The Pros & Cons of Hillary being Secretary of State

I've already discussed a lot about Hillary in this blog. However, I feel I should show what I think would be the advantages, disadvantages and other political implications of her pick yesterday.

Since I want to end on a positive note, I will begin with Cons.

Cons.

-Hillary's own ambitions for a possible re-run for the presidency could impede progress in the direction in which Obama would like to see it. She may influence his policies with her own visions. We don't want her to follow her own political agenda in the State Department.

-Hillary ran a powerful, tough campaign, but there was intense infighting and her big campaign was pretty disorganized. Most of her success in the primaries can be attributed to her star power which compensated for the disorganized campaign. So will the State Department have infighting too?

-Too opinionated and polarizing. Barack said yesterday that he likes highly opinionated figures in his cabinet, but will there be tensions in this "team of rivals."

-Bill Clinton's global interests. Turns out that the very government of China that Hillary has criticized, has donated to the Clinton Foundation via the Clinton Global Initiative.

-Peace in the Middle East and Kashmir. Hillary disagrees with Obama on Palestinian sovereignty and favors Indian policies when it comes to Kashmir. This will not help bring peace as you have to look at both Gaza and Kashmir through an unbiased speculum so that both countries can get something they want and learn to compromise. But peace in the Mid East begins from the Israel-Palestine issue since nearly every Arab country's excuse for being upset with the United States is that we have been excessively biased towards Israel and have not given enough effort to ensuring the needs of the Palestinian people. This is a legitimate excuse. We must be fair and neutral. We can not allow Israel to become vulnerable to the threat imposed by some terrorist organizations, but at the same time we can also not allow Israel to abuse the protection and defense that we've given (military equipment, F-16s, nuclear weapons) and harm innocent Palestinians. Both countries' civilians should be treated equally. For too long, we've pandered to only one side.

-Diplomacy. Hillary is very hawkish when it comes to Iran. She has declared the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization and has repeatedly called Obama 'naive' for being willing to meet Ahmedinejad. Will she let Obama boss her against her personal beliefs on diplomacy? After all, diplomacy is the biggest part of the job of Secretary of State.

-One more Clinton term. Already there are more than 20 Clinton staffers in Obama's team. Does this mean that we may just see another Clinton term, his 3rd term?

Pros.

Now that Obama has officially selected her as Secretary of State, it's no point whining. We can't do anything about her being picked. So lets look at the bright side and maybe the cons will never happen. After listening to the press conference yesterday, I was to be honest much more optimistic about the pick because maybe she will fully submit herself to Obama and probably not run her own agenda or follow her beliefs as she pointed out in her statement to the press. And in the end, the pros and cons are just based on speculation.

-Hillary is heavily experienced.

-Has met foreign leaders and knows them on a first name basis in over 82 countries.

-Capable in every region of politics.

-Has star appeal, will unite the Dems and uplift her diehard fans.

-Has gotten things done in the Senate so she may get stuff done in the State.

-Is respected globally and will send a powerful message to the world that Obama is serious about bipartisanship and unity.

-Will bring Bill into the mix. Bill's expertise as former president could help her and Obama.

-Will ensure that she doesn't backstab Obama if she decides to run for the presidency again. Basically, this lowers her guards and makes her less likely to keep animosity towards Obama. In many ways this is a clever move. She won't be able to say "I told you so" to Obama if his presidency is a failure. And at the same time this will help Obama focus on the economy as she focuses on the world. Her criticism of him being a poor commander-in-chief will thereby no longer apply.

Lets just hope the pros take over and this presidency is successful. Either way, this will be exciting!