Clinton Describes How GOP Obstructionism is Hurting U.S. in International Arena: Report from Matthew Lee Followed by a Commentary by Me
I both applaud this, in that it is a relevant move in the bigger game for Clinton to bring this up, and I have reservations about an essential part of how she treats it. Those reservations I’ll articulate below the article.
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Clinton: Obstruction Of Nominees Is Hurting America Abroad
by MATTHEW LEE
Huffington Post, 02/24/10
WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton complained Wednesday that domestic political battles are hurting the president’s foreign policy goals and damaging America’s image abroad.
Testifying before a congressional committee, Clinton said fights between the White House and Congress have led to “gridlock” in appointing officials to critical positions, including those with key foreign policy and international assistance responsibilities. That has created confusion among friends and allies, she said.
“We’re now more than a year into a new administration and whether you agree or disagree with a particular policy, a president deserves to have the people that he nominates serving him,” Clinton told the Senate Appropriations Committee.
In response to questions from Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., she noted that delays and holds placed on the nominations of several ambassadorial and senior State Department positions had been problematic.
“It became harder and harder to explain to countries, particularly countries of significance, why we had nobody in position for them to interact with,” Clinton said.
She did not identify the positions to which she referred nor the lawmakers who delayed the confirmations but in one well-publicized case last year, Republican Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., held up for months the appointments of both the new ambassador to Brazil and the incoming top diplomat for Western Hemisphere affairs over policy toward Honduras.
In another case, earlier this year several State Department appointees were among dozens caught in a blanket hold on Obama nominees by Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., who placed it over concerns about a Air Force refueling tanker contrac in his home state and a new FBI explosives center he wants built there.
Clinton said foreign governments have trouble understanding the way the U.S. process works when situations like that arise.
“People don’t understand the way our system operates, they just don’t get it,” she said. “And their view does color whether the United States … is in a position going forward to demonstrate the kind of unity and strength and effectiveness that I think we have to in this very complex and dangerous world.”
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She manifests the all-too-usual liberal pussyfooting away from showing the darkness that is the main point. This isn’t the American system the foreigners are having trouble understanding. It is a function of an unusually dysfunctional state of the American system, caused by the takeover of on of America’s major parties by the forces of evil.
Now, I wouldn’t expect Hillary Clinton to use the word evil. But she could certainly highlight how extraordinary this GOP has been about obstructing everything, including the confirmation of Ambassadors, which is merely a case in point.
The American people should have heard this message from her, however tactfully-but-clearly she said it: The GOP is hurting America with its obstructionism. In my arena, this obstructionism had hurt us in THIS way. The American system is supposed to work differently from this kind of obstructionism: Let’s see from these Republicans at least a modicum of “Country First” rather than the current “Country? Who Cares?”
February 26th, 2010 at 10:26 am
Here are the first few paragraphs of Russ Daggatt’s blog item from last Wednesday, February 24:
http://daggatt.blogspot.com/
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You might recall my previous account of Republicans leaders demanding that President Obama agree to the creation of a deficit reduction commission … until President Obama agreed to it. Here is Senate Minority Leader McConnell:
As I have said many times before, the best way to address the [deficit] crisis is the Conrad-Gregg proposal. . . . It deserves support from both sides of the aisle. … So I urge the administration, once again, to support the Conrad-Gregg proposal. This proposal is our best hope for addressing the out-of-control spending and debt levels that are threatening our Nation’s fiscal future.
So President Obama agreed to it. At which point Senate Republicans filibustered it. The Senate failed to overcome the filibuster by a 53 to 46 vote. It would have passed if seven Republican co-sponsors and McConnell had voted to break the filibuster. They didn’t just vote against it. They voted to filibuster it — a parliamentary maneuver that used to be reserved for extraordinary matters like denying civil rights to black people but now used to obstruct anything and everything that comes before the Senate. If they had only allowed it to come to a fair “up or down vote” they could have still voted against it and it would have passed. But they voted to filibuster the very same bill they co-sponsored and demanded that President Obama support.
Do you really have any doubt these guys are nihilists?
Then there is the increasingly common Republican practice of filibustering a bill … until if it manages to survive their procedural attacks, then they turn around and vote for it … because they really don’t have a principled reason to oppose it. Like when Senate Republicans spent several weeks obstructing a vote on a bill extending unemployment benefits, requiring that it survive three cloture votes to overcome their filibusters. But once it became clear they were eventually going to lose, Republicans all voted for the bill and it passed 98-0. Weeks of obstruction of a bill they voted for. Now common practice among Senate Republicans. Because they know most Americans generally don’t follow all this procedural maneuvering and will blame Democrats for the failure to enact legislation to help the American people at a time of national distress. But they don’t want to be held accountable for actually voting against it.
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