November 20, 2008

WASHINGTON: As he wrapped up his second week as president-elect, Barack Obama appears to be taking an altruistic approach in both diplomacy and politics.

How else to explain the fact that he had all but offered the most prestigious job in his Cabinet — Secretary of State — to a woman whose foreign policy experience he once dismissed as consisting of having tea with ambassadors?

Or that Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-New York, might accept an offer from a man whose national security credentials, she once said, began and ended with "a speech he made in 2002"?

Some Democrats, meanwhile, are voicing increasingly loud concerns that Obama's national security team will be dominated by appointees who favored the Iraq invasion and hold hawkish views on other important foreign policy issues.

They are angry that Sen. Joe Lieberman, who abandoned his party's affiliation as a Democrat because he favored the war in Iraq, was given a slap on the wrist this week by his colleagues and welcomed back as chair of the powerful Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee without recrimination.

Others are uneasy that both Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert Gates could be in the Obama Cabinet, and at reports suggesting that several other short-list candidates for top security posts backed the decision to go to war.

"Obama ran his campaign around the idea the war was not legitimate, but it sends a very different message when you bring in people who supported the war from the beginning," Kelly Dougherty, executive director for Iraq Veterans Against the War, told reporters.

The president-elect has told some Democrats that he expects to take heat from parts of his political base but will not be deterred by it.

Aside from Clinton and Gates, the roster of possible Cabinet secretaries has included Sens. John F. Kerry, D-Mass., and Richard G. Lugar, R-Indiana; both of whom voted in 2002 for the resolution authorizing President Bush to invade Iraq, although Lugar has since said he regretted his decision.

"It's astonishing that not one of the 23 senators or 133 House members who voted against the war is in the mix," Sam Husseini of the liberal Washington-based group Institute for Public Accuracy, told reporters.

Hillary Clinton, for example, voted in favor of the Iraq war resolution, and despite pressure, she never said during the primary campaign that she regretted that vote.

She also favored legislation last year to support the designation of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization, another decision that pleased conservatives.

As transition team lawyers vet the complex dealings of former President Bill Clinton — and as Hillary herself is said to be weighing whether she really wants to surrender her Senate seat for the job as the nation's top diplomat.

Clinton surrogates and some analysts are publicly and privately circulating her doubts about whether she should take the job.

Syndicated columnist David Broder, who calls himself a fan, argues the job would be a "mistake" for Clinton because she would find it hard to subordinate her views to those of her new boss, and her husband would be "unlikely to remain silent."

Dick Morris, a onetime Bill Clinton adviser who is now a poison-pen critic of the couple, wrote on his Web site yesterday that Clinton discussed the position with Obama in Chicago last week, then tried to lock that into an "offer" by leaking an account of their meeting to the media... exactly the kind of thing the no-drama Obama operation did not tolerate during the presidential campaign.

"In the world of Hillary and Bill, predictions are almost impossible," Morris wrote. "But Obama and the world would be well served if Hillary did not get the job."

In a move to advance her candidacy, Clinton's husband, former President Clinton, has agreed to take steps to avoid conflicts of interest posed by his widespread financial dealings, Democrats close to the discussions said Thursday, and agreed to check with the Obama Administration before giving a paid speech.

Still, many Democrats remain concerned about Bill might do as Madam Secretary's spouse.

"When the going gets rough," wrote Tina Brown in The Daily Beast, Obama will need Clinton "like Batman needs Robin. ... And God help Bill if he screws it up for her."