I'm working on a longer piece on what the potential Clinton appointment to Secretary of State means, but I wanted to note one thing that Matt Yglesias pointed out:
This idea that a relatively small disagreement about diplomacy with Iran was their only disagreement during the primaries is widespread, but strikes me as something of a mutually convenient myth. The Iran thing really was an example of an issue where the disagreement seemed to generate more heat than light. But they had a related, and more clear-cut, disagreement about Cuba policy with Obama indicating a desire to soften the hard line that prevailed through the Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and Bush administrations while Clinton indicated a desire to stick with the status quo. Obama wholeheartedly embraced the Shultz/Perry/Kissinger/Nunn nuclear disarmament agenda while Clinton was more equivocal. Obama implicitly criticized the Clinton administration for waiting until its waning days to really buckle down on the Arab-Israeli conflict. They disagreed about whether the US should join the international treaty to ban cluster bombs.
Matt notes that there is a trend here, but doesn't identify it. I'll take a stab: The difference is Obama is more willing than Clinton to ignore foreign policy orthodoxies based on domestic political considerations. Iran negotiations? Don't want to cede hawkishness to the right and have to worry about the Israel factor. Same thing with the cluster bomb treaty, since U.S. military cluster bombs were used by Israel during the July War. Cuba policy? Clinton was stuck in the old Cuban-voters-in-Florida framework that has allowed that benighted policy to fail through the decades. Disarmament? No doubt Clinton better remembers the political pitfalls of that position during the Cold War.
Now the conventional wisdom holds that Clinton will be Obama's Secretary of State, and folks worry that her center-left brand of hawkishness will dilute Obama's promises of foreign policy change. It's possible, and we won't know for sure until foreign policy starts getting made. But in terms of speculation, I'd suggest that Clinton, working for someone whose political courage has let him ignore outdated political considerations and support a progressive foreign policy, will be more willing to adopt new policies since those political considerations will not be operative for her. That is to say, we can expect Clinton to be a solid advocate for the Obama foreign policy. Even if you buy the idea that Clinton is positioning herself for 2016, she's learned that a Democrat can win the presidency running on a liberal foreign policy, and no doubt understands that her future prospects depend on the perceived success of the Obama administration.
Of course, the key to all of this is mid- and sub-cabinet level staffing. Spencer shares America's concerns, but notes that the White House, even the hypothetical foreign policy team, is going to be pretty progressive. That's good news.
--Tim Fernholz
