Head of State: Hillary Clinton

 

Hillary Clinton, the blind dissident, and the art of diplomacy in the Twitter era.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sat down on a plush yellow couch at the J.W. Marriott late on a Saturday morning in early May. The Beijing skyline sparkled, uncharacteristically sunny and smog-free, out the window of her 23rd-floor suite, and she was wearing sunglasses even though we were indoors, “an eye infection,” she said apologetically. Clinton seemed surprisingly upbeat, especially considering that just a day earlier, she had come uncomfortably close to a major public rebuff by the Chinese — much closer, in fact, than anyone yet realized. “It was a standoff,” she told me, “for 24 difficult hours.”

Until our conversation, Clinton had said virtually nothing publicly about the case of Chen Guangcheng, the blind Chinese dissident whose fate had become the object of a week of frenetic negotiations when his escape from village house arrest to the U.S. Embassy collided with a visit to Beijing by Clinton herself. Amid the unfolding drama, the secretary had smiled and nodded her way through elaborately choreographed high-level annual talks and a variety of photo ops at which she gamely recited paeans to constructive dialogue and plugged cut-rate cookstoves for the developing world.

But Clinton had in fact spent the last few days in hard-nosed deal-making with the Chinese that nearly ended in an embarrassing failure, until she personally intervened, twice, with her counterpart, Chinese State Councilor Dai Bingguo: the first time to reassure Dai about a deal to allow Chen to stay in China and study law; then, when Chen balked at that, to secure agreement that he and his family could leave for the United States. “We were in a very difficult position because we had pushed their system just about to the breaking point,” recalled a senior official who was present. “We knew it, they knew it, and they knew we knew it.”

Her final encounter with Dai came, at her request, in an early-morning session in a room at the Diaoyutai compound where, 40 years earlier, Nixon had stayed when he famously met Mao to reopen U.S.-China relations. It was just hours before the close of the formal Strategic and Economic Dialogue that was the ostensible purpose of Clinton’s trip; if Clinton had no agreement by then, they both knew it would open a rift in their relationship and create a political disaster back in Washington, where the secretary and her team were being accused of fumbling an important human rights case by delivering the sick dissident to a Beijing hospital and right back into the hands of his persecutors.

Still, the Chinese did not give in. At one point, an advisor who was present recalled, Clinton finally seemed to catch their attention by mentioning what a political circus the case had become — with Chen even dialing into a U.S. congressional hearing that Thursday by cell phone from his hospital bed to say he feared for his safety if he remained in China. The Chinese team was visibly surprised. Eventually, Dai agreed at least to let the negotiations proceed. A few hours later, exhausted U.S. officials announced a deal.

By the next morning when we met, it was already clear this had been the most intense high-stakes diplomacy of Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state. She had worked hard to rescue Chen without blowing up the American relationship with China, but it was not yet obvious whether she had accomplished either goal. The Chinese were furious about the embarrassing attention to their human rights abuses. Clinton and her aides were being pilloried at home by everyone from Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney to the human rights community for abandoning Chen at the hospital. And the secretary was still worried about the deal. “Until he’s actually out and up with his family,” she told me, “it’s still touch and go.”

Listening to Clinton recount the episode, it was hard not to think of her own journey from idealistic human rights crusader to hardheaded global diplomat. Back in 1995, on her first trip to Beijing as first lady, Clinton’s impassioned speech declaring “women’s rights are human rights” was so inflammatory the Chinese blacked out the broadcast. By 2009, when she made her first visit as secretary of state, she was determined to avoid that kind of controversy — so determined, in fact, that she created one by declaring that human rights was just one of many issues she would raise with her Chinese counterparts.

continued… more:

Head of State

Advertisement

HAPPY HOLIDAYS from the Clinton White House… 1994

Official 1994 William Clinton White House Christmas Card. Painting of White House Red Room by Thomas McKnight. Produced for the White House by American Greetings co.

 

 

 

NEW HAMPSHIRE voters contemplate DRAFTING HILLARY CLINTON:

New Hampshire voters should draft Hillary

Taken almost one year ago today- December 23, 2010- GIVE US HILLARY for PRESIDENT in 2012

We are now calling on Democratic voters nationally — particularly in New Hampshire — to organize a write-in campaign for Clinton. This is something that New Hampshire voters have a long history of doing.

YOU’RE GONNA LOVE IT! SIGN THIS PETITION, please.

HILLARY REPLACING OBAMA AS THE DEMOCRATIC NOMINEE

We advocate this DRAFT HILLARY movement not because of the desire to make political mischief — but to put the country on the right course.

It’s clear that Obama has been unable to build consensus and, with the polarizing campaign he is now running, will be unable to govern effectively even if reelected. Only Clinton can commit the Democratic Party — and, indeed, the nation — to a unification and healing process. This could allow Washington, in a bipartisan manner, to finally address the economic and governmental
crises that now grip America.

We are facing a crisis of national leadership, so citizens should step up and take charge of their country the way demonstrators in the Middle East did earlier this year. And, stunningly, as the people of Russia are now doing.

It’s time to take the decision about America’s leadership out of the hands of the established powers and return it to the citizens of our country. That opportunity to change U.S. politics will appear in the second week of 2012 in New Hampshire.

To seize this moment two things are required:

First, and most important, ordinary Democrats and independents in New Hampshire should mobilize behind a grass-roots effort to write in Clinton’s name during the Jan. 10 Democratic primary.

Second, a committed group of Democrats with resources and stature needs to help facilitate an authentic citizens’ movement — independent of party structure, Clinton and organized interests — to support a massive New Hampshire write-in campaign and put this before a deeply disaffected electorate.

There is already an online petition to draft Clinton, created by Democrats.
“We the undersigned Democrats want a new Democratic nominee for president who can win in 2012. We are convinced that the only person with the national stature, experience … who can win in the general election in 2012 is Hillary Rodham Clinton. We are fully prepared to take matters in to our own hands and launch our own massive write-in campaign,” it reads.

Even if one does not agree with their every argument, we urge everyone who shares our beliefs go to that website now — and to tell their friends to go to there and sign it.

Since 1944, when approval ratings first became reliable, there have been five cases in which the incumbent president had an approval rating below 49 percent a year ahead of the election. Each time, the incumbent party lost.

Obama’s approval rating has dropped to 43 percent — less than Jimmy Carter’s. Obama now has the worst job approval rating of any president at this stage of his term in modern political history. Many, particularly on the left, have begun to demonstrate with signs reading,

“Buyer’s remorse.”

DRAFT HILLARY 2012 ... Hillary Can Fix This: New Hampshire residents Write in Hillary Clinton for President Primary Day!

In a recent Daily Beast piece, “Hillary Told You So,” angry, frustrated liberals were quoted saying, “No one ever had to tell Hillary” that the economy is crucial, and “Hillary is TOUGHER (and 10X SMARTER ).”

Indeed, the most active calls for Clinton to run have come from the left — indicating that there is substantial support for this idea across the board and not just from centrist Democrats.

Certainly, the recent barrage of articles by former Obama allies saying that the White House has lost white, working-class voters — a key part of the Democratic coalition — is cause enough for Clinton, who has been that voting bloc’s champion in the past, to be the Democratic standard-bearer.

Many argue that our approach is impractical and is unlikely to work because Obama will not stand down. But make no mistake, we are political realists.
As political realists, we know that every recent presidential candidate who has emerged — from Obama in 2008 to Herman Cain, Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry and now Newt Gingrich — has been citizen-driven. The elites have not driven the process; ordinary voters have filled the void.

Such a void exists now.

Clinton pulled off a stunning New Hampshire primary victory over Obama during the 2008 primaries. There is every reason to believe that, as a write-in candidate, she would get a substantial number of votes in the Granite State next year.

NEW HAMPSHIRE is one state where grass-roots politics predominates. As presidential historian Theodore White wrote in 1965, New Hampshire’s primary allows candidates “to appeal directly to people” and “over the heads of the politicians.”
This primary — traditionally well before other primaries — allows independents to cast ballots for either Democrats or Republicans, unlike most other “closed primaries,” in which only registered Democrats and Republicans can vote on their respective parties’ ballots. It’s justly famous for write-in candidates, who often had substantial success.

In 1964, write-in candidate Henry Cabot Lodge had an upset victory over GOP front-runners Barry Goldwater and Nelson Rockefeller. In 1968, incumbent President Lyndon B. Johnson was not on the ballot, but as a write-in, he received nearly 50 percent of all Democratic votes.

A write-in candidacy in 2012 can send a message that the Democratic Party must stand for something more than Obama’s reelection at all costs.

We are not asking the president or the secretary of state to take action. We ask the people of the United States, Democrats and, especially, New Hampshire voters to exercise their right to be heard by writing Clinton’s name on the primary ballot.

Voters have had enough of the establishment powers dictating who can run.

All that is needed is a spark on the dry tinder of political frustration and anxiety. A few Democratic patriots can provide the means to make it possible — and change the course of U.S. history.

article written by: PATRICK H. CADDELL and DOUGLAS E. SCHOEN

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1211/70623.html