Everything’s coming up Hillary

Despite getting off easy (where’s Norm Coleman when you actually need him), Hillary Clinton remade herself today.

By Steve Clemons

In Hillary Clinton’s Senate confirmation hearing today, one person pounded the table and pushed the secretary-of-state-designate hard on discrepancies between her foreign policy views and those of Barack Obama, on her seeming softness now on Iran and Syria, and on conflicts of interest with her husband’s financial web of global deal-making and do-gooding.

Wait. That voice was in my mind. No one did that -– not really. That would have been the role for purgatorially trapped (not-yet-not) Senator Norm Coleman to play. On the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Coleman has long played the spear-carrier for the brand of Jesse Helms-inspired pugnacious nationalism manifested in the posture of his close friend, John Bolton.

Coleman’s absence wasn’t the only reason Hillary Clinton enjoyed such soft gloves treatment in her hearings today. Other Republicans just didn’t want to break their pick on a former Senate colleague of such unique distinction and background as Hillary Clinton. In their minds, there are more easily overwhelmed targets in other hearings yet to come.

Clinton did get harassed just a bit on the obvious questions about how she will keep a firewall between her diplomatic objectives and Bill Clinton’s legacy machinery. Some will vote against her in the end because there is no degree of financial transparency from Bill Clinton that some Republicans can ever buy into. But that’s not important. 

What is significant is that Hillary Clinton remade herself today, achieving three fundamental objectives. 

First, Clinton telegraphed competence and a facility with the details and art of foreign policymaking that were a step more balanced than what Americans saw in her hawkish edginess during the presidential campaign. 

Second, she embraced a fundamental realism in her approach to global deal-making, shrugging off ideology. And while speaking to important causes like global women’s rights, stopping the genocidal trends in Darfur, and pushing human rights, Clinton made clear and square an understanding that the building blocks of progress on all these and other issues depends on collaboration with Europe, Russia, China, and other global stakeholders. 

Third, Clinton managed to avoid over-prescribing exactly what President-elect Barack Obama’s foreign policy would be comprised of. After all, Obama is not yet president and will not be given the keys to the nation’s policy machinery until January 20th.

Still, Clinton intimated that Obama may take a new and quite different approach to diplomacy with Iran and Syria -– but that Hamas is still very much a bilateral no-no.  It’s clear, however, that Hillary Clinton is conveying a desire to walk in to her diplomatic tasks creatively, without necessarily committing to perspectives continuous with the Bush administration.

And while her statements and views may not feel and sound like the “change” that many Obama fans pine for, the Hillary Clinton who will now be secretary of state — not a constituent-seeking Senator and not a donations- and vote-mongering presidential candidate — may be preparing for a foreign policy agenda that could be as significant in historical scale as Nixon’s trip to China.

She is giving herself a makeover. The Hillary Clinton we saw today, and who will soon step onto the world stage, is a new and different phase in life. This is her Kissinger phase.