Hillary Clinton struggled to fit into the government of President Barack Obama after being appointed Secretary of State in 2009, according to emails released by the State Department on Tuesday.
They showed Clinton turning up for meetings that had been canceled and worrying about how much time she had with her new boss, revealing growing pains in the relationship between her and former election rival Obama in the early months of her time as America's top diplomat.
In an email to two aides on June 8, 2009, Clinton was unsure if the White House had held a Cabinet meeting and whether she should attend.
"I heard on the radio that there is a Cabinet mtg this am. Is there? Can I go? If not, who are we sending?" Clinton wrote.
A State Department official wrote back that the government was holding a meeting, but not a full cabinet meeting that she needed to be at.
As Clinton sought to navigate her relationship with the Obama White House, she corresponded with several former aides and advisers to her husband, former President Bill Clinton.
They included Sidney Blumenthal, a former White House speech writer, Sandy Berger, the former National Security Adviser and Mark Penn, who served as a political adviser to both Bill Clinton and to Hillary Clinton's 2008 White House bid.
As the Obama administration was conducting a review of its policy in Afghanistan, for example, Penn emailed her and advised her not to ignore the threat posed by the Taliban.
While they were fierce competitors on the campaign trail Clinton and Obama eventually struck up a cordial working relationship in the four years she spent as secretary of state.
As she runs for the White House again at the November, 2016 election, Clinton's relationship with her fellow Democrat will come under further scrutiny.
While she has aligned herself with the Obama administration on issues that are popular with the base of Democratic supporters such as immigration reform, she has also tried to make her own mark by distancing herself from Obama on trade.
Back in 2009, there were a few misunderstandings, according to an email Clinton sent about what she thought was a meeting at the White House.
"I arrived for the 10:15 mtg and was told there was no mtg," she wrote to aides. "This is the second time this has happened. What's up???" she asked.
The emails released on Tuesday are among some 30,000 work emails relating to Clinton that a judge has ordered to be released in batches after a controversy broke out earlier this year when she acknowledged using a personal email account rather than a government one for State Department business.
As she began her tenure, Clinton worried about perceptions that she was not meeting enough with the president, given that former President Richard Nixon used to see his secretary of state Henry Kissinger daily.
"In thinking about the Kissinger interview, the only issue I think that might be raised is that I see POTUS at least once a week while K saw Nixon everyday," she said in an email to a spokesman, using Washington shorthand for President of the United States.
"Do you see this as a problem?” she asked spokesman Philippe Reines.
OBAMA COMPARISONS
Informal adviser Blumenthal showed concern in an email that the former first lady would be compared unfavorably to Obama as a public speaker.
"This speech can't afford to be lackluster. It will then be held up in invidious comparison to Obama's glittering best efforts. Your speech must have, amid the policies, a distinctive and authoritative voice,” Blumenthal wrote to Clinton about an address she was going to give at a foreign policy think tank.
A controversial figure, Blumenthal has had ties to the Clinton family since Bill Clinton's White House years.
He gave Hillary Clinton detailed advice on issues ranging from British politics to Afghanistan and Iran even though he was not employed by the U.S. government.
Blumenthal seemed to act as a middle-man between Clinton and former British prime minister Gordon Brown on the Northern Ireland peace process, according to an email he sent in 2009.
Blumenthal was barred from a job at the State Department by aides to Obama because of lingering distrust over his role advising Clinton's run against Obama, according to The New York Times.
The adviser emailed Clinton on June 23 around 10 p.m. with the subject line, "Hillary: if you're up, give me a call. Sid." In the preceding days, he had sent her detailed memos on Iran's 2009 election crisis.
James Cole, a lawyer for Blumenthal, did not reply to an email requesting comment.
Blumenthal last month said he wrote to Clinton only as a friend and a private citizen.
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In order for any life to matter, we all have to matter
Registered: May 2005
Location: Your Erogenous Zones
Well, luckily your Eurotrash opinion won't make a difference. God save Trump, is what I say, he'll return the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave back to former glory, after that Muslim you libs call a President nearly destroyed it!
People who think Hilary has a chance here on living on a prayer, Obama is taking her out in a slow cold calculated public lynching. He will never allow Bill back in that office, much less Hilary.
__________________
In order for any life to matter, we all have to matter
This seems an odd view to me. One, he had her as secretary of state, they could work together professionally. Two, Bill Clinton gave some *great* pro-Obama speeches and helped him a lot in 2012. Three, why he'd prefer any of the Republicans, I don't know.
Three, the Republican party players really don't like Trump, he has an obstacle of that sort too, yet we don't think he's out of action.
While Barack does like Biden better, that doesn't mean he's dead set against the Clintons.
You obviously haven't read the book detailing how much dislike exists between the Clintons and the Obamas.
__________________ There's a man goin' 'round takin' names.
An' he decides who to free and who to blame.
Everybody won't be treated all the same.
There'll be a golden ladder reaching down.
When the man comes around.
No, he did so as part of a political deal, to be sure. However, it does show they can work together, and he and the Clintons have done so fairly smoothly.
Which seems at odds with your 'he is focused on stopping her' view.
Which didn't prevent Bill from giving Barack an incredible key-note speech last election- notably, a few years after the selection that T-I just posted.
I haven't read the book, but it's quite possible it's not entirely accurate, and from the sound of it it doesn't fit in line with their public support of each other- whatever private dislike, it prevents neither from working together for the sake of the country and the democrats.
There's also the very real possibility that animosity has faded.
They started out flat adversaries in '07, but that is 8 years ago.
The funny thing is how often you actually do say things that aren't what the articles say.
Really, I quite buy that it's exactly what it seemed, just, y'know, time passes.
And even back then that article doesn't scream 'they hate each other with a passion,' more just 'they didn't get along that well.' Which, they didn't, but I don't see the blood feud you're insisting on.
"The Daemon lied with every breath. It could not help itself but to deceive and dismay, to riddle and ruin. The more we conversed, the closer I drew to one singularly ineluctable fact: I would gain no wisdom here."
You do realize that's a book that may not be entirely accurate or at all represent the present even if it was true in the past? These are very pragmatic individuals, after all.
It includes gems like:
"Obama adopted Clinton's view of how to deal with Iran[112] and Clinton's work in organizing international sanctions against that country eventually led to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action that Secretary Kerry negotiated in 2015; this in effect tied Clinton's legacy with respect to Iran to Obama's.[113]"
So Obama's success in concluding a deal with Iran? In large part due to him listening to Hillary.
And even better:
" Indeed, a writer for The New York Times Magazine declared that "Obama and Clinton have instead led the least discordant national-security team in decades, despite enormous challenges on almost every front."[4] In part, this was because Obama and Clinton both approached foreign policy as a largely non-ideological, pragmatic exercise.[4]"
This is one thing that some do that leads them into mental traps- They decide what someone else believes, and then refuse to believe any counter-evidence to contrary, especially evidence from the people they've decided on the viewpoint of.
Obama gets a ton of this, it's why so often the Republicans talking about his views have such a fictionalized vision that doesn't fit with what he actually says. The empty chair Obama and all that.
Registered: Oct 2009
Location: Miami Metropolitan Area
A new CNN poll puts Fiorina in second place after Trump and before Carson. Rubio and Bush take up 4th and 5th places respectively. I think these five will move around a bit in terms of placement (Bush is almost certain to rise, while I have a feeling Carson will probably slide a bit), but I feel safe saying that they'll be the main five contenders till the primaries and beyond.
__________________
Where the longleaf pines are whispering
to him who loved them so.
Where the faint murmurs now dwindling
echo oer tide and shore."
-A Grave Epitaph in Santa Rosa County, Florida; I wish I could remember the man's name.
Registered: Nov 2004
Location: With Cinderella and the 9 Dwarves
The pity of Trump, Fiorina and Carson ready shows how fed up Republican voters are with politicians. I think that's really a predicament of their own making as well, by making Obama out to be the downfall of America for 8 years, and constantly talking about how he did this terrible thing and that terrible thing, the Republicans have positioned themselves as extremely weak and unable to give any resistance for their voters (which is in stark contrast to the reality of how obstructionist they have actually been). By playing victim for years they have made themselves look weak and useless to people who go for strength in leaders.
This is just a feeling , but it also seems in contrast to why people of other political affiliations seems to be more fed up with politics, I.e. The undue influence of money in it.
Of course there's always been a resentment with politicians, but it really seems to have escalated, particularly with Republicans.
It's sort of a multi-level thing. "Obama is horrible, and everything he does needs to be stopped without exception," and "we can stop him and turn back what he does," makes every success of Obama's, even limited ones that trickle out and would normally be the type of thing every president does often with bipartisan support*, a loss for them, and also makes their words come across as untrustworthy. "I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do this," only works if people at least view you as making a serious effort into that area- if something fails due to great effort of the opposition, that's one thing, but, say, the 40 attempts to repeal Obamacare don't even reach Obama's desk.
When 'how much I said against Obama and voted against him,' surpasses 'what I got done' as a selling point in primaries, it caused a lot of people to paint themselves into corners where they were promising stuff they literally did not have the power to do in their positions.
*Which also removes stuff as much of a propaganda weapon. "I did X!" "Well, everyone on both sides voted for it, so?" is ironically a much more effective way to remove some of an opponent's points rather than trying to block every shot.
One thing I learned this cycle is apparently the overpromising thing, while big with Obama, started much sooner.
Like, of course I don't pay attention to house and senate primaries in other states, but analysts and political media people who have said it's common in those for the candidates to promise a list of conservative things they're going to do- and that a lot of these people had opportunities to push for these conservative things in the Bush years and before, when they had a lot of power to get things through, and didn't, and that even during the Obama years, there really was a fair amount they could've done.
Proposed legislature wise, there's been far more emphasis on the 'cut taxes' 'corporate stuff,' and that kind of thing that the business Republicans have wanted, while the other social conservative stuff has remained in the realm of primary promises.
And when there were wins, this was at least somewhat accepted, because at least it kept out people who wanted things they didn't like. But if you trade the stuff a fair amount of the base wants for the promise of victory, and you don't get victory for it? They end up pissed.
Sep 15th, 2015 04:10 PM
