Susan Rice is imminently qualified to succeed Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State. She was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, where she got her PhD in international relations. She has been part of the National Security team in the Clinton administration, as Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, a senior Fellow on Foreign Affairs at the Brookings Institute, and is currently the U. S. Ambassador to the United Nations.
Opposition to her appointment has focused on one Sunday morning of talk shows, where she gave a preliminary report on what happened in the Benghazi attack that killed our ambassador and three others. Her explanation was based on unclassified information that was supplied by our intelligence organizations. It proved to be premature and incorrect, as she said at the time that it might be.
Graham, McCain, and other Republican senators have been unrelenting in their continuing rant of opposition, without much substance to their criticisms of Rice herself.
Nevertheless, insiders predicted that she would still win confirmation in the Senate, requiring only five Republicans to join a united Democratic vote. Today, Dr. Rice asked President Obama to withdraw her name from considerations. She had not been formally nominated.
There are two speculations about what motivated the Republicans' opposition. (1) It is a way to thwart President Obama and to create a sideshow to distract from their losing position on the fiscal cliff fight. (2) The next most likely nominee is Senator John Kerry, whom even Republicans consider highly qualified. But this would create an open senate seat from Massachusetts and the possible flip of the seat to a Republican. Scott Brown might beat anyone less formidable than Elizabeth Warren.
Aides say that it was Rice's own decision, not that Obama pulled the plug. But I would guess the White House is relieved not to have that fight right now with the financial cliff, debt ceiling, and budget fights going on.
Now there will be a white man at State again for the first time in 15 years. Before that, it had never been anything but a white man. Then came Madeleine Albright, Colin Powell, Condi Rice, and Hillary Clinton.
Ralph
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Andrea Mitchell said on tv today that this is not going to help Republicans at all: having scuttled the nomination of a highly qualified woman of color.
ReplyDeleteI think she means that they already have a problem with women and with minorities -- and they might tend to see this as sexist or racist.