebook for more examples of drink + youth = stupidity inside the Beltway will probably turn up a much larger crop these days than in the distant past.

The reason? It seems that more than ever, the young footsoldiers are moving on up. Some of Obama’s top field operatives were barely out of their teens, and the Cable networks are full of earnest, fresh faced journalists who probably shave perhaps once a week at best. The Atlantic Monthly in particular seems full of them. Neel Kashkari, the surly and hopeless Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, co-ordinator for the Financial Bailout, and chief dry cleaning pick-up consultant to walnut-brained Hank Paulson is another example.

It’s hard to imagine that even though these neophytes seem really, really smart, that have the life experience or smarts to be able to act on behalf of the nation, but there it is. Frank Rich alluded today that perhaps the “Brightest and the Best”, a term originally forged with irony when referring to the fabulous resumes of the disastrous Kennedy-Johnson years in ‘Nam, could be applied to Obama’s peeps too. It’s certainly a scurrilous and counter-cultural idea, now the press has turned on the gush overdrive in its dealings with “The One”. But often the really smart guys often don’t turn out so smart after all. Maybe they’re too smart. Maybe they’re not street smart. Maybe a character flaw – like arrogance – for example, lets them down. But something about smart is, well, not so smart.

The attack of the young begs a question about the role of seniority in the Senate for example. Young politicians join the Senate, and realize that they have to wait their turn to get stuff done. And when Robert Byrd is still roaming the place at 97, that probably doesn’t bode well for their chances of a legacy on the Hill. So some of them bail early. A good example is the next President. He took one look at the place and said uh-uh. This place is for stiffs only. I’m moving on. And when you’re a US Senator, there’s only two places to go. The White House or the Cabinet.

Joe Lieberman called Obama, a “fine young man” not yet ready for leadership. But the young have arrived and they’re here to stay. Let’s hope that is a good thing.

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hey, barack, you wanna like talk or something?

To paraphrase Clausewitz, “Peace is war by other means”. It sounds nutty, but in certain situations, extending the hand of peace and cooperation is far more devastating to our adversaries.

In April, Hillary Clinton was quoted as saying on Good Morning America of all places that if Israel was attacked by Iran, “we would be able to totally obliterate them”. Now this was said during the heat of a brutal primary campaign that Hillary was in the process of losing to Obama, and the primaries she was fighting at that moment were in Pennsylvania, where muscle flexing is valued highly. But it also happens to be the same a quote from Hillary Clinton that has just been nominated as the nation’s next chief diplomat. And dealing with Iran will be one of her top priorities.

President Ahmadinijad is the kind of sly propagandist who can take the “obliterate” comment and turn it into more opportunities for mischief than Baskin Robbins has flavors. Hate-talk about Iran is a big fat BP fastball to the Iranian President. Every angry word about Iran can be used to keep the Iranian population fired up. It’s an old trick in the Middle East. When your people have no jobs, high inflation, a stagnant economy, a crumbling infrastructure, and no political freedom, just blame it on Israel or the Great Satan. This kind of stuff has been Iran’s second-most effective export after oil. It’s used it to finance it’s highly effective proxy networks in Lebanon, and to a lesser extent in Iraq. It’s used it to drive forward it’s nuclear policy. They all perform one profound function. Preservation of domestic power.

As for sanctions, they aren’t really diplomacy at all. They’re economic warfare. And often, all they too serve to do is prop up the dictatorship they’re targeting. The sanction experiment in Iraq was a proven failure. For years Saddam was able to blame the West for the sanctions and their effects on the population, propping up his own power in the process even as the country sank deeper into the mire. The same will be even truer in Iran, where there is a very real risk that they could get a nuclear capability and where the chances of us barring the sale of Iranian oil with the petroleum market as delicate as it is are very slim. Without sanctions of Iranian oil exports, they’re lifeline stays open, and the mullah’s domestic power-base can be maintained.

But there’s far more to Iran than meets the eye. Firstly, it’s had a short taste of democracy (before we put the Shah in charge). Secondly, it’s urban population is about as westernized as anyone in the region. Thirdly, the mullahs are holding onto power with force. And that can change. And fourthly, Iran is in terrible shape. The awkward attempt by Ahmadinijad to congratulate Obama on his victory was his skewy way of saying “maybe we should talk or something.” He’s not doing it because he wants to have a beer with Barack. He’s doing it because he believes it to be in his best interests to take relations between the US and Iran beyond the back channels. That is fraught with risk for Ahmadinijad who’s powerless domestically next to the mullahs, but if it is taken seriously by the new administration would put America in a very strong position.

An awful lot was made of Obama’s suggestion that talking to enemies, like Ahmadinijad was a good idea. Hillary laid into the idea, and so did McCain, but General Petraeus and just about every living Secretary of State and National Security Advisor said it’s a great idea. After all, the reason the whole business of dealing with other states is called diplomacy is because you have to be diplomatic with your enemy, not your friends. Diplomacy among friends is an oxymoron. If friends do wrong, you’re frank with them.

Talking with Iran in a friendly, courteous and respectful manner would put Tehran in a terrible bind. Either it spurns America’s hand of peace or is seen as contradicting its own Great Satan propaganda. And if the American outreach comes with potential of serious economic aid that could make a big difference in the lives of ordinary Iranians (implicitly requiring Iran to back off its nukes), that would make Ahmadinijad’s task that much harder. Europe would back American overtures, which it has been seeking for years, and depending on the Iranian response would temper its goodwill towards Tehran. Iran could end up isolated and its power base weakened both at home and abroad.

The Mullahs don’t talk peace because they don’t want peace. To them peace with America is a bad idea, because if you open trade markets, and allow tourism, it will encourage a sophisticated urban population like Iran’s to bridge the gap between the two countries. That would ultimately lead to the end of the Iranian theocracy, because the students would find their power again and the secular elite would develop a real powerbase. The end of Iranian theocracy would come with a profit for the US, not at the cost of trillions in lives and treasure spent t finance a war, with all the horrific human costs and unpredictability that would entail.

And what would all this mean for US interests in the region. the benefits would be huge. The Mid-East would become far more stable. America would have one less war to discuss. Hezbollah would wither, and Israel and the Palestinians could get on with the real business of peace. Lebanon would stabilize. Syria would abandon its ambitions to its West and would be forced to the peace table with Israel. Iraq would have a far better chance of success with genuine Iranian help rather than Iranian meddling. And Iran could once again be a positive influence, an intelligent, westernized Muslim country, like Turkey, proving that Islam and secularism can live side-by-side.

Ironically, Iran is the one place where the neo-con dream actually has a chance, but to bring it about requires us to meet them with respect. It’s my belief they will have no choice but to accept our offer of peace.

For the current leadership in Tehran, that would be a disaster, for the Iranian people, it would be a new beginning, and for the United States, it would mark the beginning of a new era of American diplomatic power.

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eahhh. i've seen better.

So what exactly is Obama thinking with his cabinet picks?

Everyone from Joe Lieberman to Pat Buchanan is delighted with Obama’s top job choices. Joe says they’re “perfect”, which suggests Obama is doing something very, very wrong. Pundits are torn. Is Obama a closet centrist who sold us a bill of goods with all that ‘change’ stuff? Or is he a progressive who’s going to browbeat all his experienced Clintonians into doing his bidding.

My guess is the answer is neither. Obama said today that the ‘change’ is going to come from his desk and filter downwards, but that’s easier said than done. If Obama truly is a progressive (and he really needs to be to define this historical economic moment), a more likely outcome is that the cabinet could quickly descend into ideological squabbling as the President talks up real change, and the cabinet talk up real caution. Obama is known as a consensus builder. If the cabinet is moderate, the consensus will be moderate, and real ‘change’, well that will have to wait.

It would certainly help the President’s ‘change scenario’ that at least one of his major cabinet picks was someone, well, new. But there isn’t really one guy in the top team that offers a totally new perspective on anything at all. So far moderation and predictability has been the order of the day, except in the case of HRC for State, which strikes me more as either fear or plain stupidity.

Time will tell, of course. But there’s one word that definitely wouldn’t be used to describe the new cabinet.

And that’s transformative.

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has china really changed that much?

Sometimes it takes an aging rock band to make a great point. Take Guns n’ Roses new album, its first for seventeen years. The band’s insightful leader created a fabulous oxymoron, bringing together the words “Chinese” and “Democracy” for it’s title. Now that’s comedy.

The Chinese authorities did what they always do in these situations and censored everything about the album they could get away with at the same time as lashing out at the band for its insulting stance on the People’s Republic. How dare some old rock stars attack China’s non-democracy?

But does the vast plastic toy police state protesteth just a little too much? The irony seems completely lost on most of the world’s leaders, who are busy toadying to the Chinese to keep them buying the mountain of freshly issued Western debt. The British have backtracked on their decades-long fudge about Chinese control of Tibet to appease Beijing, and America, which has been pushing democracy like Avon pushes makeup is simply too scared to issue any kind of statement about censorship or human rights abuses in China. We allowed them into the World Trade Organization even though they brazenly broke its rules before and after they joined. Slowly but surely, we seem to be handing China superpower status on a plate. Another word for it is appeasement. And just like back in Munich in 1938, it strikes me as a very bad idea.

The West has to end this sorry, unspoken policy of appeasement to China. China is not our friend. It is our adversary. It does not have our interests at heart. It is a wilful, nationalistic, unscrupulous behemoth that believes solely in preserving and expanding its power. It will soon be a greenhouse gas disaster and the world will suffer as a result. Our debt to China has serious national security implications, and it has mercilessly exploited it. China does not play on a level playing field with the rest of their global trading partners, on currency or import/export terms. Oh, yeah, and they are very undemocratic.

When you introduce economic freedom, political progress is sure to follow. Up until Deng Xiaoping opened up China in the late eighties that was the golden rule. But to suggest that China’s profoundly bucking the mantra is only half true. Firstly, China is a very big place where historical change happens slowly, and it hasn’t been that long from a historical standpoint since the Communists went into the cheap crap business. And secondly, the world needs China right now in a variety of unpleasant ways. But there’s going to come a time, in the not too distant future, when the Communist Party’s ability to prevent social unrest will be compromised. Another Tiananmen, another over-reaction by the Party and the unreast could take hold. And the Chinese Communist party fear internal unrest more than anything else. That’s why they always overreact to those minor slights – from aging rock stars among others.

All over backwoods China, outside the seething economic speical districts unrest is already brewing. And large scale social upheaval in China is very, very possible. The threat of it is the West’s unseen trump card in its dealings with Beijing. In the next twenty years, increasingly scarce energy resources are going to cause massive inflation within China and reduce the labor and manufacturing cost differential with the West. We’re already seeing a move towards manufacturing in Cambodia and Vietnam because of this. To feed its economic beast and prevent economic distress China might start doing what Japan did in World War Two and try to control energy supplies.

Flashpoints of civil disobedience will be crushed with standard Chinese heavyhandedness. And the more the Party crushes dissent, the more pops up. That’s the “whack-a-mole” golden rule. The more you whack, the more you get. And as for censorship, it doesn’t really work. When you give people the internet, they find a way to use it. Rabid Chinese nationalism which is seen as a stabilizing force could also backfire. The Chinese love of Country could easily turn into a weapon against the corrupt and self-serving Communist Party. Just think of the recent melamine crisis.

China does not as yet present a serious military threat, but if it sees the need for militarism to create a diversion from shattered domestic expectations, this might change. Already the Chinese are investing in at least one aircraft carrier, and it’s probably not for show. The US needs to focus on preventing the expansion of Chinese influence throughout the world. In Africa, China is embarking on a virtual recolonization of weak, resource-rich African countries, and we just sit and watch. Bad mistake.

The irony is that Russia is much more of a thorn in the West’s side because of the size of its nuclear arsenal, proximity to the Middle East and its petro-authoritarian ways. And yet China seems to be the nation we fear most, despite the fact that it isn’t yet a major military threat. Sure they’re too big to fight with guns and ammunition, but guns and ammunition are outmoded.

We are entering the age of Economic warfare and the best way to combat China is economically. They need to keep growing to feed domestic demand, and the only way we get leverage over them is to find a way to hit them in the wallet. My guess is that the dollar is the most important strut of their plan to prevent social unrest. In short they need us to protect the Party from being weakened or even toppled.

We pull the plug on them, and they might begin to realize they need us. Economic warfare might sound like a very tall order, but a good dose of, shall we say, targeted protectionism could help. For example, we could re-import jobs to the US to build our economy merely by saying that we demand fairness in our dealings with China or we’ll institute import controls of our own. Sure, US business might scream, but the American public will love the idea that we could develop a manufacturing sector again.

And we might see real concessions from China.

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Richard Holbrooke

Richard Holbrooke

Holbrooke is the only person to have held Assistant SOS positions for two different world regions and has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize seven times. He is highly respected on the diplomatic scene and has been involved in some of the most successful and delicate negotiations in recent memory. He’s thoughtful, highly intellligent and probably the single most experienced diplomat of the Clinton era, with hands on experience unlike any other. Perhaps his one mistake was to hitch his wagon to the wrong team during the Presidential contest. He was an advisor to Clinton’s campaign during the primary season. He’s a professor at Brown, and while that’s a great place to be, it’s a huge waste of his talents.

Bill Richardson

Bill Richardson

Bill Richardson has the perfect resume for State. He has been Energy Secretary and UN Ambassador. He publicly broke from the Clintons to endorse Obama after he dropped out of the Presidential race, when it was by no means certain Obama would prevail, and as a result would be a proven ally to the new President, who keeps his own ambitions studiously hidden. Richardson is engaging, forthright, and very savvy. His Hispanic (“brown”) roots will help him with connect with many leading developing nations as global power begins to drift in that direction. His reward for his loyalty for Obama, not to mention delivering New Mexico to the Democratic column for decades to come? The Commerce Department. Not even sure if the appointment comes with a limo.

Hillary Clinton

Hillary Clinton

Former First Lady and vanquished Democratic candidate for President 2008, Hillary Clinton is heavily associated with an outmoded brand. Her own. She most certainly doesn’t shout out ‘change’, while her ‘no bull’ approach might rankle in more sensitive negotiations with adversaries. To make matters worse, she clearly has her own agenda, so it will never be certain she’s acting solely on the wishes of the President. She has no experience of day-to-day diplomacy. It’s not certain how “knowing world leaders on first name terms” qualifies her over others. Finally, the appointment is going to be seen as political by the world, and may undermine Obama’s diplomatic influence in international eyes.

Most of Obama’s cabinet choices have been cautious and pragmatic, but the apparent decision to nominate Hillary Clinton seems fraught with political considerations at a time when we need to rebuild America’s diplomatic credentials. It may be a decision he will come to regret.

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