Perhaps, one way to solve the auto industry problem is for the unions to buy GM. Pelosi could draft a bill allowing the unions to borrow the money from the government and after pledging all union member homes as collateral the union could run the company, raise worker salaries and increase health benefits. That's a good way to spread the wealth!
Next, Pelosi could pass additional legislation dictating that all new car purchases must be GM models that get over 25 mpg. Sale of these small unprofitable cars, whose manufacture has been imposed on GM by the government under CAFE legislation, would certainly make Greens happy.
Finally, if the plan works, and according to the way government accounting goes GM should show a profit, Pelosi could then offer the same deal to Ford and Chrysler. This would drive foreign car manufacturers, who make cars people want, to close their American plants - but then we would have more auto workers looking for jobs wouldn't we?
Pelosi is right! Guess we better take $100 billion from the $700 billion bank bail out and give it to the auto industry after all. Anything to keep America strong, unions happy and Greens sated and shift the blame to corporate managers and Wall Street hedge funds.
But, Robert Samuelson has the real answer on how to bail out GM. Pelosi should read his article but if she did she would have to take action against her union and ecology friendly supporters. (See 1 below.)
Obama will have to hit the ground running when he takes office according to Jeannine Aversa. The president elect has a real opportunity to make positive changes or failing that he can do more harm than good. It will be interesting to see which road he takes and whether he truly understands the benefits of free markets versus government controlled markets. In less than two months the voters will finally begin to learn who is our president - perhaps then the real Obama will emerge. (See 2 below.)
James Fallows visits and learns about China.(See 3 below.)
It worked for Lincoln whose cabinet was comprised of his opponents but will it work for Obama? Making Hillary Sec. of State, assuming she would take it, might be keeping one's adversary close at hand but could Obama fire her? (See 4 below.)
Obama campaigned on an exit strategy of getting out of Iraq. Does he have one when it comes to bailing out of the bail out? If so what is it?
Dick
1) How to Bail Out General Motors
By Robert Samuelson
Imposing tough conditions would improve the odds of success and discourage many other firms from seeking costly government handouts.
So it's come to this: General Motors, once the world's mightiest industrial enterprise, is now flirting with bankruptcy. Ford and Chrysler may not be far behind. Car and truck sales have collapsed. GM is rapidly exhausting its cash reserves and may soon be unable to pay its bills. Here's the dilemma: GM and other U.S. automakers ought to be rescued to minimize damage to the economy, but the rescue should require tough conditions that neither the Democratic Congress nor the incoming Obama administration seems willing to support.
In a booming economy, a GM bankruptcy might be tolerable and useful. It would remind everyone of the social costs of mediocre management and overpriced unionized labor. But far from booming, the economy is declining at an apparently accelerating rate. Confidence among small businesses has dropped to a 28-year low, according to a survey released last week by the National Federation of Independent Business.
No one knows what further havoc a GM bankruptcy might inflict. A study by the Center for Automotive Research (CAR) estimates that 2.5 million jobs would be lost in the first year. The logic: if any of the "Big Three" went bankrupt, many suppliers would also fail; because car companies share suppliers, all U.S.-based manufacturers would suffer crippling parts shortages. American production would virtually stop until new supplier arrangements emerged. "It takes 6,000 to 14,000 parts to make a vehicle," says Sean McAlinden, CAR's chief economist. "If you don't have one, you can't make it."
This may be too pessimistic. In a Chapter 11 bankruptcy, GM would "reorganize." It would suspend many existing debt payments and continue normal operations. Perhaps. The snag is that even in "reorganization," GM would require new loans and these might not be available. "Historically, when companies go bankrupt, there's 'debtor in possession' financing—investors lend you money, but they get repaid first. That market has evaporated because of the credit crunch," says auto analyst Rod Lache of Deutsche Bank. No loans, no production. Another possible pitfall: worried about warranties and service, customers might shun a bankrupt GM's vehicles.
Why run these risks when the 6.5 percent unemployment rate seems headed toward 8 percent and almost a quarter of the 10 million jobless have been out of work for six months or longer? Just to satisfy a purist "free market" ideal? It doesn't make sense. But neither does it make sense simply to heave taxpayers' money at automakers. The objective is not to rescue the companies or workers; it is to shore up the economy and improve the U.S. industry's competitiveness. A bailout won't succeed unless other things also happen.
First, auto companies' existing creditors need to write down their debts. Even with federal aid, companies will shrink. Economist McAlinden estimates that the country has surplus assembly capacity of about 4 million vehicles, much owned by the Big Three and destined to be shut. GM will need a $25 billion government loan to get through the recession and cover closing costs, says Lache. But GM already has $48 billion of debt. Unless the old debt is sharply written down, GM would be overburdened and its rendezvous with bankruptcy would merely be delayed. Already, shareholders are essentially wiped out.
Second, labor costs need to be cut. By Lache's estimates, GM's hourly compensation—wage plus fringe benefits—totaled $71 in 2007 compared with Toyota's $47. Health benefits for retirees (many in their 50s, having retired after 30 years) are expensive. These costs contributed to GM's massive cash drain, $31 billion since 2005. But the United Auto Workers opposes making concessions. Just the opposite. Government aid, says UAW president Ron Gettelfinger, is needed "so that auto companies can meet their health-care obligations to more than 780,000 retirees and dependents." The bailout should be more than union welfare.
Finally, automakers need a consistent energy policy. Congress demands that companies produce more fuel-efficient vehicles (35 miles per gallon by 2020, up from 25mpg now). But politicians also want low gas prices. These goals are contradictory. To encourage consumers to buy fuel-efficient vehicles, Congress should mandate higher gas prices. Gasoline taxes could be raised gradually (say a penny a month for four years, possibly offset by other tax cuts). Wild swings between low and high fuel prices have crippled the U.S. industry by erratically shifting buyer preferences—to and from SUVs.
In bankruptcy, a judge can modify a firm's labor contracts and debts. GM needs the benefits of bankruptcy without the uncertainties, but the political process—so far—resists that desirable bargain. The conditions that Democrats seem to be discussing are mostly rhetorical gestures against high executive compensation (already limited) and in favor of more fuel efficiency (already legislated). The lame-duck Bush administration hasn't helped the conversation. It rejects additional assistance without saying why; if aid is forthcoming, it doesn't suggest what might be useful conditions.
We are now seeing the first political side effects of the open-ended $700 billion rescue of financial institutions. With so much money going to so many recipients, boundaries and rationales need to be established. When is public intervention justified? Who deserves support and why? Otherwise, political firepower will increasingly rule. The reason for imposing tough conditions on the auto industry is not only to improve the odds of success, but also—by the sacrifices required—to make the process sufficiently unpleasant so that countless other companies and unions won't demand similar handouts. In 1979, when it rescued Chrysler from bankruptcy, the Carter administration insisted on concessions from management, investors and labor. We should do as much or more.
2) Financial overhaul added to Obama's to-do list
By JEANNINE AVERSA
Barack Obama isn't president yet, but his must-do list just got longer.
The newest addition to the lengthy list of tasks after taking office: helping oversee the overhaul of the world's financial regulatory system. That is one of the assignments to the president-elect from current global leaders after their weekend summit, where they pledged action to avoid a repeat of the financial mess that has caused worldwide economic chaos.
"Obama has a tall order," said Morris Goldstein, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics who spent years working at the International Monetary Fund, the world's financial firefighter.
"He has a lot of things he has to do quickly in a number of areas and doesn't have a lot of time to think about them," Goldstein said in an interview Sunday.
That will put a lot of pressure on Obama. He did not participate in the emergency two-day summit that concluded Saturday, instead sending representatives to meet with leaders on the sidelines.
After taking the oath of office Jan. 20, Obama will have to figure out in short order how far his administration is willing to go in revamping oversight of financial companies and products, in the United States and abroad, and nailing down the crucial details.
"Obama has an incredible mountain to climb in the way of the economic and financial situation," said Richard Yamarone, economist at Argus Research.
President George W. Bush hosted the summit, where nearly two dozen foreign leaders endorsed broad goals to fend off any future calamities and to revive the global economy.
It will be up to finance ministers to flesh out the details to put such changes in place by the end of March. Leaders plan to hold the next summit by April 30 — just months into Obama's term.
"I think this puts Obama and a new administration in a very difficult position," said Steven Schrage, a former Bush administration trade official now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
"It's really going to be up to the next administration to figure, do they breathe life into this? Does this go forward? Do they take it in a different direction?"
All the while, the new president will be under immense pressure to bring relief to millions of Americans who have watched jobs disappear, nest eggs shrink, home values plunge, foreclosures zoom upward and banks — along with storied Wall Street firms — laid low by the financial and economic crises.
"Make no mistake: This is the greatest economic challenge of our times," Obama said Saturday in the weekly Democratic radio address. "And while the road ahead will be long and the work will be hard, I know that we can steer ourselves out of this crisis."
The president-elect himself did not weigh in after the summit about whether he agreed with the thrust of the leaders' broad goals. But he indicated the global gathering was a good idea because "our global economic crisis requires a coordinated global response," he said Saturday.
Translating the leaders' sweeping principles into specific actions will be difficult. "That's the rub. That's where you really see the differences across countries in what you want to do," Goldstein said. "In the coming months, we'll see to what extent Obama's agenda will conflict with the Europeans."
Leaders pledged to make the global financial system more accountable to investors and less vulnerable to risky investing. But there are sure to be differences of opinion on exactly how to accomplish that, which could impede progress at the next summit in the spring.
To provide relief from the current woes, the leaders supported the benefits of enacting government spending plans to stimulate their economies. But they stopped short of a commitment for all to act at the same time, as some Europeans had favored.
The Bush administration has reacted coolly to the idea of a second U.S. stimulus plan.
For Wall Street, the leaders' talk about ways to provide relief probably will be of more importance than efforts to prevent another financial fiasco, experts said. Even without new concrete commitments for government spending, tax cuts or interest rate reductions, the fact that leaders came together to address the crisis and did not let it become a blame game should help bolster some confidence on Wall Street, according to Goldstein, Yamarone and others.
Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez, appearing on CNN's "Late Edition" on Sunday, warned against the making any new financial rules of the road too restrictive.
"There is an inclination, when you get into problems like this to go to an extreme, to over regulate, to think that we're going to have a worldwide compensation system. How is that going to be done? I think we have to be careful, we have to find a balance and we can't over regulate so that five years from now we're trying to claw our way back because we overdid it," he said.
3)AS CHINA PREPARES to take its place as the world’s dominant power, it faces confounding obstacles: its insularity and sheer stupidity in delivering the genuine good news about its own progress.
By James Fallows
Their Own Worst Enemy:
After two years in China, there are still so many things I can’t figure out. Is it really true, as is always rumored but never proved, that the Chinese military runs most of the pirate-DVD business—which would in turn explain why that business is so difficult to control? At what point in Chinese culture did it become mandatory for business and political leaders to dye away every gray hair, so that gatherings of powerful men in their 50s and up are seas of perfect pitch-black heads? How can corporations and government agencies invest huge sums producing annual reports and brochures and advertisements in English, yet manifestly never bother to ask a native English speaker whether they’ve made some howler-style mistake? (Last year, a museum in Shanghai put on a highly publicized exhibit of photos from the Three Gorges Dam area. In front, elegant banners said in six-foot-high letters The Three Georges.) Why do Beijing taxi drivers almost never have maps—and almost always have their own crates or buckets filling the trunks of their cars when they pick up baggage-laden passengers at the airport? I could go on.
But here is by far the most important of these mysteries: How can official China possibly do such a clumsy and self-defeating job of presenting itself to the world? China, like any big, complex country, is a mixture of goods and bads. But I have rarely seen a governing and “communications” structure as consistent in hiding the good sides and highlighting the bad.
I come across examples every day, but let me start with a publicly reported event. Early this year, I learned of a tantalizing piece of news about an unpublicized government plan for the Beijing Olympics. In a conversation with someone involved in the preparations, I learned of a brilliant scheme to blunt potential foreign criticism during the Games. The Chinese government had drawn up a list of hotels, work spaces, Internet cafés, and other places where visiting journalists and dignitaries were most likely to use the Internet. At those places, and only there, normal “Great Firewall” restrictions would be removed during the Olympics. The idea, as I pointed out in an article about Chinese controls (“‘The Connection Has Been Reset,’” March Atlantic), was to make foreigners happier during their visit—and likelier to tell friends back home that, based on what they’d seen on their own computer screens, China was a much more open place than they had heard. This was subtle influence of the sort that would have made strategists from Sun Tzu onward proud.
The scheme displayed a sophisticated insight into outsiders’ mentality and interests. It recognized that foreigners, especially reporters, like being able to poke around unsupervised, try harder to see anything they’re told is out-of-bounds, and place extra weight on things they believe they have found without guidance. By saying nothing at all about this plan, the government could let influential visitors “discover” how freely information was flowing in China, with all that that implied. In exchange, the government would give up absolutely nothing. If visiting dignitaries, athletes, and commentators searched for a “Free Tibet” site or found porn that is usually banned in China, what’s the harm? They had seen worse back at home.
When the Olympics actually started, things did not go exactly according to plan. As soon as journalists began checking in at their Olympic hotels, they began complaining about all the Web sites they couldn’t reach. Chinese officials replied woodenly that this was China, and established Chinese procedures must be obeyed: Were the arrogant foreigners somehow suggesting that they were too good to comply with China’s sovereign laws? Unlike the brilliant advance scheme, all this was reported.
After huddling with officials from the International Olympic Committee, who had been touting China’s commitment to free information flow during the Games, the Chinese government quietly reversed its stance. For a few days, controls seemed to have been lifted for Internet users in many parts of Beijing—in my apartment, far from the main Olympic areas, I could get to usually blocked sites, like any BlogSpot blog, without using a Virtual Private Network (VPN). Eventually the controls came back on for everyone except users in the special Olympic areas. By then the Chinese government had turned a potential PR masterstroke into a fiasco. Now what the foreign visitors could tell friends back home was that they knew firsthand that China’s Internet is indeed censored, that its government could casually break its promise of free information flow during the Games, and that foreign complaints could bully it back into line.
From the outside, this blunder might not seem noteworthy or surprising, given the dim image of the Chinese government generally conveyed in the Western press. It might not even be thought of as a blunder—rather, as a sign that the government had, for once, been caught trying to sneak out of its commitments and repress whatever it could. To me it was puzzling because of its sheer stupidity: Did they think none of the 10,000 foreign reporters would notice? Did they think there was anything to gain?
The government’s decision was more complicated but even more damaging in another celebrated Olympics case, this one the most blatantly Orwellian: the offer to open three areas for “authorized protests” during the Olympics—followed by the rejection of every single request to hold a demonstration, and the arrest of several people who asked. It’s true that even if China is wide-open in many ways, public demonstrations that might lead to organized political opposition are, in effect, taboo. But why guarantee international criticism by opening the zones in the first place? Who could have thought this was a good idea?
Such self-inflicted damage occurs routinely, without the pressure of the Olympics. Whenever a Chinese official or the state-run Xinhua News Agency puts out a release in English calling the Dalai Lama “a jackal clad in Buddhist monk’s robes” or a man “with a human face and the heart of a beast,” it only builds international sympathy for him and members of his “splittist clique.” A special exhibit about Tibet in Beijing’s Cultural Palace of Minorities this year illustrated the blessings of China’s supervision by showing photos of grinning Tibetans opening refrigerators full of beer, and of new factories including a cement plant in Lhasa. Such basic material improvements are huge parts of the success story modern China has to tell. But the exhibit revealed total naïveté in dealing with the complaints about religious freedom made by the “Dalai clique.” It was as if the government had hired The Onion as its image consultant.
Let’s assume for the sake of argument that reporters are viewed with suspicion or loathing by the political or business leaders they cover. That doesn’t keep governments in many countries from understanding the crass value of cultivating the press. Anyone with experience in neighboring South Korea, Taiwan, or Japan knows how skillful their business-governmental establishments are at mounting “charm offensives” to make influential foreigners feel cosseted and part of the team. Official China sometimes launches a successful charm offensive on visiting dignitaries. When it comes to dealing with foreign reporters—who after all will do much to shape the outside world’s view of their country—Chinese spokesmen and spinners barely seem to try. Maybe I’m biased; my application for a journalist visa to China was turned down because of “uncertainty” about what I might be looking for in the country (I have been here on other kinds of visas). But China’s press policy seems similar to, say, Dick Cheney’s (if without the purposeful stiff-arming) and reflects the same view—that scrutiny from the Western press is not really necessary. I’m convinced that usually these are blunders rather than calculated manipulation.
This is inept on China’s part. Why do I consider it puzzling? Because of two additional facts I would not have guessed before coming to China: it’s a better country than its leaders and spokesmen make it seem, and those same leaders look more impressive in their home territory.
Almost everything the outside world thinks is wrong with China is indeed a genuine problem. Perhaps not the most extreme allegations, of large-scale forced organ-harvesting and similar barbarities. But brutal extremes of wealth and poverty? Arbitrary and prolonged detentions for those who rock the boat? Dangerous working conditions? Factories that take shortcuts on health and safety standards? Me-first materialism and an absence of ethics? I’ve met people affected by every problem on the list, and more.
But China’s reality includes more than its defects. Most people are far better off than they were 20 years ago, and they are generally optimistic about what life will hold 20 years from now. This summer’s Pew Global Attitudes Project finding that 86 percent of the Chinese public was satisfied with the country’s overall direction—the highest of all the countries surveyed—was not some enforced or robotic consensus. It rings true with most of what I’ve seen in cities and across most of the country’s provinces and autonomous regions, something I wouldn’t have guessed from afar.
Americans are used to the idea that a country’s problems don’t tell its entire story. When I lived in Japan, I had to reassure fearful travelers to America that not every street corner had a daily drive-by shooting and not every passing stranger would beat them up out of bigotry. When foreigners travel or study in America, they usually put the problems in perspective and come to see the offsetting virtues and strengths. For all the differences between modern China and America, most outsiders go through a similar process here: they see that China is a country with huge problems but also one with great strengths and openness.
It’s authoritarian, sure—and you put yourself at great risk if you cross the government in the several areas it considers sacrosanct, from media control to “national security” in the broadest sense. (The closest I have come to trouble with the law was when I stopped to tie my shoe on Chang’an Boulevard, near Tiananmen Square in Beijing—and obliviously put my foot on what turned out to be a low pedestal around the main flagpole at Xinhua Gate, outside the headquarters of the country’s ruling State Council. Three guards rushed at me and pushed me away to end this sacrilege.) But China is full of conflicting trends and impulses, every generalization about it is both true and false, and it is genuinely diverse in a way the Stalin-esque official line rarely conveys.
One other Olympics example: the opening ceremonies paid homage to China’s harmonious embrace of its minority peoples with a giant national flag carried in by 56 children, each dressed in the native costume of one of China’s recognized minority groups, including Tibetans, Mongolians, and Uighurs. Contrary to initial assurances from Chinese officials, it turned out that every one of the children was from the country’s ethnic majority, Han Chinese. This was reminiscent of Western practices of yesteryear, as when Al Jolson wore blackface or the Swedish actor Warner Oland was cast as Charlie Chan in 1930s films. And it was criticized by the Western sensibilities of today.
Another element of the mystery is the deftness gap. Inside the country, China’s national leadership rarely seems as tin-eared as it is when dealing with the outside world. National-level democracy might come to China or it might not—ever. No one can be sure. But from the national level down to villages, where local officials are now elected, the government is by all reports becoming accountable in ways it wasn’t before. As farmers have struggled financially, a long-standing agricultural tax has been removed. As migrant workers have become an exploited underclass in big cities, hukou (residence-permit) rules have been liberalized so that people can get medical care and send their children to school without having to return to their “official” residence back in the countryside. Whenever necessary, the government turns to repression, but that’s usually not the first response.
The system prides itself on learning about problems as they arise and relieving social pressure before it erupts. In this regard it learned a lesson earlier this year, when its reaction to the first big natural disaster of 2008 turned into its own version of Hurricane Katrina. Unusual blizzards in central and southern China paralyzed roads and rail lines, and stranded millions of people traveling home for the Chinese New Year holidays; the central government seemed taken by surprise and was slow to respond. That didn’t happen with the next disaster, three months later. When the Sichuan earthquake occurred, Premier Wen Jiabao was on an airplane to the stricken area the same afternoon.
So I return to the puzzle: Why does a society that, like America, impresses most people who spend time here project such a poor image and scare people as much as it attracts them? Why do China’s leaders, who survive partly by listening to their own people, develop such tin ears when dealing with the outside world? I don’t pretend to have a solution. But here are some possible explanations, and some reasons why the situation matters to people other than the misunderstood Chinese.
There is no politer way to put the main problem than to call it “ignorance.” Most Americans are parochial, but (surprise!) most Chinese and their leaders are more so. American politicians may not be good at understanding foreign sensitivities or phrasing their arguments in ways likely to be effective around the world, as foreigners have mentioned once or twice in recent years. But collectively they understand that America is part of an ongoing, centuries-long, worldwide experiment and discussion about political systems and human values, and that making their case well matters.
After the 9/11 attacks, America went through a round of “Why do they hate us?” inquiry. Whether or not that brought the United States closer to understanding its problems in parts of the Islamic world, it did represent a more serious effort to understand how the country was seen than anything I have heard of in China. When the Olympic torch relay this spring was plagued by boos and protests over Tibet in places ranging from France to the United States, the reaction at every level of the Chinese system seemed to be not just insult but genuine shock. Most Chinese people were familiar only with the idea that China has always been a generous elder brother to the (often ungrateful) Tibetans. By all evidence, no one in command anticipated or prepared for this ugly response. The same Pew survey that said most Chinese felt good about their country also found that they thought the rest of the world shared their view. That belief is touching, especially considering how much of China’s history is marked by episodes of its feeling unloved and victimized. Unfortunately, it is also wrong. In many of the countries surveyed, China’s popularity and reputation were low and falling. According to a report last year by Joshua Cooper Ramo of Kissinger Associates, most people in China considered their country very “trustworthy.” Most people outside China thought the country was not trustworthy at all.
“The underlying problem is that very few people in China really understand how foreign opinion works, what the outside world reacts to and why,” Sidney Rittenberg told me. Rittenberg is in a position to judge. He came to China with the U.S. Army in 1945 and spent 35 years here, including 16 in prison for suspected disloyalty to Chairman Mao. “Now very few people understand the importance of foreign opinion to China”—that is, the damage China does to itself by locking up those who apply for demonstration permits, or insisting on “jackal” talk.
During the Chinese Communist Party’s rise to power and the civil war against Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists through the 1940s, the coterie around Mao knew how to spin the outside world, because they had to. One important goal was what Mao called “roping the whale”: keeping the United States from intervening directly on Chiang’s side. The future prime minister and foreign minister Zhou Enlai was especially skilled at handling foreigners. “He laid out battle plans and political strategies, in advance, with remarkable clarity,” the muckraker Jack Anderson, who was a cub reporter in China, said of Zhou in his memoirs. “These truths made him so believable that a reporter would be inclined to accept his assurances, too, that the Chinese Communists weren’t really Communists but just agrarian reformers.”
Of course, most official voices of China now have the opposite effect. Their minor, provable lies—the sky is blue, no one wants to protest—inevitably build mistrust of larger claims that are closer to being true. And those are the claims the government most wants the world to listen to: that the country is moving forward and is less repressive and more open than official actions and explanations (or lack of them) make China seem. Many Chinese who have seen the world are very canny about it, and have just the skills government spokesmen lack—for instance, understanding the root of foreign concerns and addressing them not with special pleading (“This is China…”) but on their own terms. Worldly Chinese demonstrate this every day in the businesses, universities, and nongovernmental organizations where they generally work. But the closer Chinese officials are to centers of political power, the less they know what they don’t know about the world.
Even as the top leadership tries to expand its international exposure and experience, much of the country’s daily reality is determined by mayors and governors and police. “It’s like the local sheriff in the old days in South Carolina,” said Sidney Rittenberg, who grew up there. “He’d say, ‘They can talk and talk in Washington, but I’m the law down here.’” Thus one hypothesis for the embarrassment of the “authorized” protest sites during the Olympics: Hu Jintao’s vice president and heir apparent, Xi Jinping, was officially in charge of all preparations for the Games; hobnobbing with the IOC, he would see the payoff to China of allowing some people to protest. But the applications went to the local police, who had no interest in letting troublemakers congregate. A similar mix-up may well have led to the embarrassment over whether to open the Internet during the Olympics, and could also explain many of the other fumbles that get so much more attention than the news the government wants to give.
The Communist Party schools that train the country’s leadership are constantly expanding their curricula to meet the needs of the times; but for advancement in party ranks what matters is loyalty, predictability, and party-line conformity. The United States saw just how well a similar approach paid off in worldwide respect and effectiveness when it staffed its Embassy in Baghdad’s Green Zone mainly with people who followed the party line in Washington.
The damage China does to itself by its clumsy public presentation is obvious—though apparently not yet obvious enough to its leadership. For outsiders, the central problem is that a country that will inevitably have increasing and perhaps dominant influence on the world still has surprisingly little idea of how the world sees it. That, in turn, raises the possibility of blunders and unnecessary showdowns, and in general the predicament of a new world power stomping around, Gargantua-like, making onlookers tremble. The world has known this predicament before. It is what the previously established powers have feared about America, starting a hundred years ago and with periodic recurrences since then, most recently starting in March of 2003. Maybe that puts America in a good position to help China take this next step.
4) Keep Your Friends Close (and Your Enemies Under Your Thumb)
By Andrea Tantaros
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton? That's what reports are saying. According to officials, Obama has narrowed the possibilities for secretary of state and Senator Hillary Clinton is among those being strongly considered. Some officials are even calling her the favorite.
Obama offering Clinton the position of secretary of state exemplifies the notion of keeping your friends close and your enemies -- not just close -- but under your thumb. The last thing Barack Obama wants is a supercharged Hillary Clinton potentially causing trouble in the Senate. (The last thing Hillary wants is to be under a man's thumb, I thought). If she accepts the job, she's shackled to his administration, which is smart if he wants to fend off attacks from the Clintons in 2012 -- a win for Obama and Democratic Party unity.
It's all politics, shrewd politics. So is Obama's upcoming meeting with John McCain. The President elect ran on bi-partisanship. Now the onus is on him to deliver. But most importantly, he wants shore up two terms early. And he can do that by mollifying his detractors and appeasing potential opponents.
If Hillary doesn't accept the job she looks like a sore loser, unwilling to cooperate. But Obama is smart enough not to publicly ask her without knowing she'll accept.
I'm not sure why she would want the position. Sure it's prestigious, but if she signs on Obama will own her. She will serve at his pleasure. In the Senate, nobody owns Hillary, especially now. She is poised to assume the role of lioness in the Senate in Ted Kennedy's absence. And secretary of state may seem old hat for the former First Lady. She likely considered herself Madeline Albright's boss when Bill was Commander in Chief.
To the Senator's credit, she is the most hawkish out of the names being floated thus far.
My hunch is the Clintons have already brokered a deal with President elect Obama. The question is, is this it?
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