Is Clinton Experienced enough to be Secretary of State?

PE Obama naming Sen. Clinton Secretary of State

ORWELLIAN WORLDVIEW …to hold simultaneously two opinions which canceled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy…-- George Orwell, 1984

Remember all that stuff that President-elect Obama said about his opponent Sen. Hillary Clinton during the campaign? Naw I didn’t think you did… wait a moment I think that I may be able to help. (see 0:15 video)



According to CNSnews.com, during the campaign for the Democratic nomination, Obama mocked Clinton’s primary claim that she possessed the necessary foreign policy experience to be president. (see story)

Obama questioned Sen. Clinton’s foreign policy expertise while flying from a campaign event in Texas. Obama’s statement to reporters who were obviously attempting to gin up controversy between the two of them responded to the question of Clinton’s claim to be an expert on foreign policy in this fashion, “Was she negotiating treaties? Was she handling crises? The answer is no.”

President-elect Obama also questioned Sen. Clinton’s integrity and character during the days of the campaign, “Hillary Clinton will say anything to get elected,” Obama said in a January radio ad. “Hillary Clinton. She’ll say anything and change nothing.”

Last year the Obama campaign also charged that Sen. Clinton’s ideas about foreign policy were extraordinarily similar to President Bush’s policies, “Barack Obama doesn’t need lectures in political courage from someone who followed George Bush to war in Iraq,” the campaign said in a December 2007 statement about Sen. Clinton.

Obama further maligned Clinton by indicating that she did not represent real change, “Real change isn’t voting for George Bush’s war in Iraq and then telling the American people it was actually voting for more diplomacy,” he said about Clinton in March.

Greg Craig, incoming chief counsel, said of Clinton in a March conference call: “There’s no evidence that she participated or asserted herself in any of the crises that took place during the eight years of the Clinton presidency. White House records show that she was consistently absent when critical decisions were being made and that her trips abroad were largely ceremonial.”

Susan Rice, Obama’s choice to become U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, meanwhile, said that a First Lady doesn’t deal with international issues.

“There is no crisis to be dealt with or managed when you are First Lady,” Rice said in March. “You don't get that kind of experience by being married to a commander-in-chief.”

In the most hotly debated dust-up of the primary season – over Clinton’s famous “3 a.m.” ad asking which candidate would better handle a crisis call at three in the morning -- Obama himself said Clinton had already failed the foreign policy test.

“The question is, what kind of judgment you will exercise when you pick up that phone,” Obama said. “In fact, we’ve had a red-phone moment. It was the decision to invade Iraq. Sen. Clinton gave the wrong answer.”

Despite all of the above, President-elect Barack Obama designated Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) to be his next secretary of state on Monday.

In the similiartude of the immortal words of the 1948 film The Treasure of the Sierra Madre spoken by Gold Hat played by Alfonso Bedoya, “Experience, Democrats don’t need no experience, Democrats don’t have to show you no stinking experience!” (Those sentiments apply to the Presidency as well)

Does Sen. Clinton have the experience to be Secretary of State? Well after all she did take on Bosnian sniper fire didn't she?

It is an Orwellian world after all!