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From: wolda002@umn.edu
Date: Fri Nov 19 2010 - 00:43:20 EST
The upside of George Soros’s buyer’s
remorse<http://rothkopf.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/11/18/the_upside_of_george_soros_buyer_s_remorse>
Posted By David Rothkopf <http://rothkopf.foreignpolicy.com/blog/48>
Thursday,
November 18, 2010 - 5:47 PM Share<http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=20>
http://rothkopf.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/11/18/the_upside_of_george_soros_buyer_s_remorse
Yesterday, two unrelated stories showed yet again that in Washington, the
best way to shout is to whisper.
As revealed<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/17/george-soros-obama_n_785022.html>in
today's Huffington Post, (Do websites have "daily editions"? Does time
even exist on the Internet?) George Soros spoke behind closed doors
yesterday to the Democracy Alliance, a group of progressive donors, and
apparently had a public fit of buyer's remorse over the important role he
played helping to bankroll the candidacy of Barack Obama.
"We have just lost this election, we need to draw a line," The HuffPost
story quoted Soros, citing folks in attendance. "And if this president can't
do what we need, it is time to start looking somewhere else."
While a Soros spokesperson contacted for the story said the financier was
not in fact suggesting a primary challenge to Obama, that was probably
little consolation to the White House. Because in the White House they know
that Soros has been going around Washington recently and expressing his
disappointment in Obama in his typical sharp and unvarnished style. He has
even gone so far as to say to folks something to the effect of: "If I had
wanted to elect a traditional, mainstream Democrat, I could easily have
supported Hillary Clinton," and then going on to add that he actually had
great admiration for the work that Clinton was doing in the State
Department. In other words, the man who helped galvanize the fund-raising
opposition to her was having doubts.
The Democracy Alliance meeting was off the record. Conducting an off the
record meeting is one of the surest ways of making sure that what is said is
immediately leaked to the press and spread through the grapevine that
supplies sustenance to all forms of Washington flora and fauna.
There is really only one way of ensuring that something spreads more rapidly
to the news media and that is saying it is to be kept secret and then
providing it to someone on Capitol Hill. Yesterday, Hillary Clinton
discovered this as her team provided lawmakers with a first look PowerPoint
of State's long-in-the-works Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review
(QDDR). The document was marked NODIS which of course may look like an
acronym for "No Distribution" but actually means "Please forward immediately
to Glenn Kessler at the *Washington Post*." Or at least that's what it seems
to mean because within a couple of hours of the Powerpoint hitting the Hill it
showed up<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/world/documents/state-dept-development-aid-review.html>on
the
*Post*'s website with a brief
summary<http://voices.washingtonpost.com/checkpoint-washington/2010/11/catnip_for_policy_wonks_clinto.html>by
Kessler.
The Kessler summary and subsequent reviews of the document, including that
by FP's Josh Rogin<http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/11/17/the_draft_qddr_revealed>,
focused on the box-shifting nature of the document and the who-get-what
division of assets and responsibilities between the State Department and
USAID. There are a couple of more things about the document that are also
worth noting, however.
First, it is just a summary and many of the details of the plan are still
be refined prior to the official launch date of Dec. 15. Second, while the
document carefully and sensibly balances mission refinements and
responsibilities between the State Department and USAID, what is hidden
between the lines is that one of the best bits of diplomacy engineered by
the State Department during the past two years. That is the negotiated deal
between the White House team interested in reshaping how the United States
handles development and their State Department counterparts. While some in
the White House came from the school that had hoped to see a new Department
of Development and that idea died aborning, they did achieve their goals of
elevating the role of development and establishing through presidential
directive -- a decision-process that gave the NSC a bigger, more direct role
in shaping development policy. Meanwhile, State, which stood to lose in the
tug of war with the White House (the kind of match up the White House almost
always wins), achieved its core goals of maintaining control over the
crucial elements of development policy and spending and resisting efforts to
dramatically increase the autonomy of USAID. Further, in defining
development as a critical part of the State Department's mission going
forward and in recommending much needed, long-overdue steps to elevate the
role of post-conflict intervention and stabilization efforts within the
State Department, Clinton and her team have proposed an approach that is
certain to better advance U.S. interests in the context of the kind of
challenges we are likely to face in the years ahead.
In short, while details remain to be worked out, this seems to have been a
policy process that worked. It may not have produced the big sweeping
changes that some may have hoped for and the current state of the plan
leaves many details to be filled in. But, the participants in the discussion
have produced a sound initial proposal and launched a useful cyclical
process that is cousin to Defense's Quadrennial Defense Review which,
hopefully over the years ahead, will continue the important evolution that
this first phase seems to be initiating.
Which brings me to the final point: as Soros has realized and the QDDR is
only the latest by-product of the State Department's efforts to reveal,
Hillary Clinton was misunderstood and underestimated by many in her own
party during the last presidential campaign. Indeed, as is reflected in today's
*New York Times*
story<http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/18/world/18start.html?_r=1&ref=mark_landler>by
Mark Landler on her growing role as an administration point person on
Capitol Hill, many of those who campaigned most fiercely against her on
behalf of President Obama are now coming to realize that with the departure
of Secretary of Defense Gates and other administration luminaries, she is
emerging as ever more essential to the president's future success. Her
approval ratings are much higher than his. Her husband is the most popular
politician in the Democratic Party. She has distinguished herself by her
loyalty, intelligence, and competence. She even may orchestrate a few key
foreign policy victories in the next couple years that will provide vital
momentum to her former opponent's campaign for re-election.
The partnership between Obama and Clinton was no sure thing. It was a big,
bold risk undertaken by the president. It has not been without its warts and
tensions and it would be wrong to think that many do not remain. But that
only makes its remarkable success to date that much more worthy of note.