Housegate and Earmarks - Van Gogh, Lend An Ear!

Sent to me by a fellow memo reader and friend. Not a big deal anymore because it is becoming a pattern of 'avoidance' if not downright 'evasion' but then these are the ones who expect us to live by their rules.

If the mounting recent allegations pertained to Republicans they would be hounded out of office by an incessant and biased press and media. Being wimps they might even throw up their hands and leave voluntarily.

There have been so many ethic matters in just four weeks and earmarks galore that even Van Gogh would have lent an ear!(See 1 below.)

A response from a dear friend and fellow memo reader regarding Amb. Kurtzer's haughty intrusive arrogance. (See 2 below.)

More responses and this from another friend and fellow memo reader regarding Britain's refusal to allow Wilder to enter and speak in their country. (See 3 below.)

Venezuelan Diplomat fanning the flames of anti-Semitism and operates out of Pelosi's California district?

I have always maintained when anti-Semitism is on the rise it connotes a viral sickness infecting the world, is usually associated with economic stress and portends some ominous future event(s). (See 4 below.)

Peres states Gaza disengagement was a mistake. Peres is a decent politician who loves the limelight and mistakenly took to wearing his heart on his sleeve.

When you live in a hotbed sea surrounded by those who want to destroy you and have a history of not being trustworthy you must keep your guard up, remain tough and dedicated to your own survival. Israel never missed an opportunity to have peace that was synonymous with their legitimate security interests. They have missed many opportunities for peace that would have strangled them.

Israel is an irritant and it is easy for western democracies being irritated ( and who are well on their way to eventually losing their own freedom) to offer Israel as a sacrifical lamb in the hope of buying their own security. Driven by their thirst for Arab oil and now Russian gas woe unto them.(See 5 below.)

Now that Olmert is on his way out, hopefully Israel's future leaders have finally learned to play tough and be consistent.

GW talked tough but was not consistent. Time will tell whether Obama will be either tough or consistent when it comes to executing foreign and /or domestic policy. So far there has been a lot of inconsistency between what he said and has thoughlessly done. (See 6 and 6a below.)

If ever a nation needed political reform it is Israel. Amnon Rubinstein offers some constructive thoughts. (See 7 below.)

Cathy Young believes she is beginning to detect the real Obama and what she sees is not 'change' but 'business' as usual. A gifted politician with verbal skills but no real developed set of guiding principles. (Young wrote it not me.)

Blankley also offers his analysis of Obama's governing and management style. (Again Blankley wrote it not me.)

I think it will prove interesting to observe if those who fell in love with Obama, his style etc. are capable of expressing reservations should they begin to have them. Will they be as intellectually forthcoming as they were in expressing their contempt for GW, McCain and Palin? It is very early but cracks in the dike are readily discernible and whether they widen and begin to leak badly is something only time will tell.

As for myself, I believe we will soon learn some surprising things about this president that would have served us well had he been properly vetted considering how little we really knew about him and still do. Some may be good, others maybe not but it would have been better to have known them in advance Nevertheless, electing any president often is a chance matter. Is our new top dog proving to be a puppy? You decide.(See 8 and 8a below.)

There is always an alter-ego behind the scene: Kirbo-Carter, Rove-GW. Now David Axelrod - Obama. Who is David Axelrod and doth he protest too much? Are "we the people" smarter than he is? Is Obama's wheel too connected to David's axle rod?(See 9below.)

Michael Crowley writes a long analysis about Hillary as Sec.of State, who shae has brought on as her team of confidants etc. (See 10 below.)

John Bolton offers a 'naieve' Hillary some advice regarding being the Sec. of State and most specifically N Korea's nuclear program. the question is whether she is lstening? (See 11 below.)

Dick

1) By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN


News broke last week that Rahm Emanuel, now White House chief of staff, lived rent- free for years in the home of Rep. Rosa De Lauro (D-Conn.) - and failed to disclose the gift, as congressional ethics rules mandate. But this is only the tip of Emanuel's previously undisclosed ethics problems.

One issue is the work Emanuel tossed the way of De Lauro's husband. But the bigger one goes back to Emanuel's days on the board of now-bankrupt mortgage giant Freddie Mac.

Emanuel is a multimillionaire, but lived for the last five years for free in the tony Capitol Hill townhouse owned by De Lauro and her husband, Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg.

During that time, he also served as chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee - which gave Greenberg huge polling contracts. It paid Greenberg's firm $239,996 in 2006 and $317,775 in 2008. (Emanuel's own campaign committee has also paid Greenberg more than $50,000 since 2004.)

To be fair, Greenberg had polling contracts with the DCCC before - but each new election cycle brings its own set of consultants. And Emanuel was certainly generous with his roommate.

Emanuel never declared the substantial gift of free rent on any of his financial-disclosure forms. He and De Lauro claim that it was just allowable "hospitality" between colleagues. Hospitality - for five years?

Some experts suggest that it was also taxable income: Over five years, the free rent could easily add up to more than $100,000.

Nor is this all that seems to have been missed in the Obama team's vetting process. Consider: Emanuel served on the Freddie Mac board of directors during the time that the government-backed lender lied about its earnings, a leading contributor to the current economic meltdown.

The Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight Agency later singled out the Freddie Mac board as contributing to the fraud in 2000 and 2001 for "failing in its duty to follow up on matters brought to its attention." In other words, board members ignored the red flags waving in their faces.

The SEC later fined Freddie $50 million for its deliberate fraud in 2000, 2001 and 2002.

Meanwhile, Emanuel was paid more than $260,000 for his Freddie "service." Plus, after he resigned from the board to run for Congress in 2002, the troubled agency's PAC gave his campaign $25,000 - its largest single gift to a House candidate.

That's what friends are for, isn't it?

Now Rahm Emanuel is in the White House helping President Obama dig out of the mess that Freddie Mac helped start.

The president's chief of staff isn't subject to Senate confirmation, but his ethics still matter. Is this the change that we can depend on?

2)"... It is pathetic. How dare any person in such a position dictate to Israel who should lead the country. This notion that only the left is a legitimate body to be in power stands in absolute contradiction to democratic values."

3)"The Wilder's affair is nauseating. Free speech in England, my behind! That
is unless you are a muslim Please let's not offend their sensibilities...."

4) Is a Venezuelan diplomat promoting antisemitism?
By Ed Lasky

It appears that a website fanning the flames of antisemitism is registered to a Venezuelan diplomat posted to the United States. Venezuela's beleaguered Jewish community is currently suffering grave persecution under Hugo Chavez, the left wing demagogue now likely to be president-for-life.


Martin Sanchez is the founder of Aporrea.Org and was one of the volunteers that ran the website. . He is also listed as the registrant for the website. The website is hosted in America. The website, supported by the government of Hugo Chavez, is also a promoter of antisemitism.


There is a Martin Sanchez who is now the Consular General of Venezuela in San Francisco. Before that posting, he served in the same capacity in Chicago.


Might this be the same Martin Sanchez who founded Aporrea.Org?


When Aporrea.Org was registered on the internet, the Martin Sanchez who was the registrant for the site was listed as living in Chicago. This time period also coincides with the time that the Consular General in Chicago was listed as being Martin Sanchez.


Could Consul General Sanchez -- an official of the government of Venezuela -- be the man behind a campaign of antisemitism? The government of Hugo Chavez has been widely alleged to have been stoking antisemitism not just in Venezuela but throughout the region. He has been using government-funded media, including websites, to do so.


There is no doubt that Apporea.Org actively promotes antisemitism. The website regularly features anti-Semitic invective and incitement. These are not just in the comments section but are actually in articles published by the site. In fact, promoting antisemitism seems to be one of the goals of the site.


This is part of a pattern of behavior of Hugo Chavez's. Antisemitism has become a very serious problem in Venezuela; it is often stoked by government-funded media outlets, such as Aporrea.Org may be.


A mere sampling of just some of the antisemitism published on the site, as reported by Andrews Oppenheimer of the Miami Herald:


On Jan. 22, a story by Emilio Silva on www.aporrea.org called for ''publicly denouncing, with their first and last names, members of powerful Jewish groups with a presence in Venezuela.'' It also called for ``publicly demanding that any Jew on any street, commercial center or public square, take a position shouting slogans in support of Palestine and against the abortion-like state of Israel.''

This call to action was recently published on the website after a synagogue was desecrated and the names and addresses of its members stolen:


To publicly challenge every Jew that you find in the street, shopping center or park to take a stand shouting at them slogans in favor of Palestine and against that abortion: Israel."
"Denounce publicly, with names and last names the members of powerful Jewish groups present in Venezuela"
"...capitalist agents as these Zionist Hebrews are the thing that hurts them most is the pocket (including Jehovah) it is inappropriate to buy their products and go to their stores and to the stores, supermarkets, restaurants, etc., that have relations with them or are owned by them"
"...question the existence in Venezuela of educational institutions for Jews only"
"...Public, massive, periodic concentrations not only in front of the Israeli embassy but also in front of all Jewish institutions"
"Detect and watch, by the intelligence entities of the State and by the social comptroller of the organized peoples, the undercover agents of Mossad and NGOs and other groups of the so called civil society (including the filthy ("escuálidos") students of the private and autonomous universities) that have received advise and financing from the artificial state of israel,"
"Purge the government institutions of those filthy officials, that with or without the red beret act in favor of the interests of Zionist groups located in our country."
"Nationalization of the companies and confiscation of the assets of the Zionist jews that support the excesses of the nazi fascist state of israel and the immediate donation of said assets to the Palestinians, victims of the present holocaust."
- from ¿Cómo apoyar a Palestina frente al estado artificial de israel? (Translation: How to help Palestine against the artificial state of Israel), January 20, 2009.


Another article criticized the Simon Wiesenthal Center for protesting the police raid of a Jewish children's school. Journalist Afif Tajeldine claimed in his article, A Zionist Challenge to Venezuela, that:


...it was farcical that this "instrument of international Zionism" [the Wiesenthal Center], pretended to defend the Jewish people. The Zionists had succeeded in segregating the Jewish people from the rest of the world and turning a religious nation-state into a bastion of capitalism. "We must remove the masque of Zionism and reveal it as a grotesque, racist, egoistic, segregationist philosophy and the government of the State of Israel as a terrorist state responsible for the new Palestinian holocaust.


Journalist Kathy Saide writes of the developing problem in Venezuela (Kristallnacht in Caracas):



Observers like the Simon Wiesenthal Center and Latin America expert Andres Oppenheimer cite "a well-orchestrated [anti-Semitic] campaign" that has been taking place on Venezuela's government sponsored radio and television stations, newspapers and websites such as Aporrea. Stoking anti-Semitic fervor, such outlets frequently compare Israel to Nazi Germany and denounce "international Jewish conspiracies."


The Anti-Defamation League has a listing of other anti-Semitic outrages published on Aporrea.Org


The question arises: is the Martin Sanchez who founded the website and is still listed as its official registrant, the Consul General for Venezuela in San Francisco? If so, when he was granted accreditation to serve as a diplomat in America was there any knowledge of his involvement in promoting antisemitism?


Certainly we can understand why Hugo Chavez might reward and promote a man who has been active in anti-Semitic agitprop. My sources, who are active in anti-Chavez efforts, have indicated that they believe that the Martin Sanchez who served as the Consul General in Chicago and now serves in that capacity in San Francisco is the same man who is behind Aporea.Org. They also believe it was his Aporrea.Org work that holds him in good stead with Chavez.


Has anyone in the State Department, the ADL, the Jewish community of San Francisco, or the Congressional delegation from California (including Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, in whose district the diplomat is posted) inquired about the mysterious Martin Sanchez?

5)President Peres admits Gaza disengagement was a mistake



As he began consultations for the formation of Israel's post-election cabinet Wednesday, Feb. 18, President Shimon Peres made an extraordinary statement. Addressing the Presidents Conference, he admitted for the first time that Israel's unilateral disengagement from the Gaza Strip in 2005 was a mistake "which will not be repeated." His decision regarding the future composition would therefore be dictated by its policies, he said.

Peres, who was vice premier in the government headed by Ariel Sharon which ordered the 2005 evacuation of the Gaza Strip, confessed for the first time that he was wrong to support it. Things should have been differently, he said.

(Israeli forces forcibly evicted 8,500 Israelis living in the Gaza communities - many of whom remain homeless to this day - and opened the way for Hamas' takeover.)

Peres said: "My problem is less whom to entrust with the role of prime minister but rather the candidate's policies. The world is undergoing new situations and the new government must adjust its policies accordingly. I do not disqualify any Israeli who was duly elected."

6)Israel: Gaza borders won't open before Shalit freed


Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's security cabinet decided on Wednesday that Israel would not open its border crossings with the Gaza Strip until Hamas agrees to release abducted Israel Defense Forces soldier Gilad Shalit, a minister told reporters after the hours-long meeting.

The forum agreed after meeting for more than four hours that "it would be inconceivable" for Israel to accept an Egyptian-proposed cease-fire calling for reopening border crossings to more than limited humanitarian aid without Shalit's release, Interior Minister Meir Sheetrit told Israel Radio.

The cabinet met for a special session to discuss a possible prisoner exchange with Hamas which could trade hundreds of Palestinian prisoners for Shalit, who has been in Palestinian captivity since he was abducted in a cross-border raid by Hamas-allied militants in June 2006.


"The crossings are open and will remain open to humanitarian aid," said Olmert's spokesman, Mark Regev. But he said Israel has decided that "any further widening will be dependent first on the release of Gilad Shalit."

Regev said the security cabinet discussed the number of prisoners Israel would be willing to swap for Shalit, but he declined to disclose any of the figures or names.

"The ministers understand full well the sort of price that releasing Gilad Shalit will require and I believe they are
supportive," he said, adding that Amos Gilad, an Israeli envoy, was expected to return to Cairo shortly to continue the talks.

Regev said prior to the meeting that the cabinet was also expected to reach a decision on the terms of a long-term truce in Gaza after Israel's 22-day offensive there last month.

The Campaign for the Release of Gilad Shalit responded to the cabinet's announcement by saying they were satisfied by the intentions, but still waiting to see the final outcome of the decision.

"The declaration released by the government cabinet meeting, was merely that - a declaration. We, as the campaign of friends supporting Gilad Shalit, are satisfied by the declaration made by the government of Israel led by Ehud Olmert, which has yet to secure the release of Gilad," they said in a statement.

"After two-and-a-half years of declarations, time has come for action. The Israeli government is obliged to take advantage of the opportunity created after Operation Cast Lead, to return Gilad Shalit to his family. We would like to emphasize that there may not be another opportunity, and there won't remain anyone to rescue."

On Tuesday, Olmert reiterated that Shalit must be freed as the top priority of any truce deal with the Hamas rulers of the Gaza Strip.

"We will negotiate his release first, and only then will we be willing to discuss things like the Gaza crossings and rebuilding the [Gaza] Strip," Olmert said Tuesday during a tour of Jerusalem. Israel and Egypt clamped a blockade on Gaza after Hamas overran the crowded coastal territory in 2007, allowing in only humanitarian supplies.

In Damascus, exiled Hamas leader Khaled Meshal accused Israel of adding in a new condition at the last minute in an attempt to thwart Egyptian efforts to reach a truce.

"There can be no truce unless the [Gaza] blockade is lifted and the crossings are opened. The truce issue should not be linked to the issue of prisoner Shalit," Meshal told reporters in Damascus after meeting with Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa.
Olmert indicated that negotiations might take weeks. His term will end soon, when a new prime minister takes over. "Even if Shalit's case cannot be resolved while I am in office, the foundations we built will facilitate his release," he said.

Hamas wants hundreds of Palestinian prisoners released in exchange for Shalit. Some prisoners were convicted of participating in or planning some of the bloodiest Palestinian terror attacks against Israel.

Israel has had a policy of not freeing prisoners directly involved in deadly attacks, but the principle has been eroded in recent years.

6a) Hamas rejects Israel's truce conditions
Roni Sofer, Ali Waked contributed to this report

Islamist group, Popular Resistance Committees say they won't accept cabinet's decision to link Gilad Shalit's release to future ceasefire, opening of Gaza crossings. Price for captive soldier's return non-negotiable, they say, accusing Israel of 'torpedoing lull'

Hamas announced Wednesday is was "rejecting" Israel's official stand on the ceasefire agreement, which preconditions any long-term truce, as well as the opening of the Gaza crossings, with the release of kidnapped IDF soldier Gilad Shalit.

The organization stressed that its prerequisite to Shalit's release was the parallel release of 1,000 Palestinian prisoners held in Israel.

Ministers approve Prime Minister Olmert's stance that any ceasefire deal with Hamas must be preconditions with kidnapped soldier's release. Meanwhile, Shalit's friends protest outside cabinet meeting, urge ministers to 'stop zigzagging'


Hamas leaders in Damascus chided Israel for essentially scorning Egypt's meditation efforts, and said that the conditions for the captive soldier's release were non-negotiable.

Abu Mujahed, a spokesman for the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC), said that "Gilad Shalit will be released only if the price the Palestinian groups are demanding is met," adding that none of the groups agreed to change any of their demands for a possible exchange deal.

Israel's attempt to link Shalit's release to the lull agreement, he added, was an attempt to "torpedo the ceasefire."


Earlier Wednesday, the National Security Cabinet announced that Shalit's release was a stipulation for both the armistice and the opening of the Gaza goods crossings. The ministers vote on the motion was unanimous.

7) Plenty of brakes but no engine
By AMNON RUBINSTEIN


As the coalition negotiations enter into their familiar despair stage, and as the public becomes more and more aware that no conceivable Israeli government will be effective or viable, it is time to dwell once more on our blighted electoral system.


Election campaign billboard showing Likud Party leader Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister and Kadima party leader Tzipi Livni in Tel Aviv.

As a matter of fact, the election results confirmed preexisting fears. Israel has lost its capacity to produce durable parliaments and functioning governments.

Some important points ought to be made:

First, during the period when the prime minister was directly elected, that system was blamed for splintering the Knesset and for reducing the size of the two big parties. Now, after having returned fully to the old parliamentary system, we realize that the decline of both parties is an ongoing process with deep roots in Israeli society.

Second, Israel has no real executive branch: it has all the trappings of a parliamentary democracy, but it has no government. Furthermore, many leaders, journalists and lawyers have forgotten the elementary rule - i.e., that it's the duty of the government to govern; that without rule, there is no rule of law. Yes, we do have checks and balances - legal advisors galore, commissions of inquiry, comptrollers, petitions to the high-court, a watchful press - but we have nothing to check and counterbalance. Plenty of brakes and no engine. The test is simple - can any conceivable government carry out its decisions? Can any government fulfill the Israeli undertaking to evacuate unlawful settlements? Could any Israeli government carry out any national project such as the canal (which transports Kinneret water to the Negev)? The answer is a resounding "No."

Third, if the system is not altered, we can expect more of the same: The true rulers of the Knesset will not be the parties representing the majority, but the small swing parties without whom there is no coalition.

AND THERE is another conclusion: We live in two entirely different worlds - that of the media and academe, and that of polling booths. The first world is ruled almost exclusively by the Left, and in it the Right is hardly audible. Here Meretz is queen; in the social sciences, Zionism has become a semi-clandestine underground. In the second world, that of the polling booth, the situation is reversed. Actually an inverse relationship exists between the two worlds: The louder and shriller the voices of the media and academe, the stronger the Right becomes on election day.

Meretz - a party to which I belonged for many years - paid the price for deluding itself that if it was popular with the first world, all was well. This is the honey-trap into which many an Israeli politician falls: They mistake the optical illusion of the radical Left's power in the academe and media for popular support.

WHAT IS TO be done? The only practical way out is for all middle-sized parties - Likud, Kadima, Israel Beiteinu and Labor - to join hands and agree on an electoral reform that would save Israel from a series of dead-end governments reminiscent of the French Third Republic on the eve of World War II. The leaders of these parties must realize that it is the function of any democracy to arrive at a compromise between representation and effectiveness and that Israel's unique, purely proportional system achieves neither.

My proposition for reform would include:

1) raising the election threshold from 2 to 4 percent, the minimal norm in most parliamentary democracies;

2) the leader of the party with the plurality vote being automatically nominated prime minister - with, of course, the possibility of being replaced by a Knesset majority;

3) introducing multiple-member constituencies in which a certain percentage of Knesset members would be elected (e.g., a third of Knesset members in four-member constituencies), thus establishing both personal accountability and encouraging small parties to unite or merge into bigger parties if they want to be elected in constituencies;

4) avoiding the primary system, which has given undue power to radical party activists, and replacing it with the Dutch system of allowing voters to erase the names of candidates, thus giving them a direct say in the composition of their party list.

These are not dramatic changes, but in the opinion of this writer, they will dramatically change the future of Israeli politics. Unless we put an end to our present system, it will put an end to Israel's democracy.


8) Stimulus Fight Helps Bring Real Obama Into Focus
By Cathy Young

February is the cruelest month - at least for Barack Obama. After the very real sense of hope and renewal that surrounded Obama's inauguration, shared even by many who did not vote for him, came the morning after. First, another scandal over unpaid taxes took down Health and Human Services nominee Tom Daschle. Then came the acrimonious battle over the stimulus bill, with a victory that may or may not turn out to be a Pyrrhic one.

In some corners of the right where Obama Derangement Syndrome has been as fierce as the similar Bush-related malady on the left, these new developments have been viewed as justifying the worst of fears about Obama: a phony and a commie. In recent days, far-right websites have psychoanalyzed Obama's alleged hatred of America and free enterprise and suggested that he may be (I kid you not) a well-groomed Soviet plant. In fact, so far, Obama's policies are those of a mainstream liberal-to-centrist Democrat. He is no dangerous radical and no idealistic bringer of change. And, while he is a gifted and usually smooth communicator, he is neither a messiah who can lead us into a glorious future nor a pied piper who can lure us to perdition with seductive words.

Obama banked a great deal of his credibility on the stimulus package, and his appeals managed to improve public opinion of the legislation during the Congressional wrangling. Yet a Rasmussen poll of likely voters conducted on February 14-15 found that only 38% thought the bill would help the economy, and 29% thought it would hurt. Albeit by a small margin (35% to 32%), Americans said that they would be less, rather than more, likely to vote for a member of Congress who supported the bill.

Touted as a plan to create jobs and stimulate consumer spending by pumping more money into the economy, the initial bill turned out to be a cornucopia of pet Democratic causes with little relation to jobs or consumer spending. While some of the provisions, such as grants for contraception and for programs under the Violence Against Women Act (funds that do more for feminist activists than for actual victims), were later cut from the bill, other dubious items remained. Extra billions for Head Start, community-oriented policing, and "green" renovations at military bases and federal buildings may or may not be a good idea, but rushing them through Congress under the pretext of averting economic catastrophe smacks of political opportunism rather than true leadership.

It's hard to argue that this represents some unprecedented leap toward socialism, more so than Bush-era government expansion or the bank bailout. But, while Obama may not be a hater of free enterprise, his instinct is clearly to assume that government knows best. To him, the view that low taxes are a prime engine of economic growth is one of the "tired old theories" that have "led us into this mess." Of course, plenty of economists would question that analysis. But, like most people left and right, Obama assumes that the current crisis vindicates his own ideas and discredits opposing ones. (If you're a liberal, the crisis happened because the government didn't do enough to regulate markets; if you're an economic conservative, it happened because the government did too much.)

In his inaugural address, Obama declared that the question today "is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works." Interestingly, political commentator Jacob Weisberg, himself a liberal, has criticized this statement as an indication that Obama has no clear philosophy of what the proper functions and limits of government should be - and "whatever works" is a poor substitute. One might add whether a government program "works" is often hard to measure. Something that seems to "work" short -term may cause unintended consequences and unforeseen costs later, by creating a dependency on ever-expanding government services or by encouraging harmful social trends.

The grab-bag stimulus bill reflects this vague pseudo-pragmatism. Will it find public support? Not likely. In the wake of the economic crisis, some pundits have been proclaiming that, to quote the cover of Newsweek, "we are all socialists now." Apparently, not all, and perhaps not even most. According to Rasmussen polls, 48% of Americans say that more government spending is bad for the economy and only 35% believe it is good for the economy. Obama remains personally popular, getting particularly high marks on leadership quality and persuasiveness; but the substance may lag behind the image.

The silver lining of this month's troubles in Washington, DC is that Obamania seems to have passed. The stimulus bill has cooled pro-Obama conservatives and libertarians who hoped Obama would be a "market liberal." There is also growing discontent among Obama supporters on the left, unhappy with the sacrifice of "progressive" programs. Across the political spectrum, Obama has been assailed for everything from intransigence to panic-mongering excessive eagerness to compromise to lack of political maturity - and much of that criticism has come from people who supported him over John McCain, from liberal Paul Krugman to moderate conservative Kathleen Parker.

"Change we can believe in" is quickly turning out to be business as usual - the messy, day-to-day business of governing, debate, and compromise. It's not the end of our economic woes or our social discord. It is also not the end of the republic.

8a) Obama's Governing Style
By Tony Blankley

In the Middle Ages, when a young prince suddenly and prematurely became king, the royal court, the church leadership and other senior aristocrats would scrutinize his every word and habit for signs of what kind of mind would be deciding their country's fate and their personal prosperity and safety. Today, around the world, President Barack Obama's every word, every action, every inaction is being likewise scrutinized for similar reasons.

Prior to the November election, the only evidence we had of Mr. Obama's managing style -- and that evidence was indirect -- was the management of his campaign, which was brilliant. But whether he was its active manager or merely took guidance from a shrewd Svengali remains to be known.

Since the election, we have begun to get hints of his management style in four items Mr. Obama himself has described as of the highest priority to him -- and thus, one presumes, items to which he would have given his personal attention: Cabinet selection, closing Gitmo, the stimulus package and bipartisanship.

Regarding the Cabinet selection, he famously said he "screwed up." But from a management perspective, the unanswered question is: How did he "screw up"? Did he actively design the failed vetting process and actively assess the various negative pieces of information and fail to see their significance? Or did he "screw up" by letting others design the failed system and assess the data inflow? The former would show poor substantive judgment. The latter would show he wasn't paying sufficient attention to a presumably vital matter. We don't know yet which kind of "screw-up" it was.

The second item, President Obama's performance at the Gitmo executive order, provided brief but revealing insight into the president's personal involvement in vital decision making. He had campaigned hard on closing Gitmo. His first public signing as president was that executive order to close it down. The central issue of Gitmo's closing was and is: What do we do with the dangerous inmates? President Bush kept it open primarily because his administration couldn't figure out an answer to that question.

Thus, it was breathtaking that at the signing ceremony, President Obama didn't know how -- or even whether -- his executive order was dealing with this central quandary.

President Obama: "And we then provide, uh, the process whereby Guantanamo will be closed, uh, no later than one year from now. We will be, uh. ... Is there a separate, uh, executive order, Greg, with respect to how we're going to dispose of the detainees? Is that, uh, written?"

White House counsel Greg Craig: "We'll set up a process."

To be at the signing ceremony and not know what he was ordering done with the terrorist inmates is a level of ignorance about equivalent to being a groom at the altar in a wedding ceremony and asking who it is you are marrying.

Once again, in the third item -- the stimulus process -- his lack of personal involvement in its design is curious. He recently said (incorrectly, I believe) that his presidency will be judged only on whether he fixes the economy or not. Thus, as he has identified the stimulus as essential to the recovery process, his willingness to let House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid design a bill that, even now that it's passed, Mr. Obama has continued to criticize as needing improvement (on bank executive compensation) leaves one puzzled as to why he didn't use his currently vast political clout with his own party allies to shape a bill more to his liking.

The final item to examine here is his repeated campaign and post-campaign commitment to bipartisanship. While he was gracious in inviting leading Republicans to the White House for a Super Bowl party, he permitted his congressional allies to completely shut out (except for the three collaborators) all Senate Republicans and all House Republicans, including their leadership and the GOP's titular leader, Sen. John McCain, in the drafting of the bill and the final conference committee.

He says he wants bipartisanship. Why would he permit his congressional allies to kill any hope of bipartisanship by their egregious conduct?

I can think of four possible explanations for this almost unprecedented presidential detachment from the decision making of policies the president publicly declared to be vital to the country and his presidency:

1) He is a very, very big-picture man, and he delegates decisions even on the central points of vital issues.

2) For tactical reasons, he decided these matters were not worth using up political chits.

3) He is either hesitant or unskilled at management, and he let matters drift until it seemed too late to intervene personally.

4) Or his personality type leaves him surprisingly uninterested in things that aren't personally about him.

Whatever the reason, this level of presidential detachment from high policy decision making is dangerous in a White House that has so many czars and other senior players (the West Wing staff is reputed to be more than 130 -- about double the usual number) combined with emissaries and strong-willed Cabinet secretaries. It may well lead to what has been called (regarding another country's government) "the immanent structurelessness to the running of the state."

9) David Axelrod, Man of the People
By Peter Wehner

In his column on Sunday, Frank Rich quotes Obama aide David Axelrod who ridicules Washington: “This town talks to itself and whips itself into a frenzy with its own theories that are completely at odds with what the rest of America is thinking.” The moral, we learn, is “not just that Washington is too insular but that the American people are a lot smarter than people in Washington think.”

A few thoughts in response. The first is that Axelrod is playing a familiar and childish game: denigrating Washington (”this town”) even though he spent an astonishing amount of his time and energy in order to arrive here. And while he’s here Axelrod will, I imagine, participate in, and thoroughly enjoy, all the insular things he pretends to detest — from the black tie dinners to the cocktail parties to the unnamed leaks to repeating administration talking points on Sunday morning television programs to adding his voice to the echo chamber.

Second, Obama and Axelrod are coming to us courtesy of Chicago, where politics is more corrupt than in Washington. And the notion that living in Hyde Park puts one profoundly in touch with the everyday life of a Christian school teacher and his stay-at-home wife and mother of five living in Omaha, Nebraska is not terribly convincing. The only thing more laughable is that a former New York Times drama critic pretends he has the pulse of the people.

Third, the way Axelrod will understand what is on the mind of the public is by poring over elaborate public opinion surveys and focus groups which will be conducted by any number of Obama allies. That, more than Potemkin Town Hall visits, will be what Team Obama will rely on.

Fourth, Axelrod is playing up a theme almost as old as politics itself: Washington, D.C. is somehow out of touch with “what the rest of America is thinking.” I have news for Axelrod: America is comprised of residents of the upper West Side of Manhattan and Salt Lake City, Utah; Cambridge and Coeur d’Alene, Idaho; San Francisco and Oklahoma City; Portland, Oregon and Mt. Joy, Pennsylvania. The “rest of America” is in fact enormously diverse, politically and culturally.

Beyond that, arguably Washington is too much in touch with what the rest of America is thinking. Politicians in Washington are like seismographs; they monitor the shifting moods and opinions of the public to a degree that borders on the obsessive and that is often harmful. Members of Congress reflect the views of their constituents to an astonishing degree. Political figures (like Obama) often fail to take difficult but necessary acts precisely because they realize that they might encounter strong resistance from the public. That’s why profiles in courage are rare rather than commonplace.

It’s also worth pointing out that vox populi is not vox Dei. The public, for example, strongly opposed the so-called surge; it turned out to be the right thing to do. Strong public opposition to even minor changes in entitlement programs have kept necessary reforms from being made. When Ronald Reagan was doing the hard work of wringing “stagflation” out of the economy, his approval ratings sunk to the mid-30s and Republicans suffered significant mid-term losses in 1982. When Truman left the presidency, he was widely despised. And of course Abraham Lincoln reached political prominence by his opposition to the doctrine of “popular sovereignty” championed by Stephen Douglas. The founders themselves, especially Madison, argued against direct democracy precisely because they did not want public officials to be swayed by the momentary passions of the public. The Senate was designed to insulate its Members from the fleeting opinions of the polity.

Having said all that, the public does, by in large, get things right. Our system of government — “of the people, by the people, for the people” — assumes a level of good judgment in the citizenry that has been vindicated time and again. Democracy remains the best system of government ever devised, and liberty speaks to a deep human longing.

What is tiresome is the game Axelrod is engaging in. He ridicules a city he longs to be a part of. He pretends to stand outside of a political culture he and others like him have helped to shape. He speaks about the public not in the mature way of the founders — men are not angels, public passions can be dangerous and need to have time to cool, self-government is a hard but noble enterprise, public service is admirable work and comprised of many admirable (as well as less than admirable) people — but in the way a political operative does: programmed, unoriginal, superficially complimentary but ultimately condescending.

I guess I’m betting the “rest of America” is smarter than David Axelrod thinks they are, and will soon see through this wearing act.

10) Hillary's State
By Michael Crowley

Huge expectations, big egos, turf wars: Is Clinton's State Department just like her campaign?


The seventh floor of the U.S. State Department is a generally dreary place. Its employees roam hallways so long and confusing that they are color-coded for guidance. Fluorescent lights throw down a harsh hospital glare. But, to most State employees, the "real" seventh floor is a secure area, protected by armed guards and doors that require electronic keys, where the department's top staffers, including the secretary herself, spend their days. There, Hillary Clinton works from a gently lit, wood-paneled office adorned with portraits of her predecessors.

Another nearby office will be nearly as important: that of her soon-to-be chief of staff, Cheryl Mills. A dogged former White House lawyer and close Hillary confidante, Mills proved her fealty to the Clintons with a fiery 1999 House floor speech during Bill Clinton's impeachment trial in which she hailed the president's compassion for African Americans like herself. In the late months of Hillary's 2008 bid for the White House, Mills quietly emerged as de facto campaign manager. "Cheryl is extraordinarily loyal to both Clintons," says a former campaign aide. She also has little time for anyone she thinks isn't serving the Clintons well. "She has a very direct personality," says the aide.

What she doesn't have is foreign policy experience--a reminder of how alien Hillary's hard-edged political machine is to the diplomatic realm of the State Department. That has some career State-watchers bracing for a culture clash, especially given that Mills is just one of several key members of Hillary's inner circle, or "Hillaryland," making the transition to Foggy Bottom. They include her longtime personal aide, Huma Abedin (now described as a "senior adviser"); her Senate press secretary, Philippe Reines; longtime speechwriter Lissa Muscatine; foreign policy adviser Andrew Shapiro; and scheduler Lona Valmoro. Even Hillary's close friend Maggie Williams, who joined her struggling presidential campaign in January of last year as a senior aide, has been vetting job applicants in recent weeks. To some, this influx echoes the Hindenburg disaster of Hillary's run for president, with its clashing egos, awful management, and endless tawdry leaks. "Given the way the campaign wound up, I think the question mark hanging over her head is whether the department will fall prey to the kinds of feuds and organizational paralysis that plagued the campaign," says the former campaign aide.

Considering the outsized personalities who have already joined Obama's diplomatic corps, this fear seems well-grounded. But Hillary has another, often-forgotten modus operandi on which she can fall back--that of her audacious 2000 run for Senate and her subsequent tenure on Capitol Hill, where her hard work and collegiality won near-unanimous accolades and endeared her to a skeptical institution. The question--not only for Hillary's legacy but for U.S. foreign policy--is which of these models she will bring to the seventh floor.


In theory, the secretary of state is a commanding figure uniquely situated to shape world events. The dynamic of the job, however, is often less like a Kissingerian chessboard and more like a game of Whack-a-Mole, in which the department struggles just to manage the crises of the day. Hillary Clinton lacks the lengthy foreign policy resume of secretaries like Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, and Madeleine Albright--who spent their pre-State Department lives focused on world affairs--but, like each of them, she is clearly lured by the possibility of proactively shaping U.S. foreign policy rather than frantically rushing from continent to continent wielding a diplomatic fire extinguisher.

That's why, well before she was sworn in, Hillary arranged to effectively outsource the immediate work on hotspots like the Middle East and Central Asia. In unpublished portions of a recent interview with The New York Times, released in full by the State Department, Clinton recounted telling Obama in "the very first conversation that I can recall" about the State Department job that she wanted to get "immediately moving on someone for the Middle East and someone for Afghanistan and Pakistan." That ultimately resulted in last month's appointments of George Mitchell and Richard Holbrooke as special envoys to those regions. The Obama-Clinton team is also expected to designate former Middle East negotiator Dennis Ross for a similar role focused on Iran.

To some extent, this move has the virtue of necessity. "The idea that she can do all this by herself" is absurd anyway, argues a former top State Department official. But subcontracting the hotspots is about more than lightening Clinton's workload. It also enables Hillary to pick issues of her own, ones where she can take the initiative rather than constantly react to, say, the latest Taliban offensive or rocket attack from Gaza. "You don't want the secretary to have to get down and do the nitty-gritty, get bogged down in the details," says Jim Steinberg, Clinton's State Department deputy. This way, "she doesn't become such a prisoner of the crisis of the moment that she can't advance a long-term agenda." Steinberg said he had just emerged from a meeting with Clinton precisely along these lines. Outsiders agree that Hillary will be looking for a grand mission. "She needs to find a signature," argues one former senior State official from her husband's administration. "What this does is free Secretary Clinton up to deal with the issues that we have completely neglected," adds Nina Hachigian, a former aide on Bill Clinton's National Security Council now with the Center for American Progress.

Topping that list, says Hachigian, is America's relationship with Asia--which happens to be the first region Clinton chose to visit as secretary. Clinton has also complained publicly about the sway the Bush administration gave the Treasury Department to negotiate with China and Japan over currency and trade issues, and wants to reassert State's primacy. And she is certainly familiar with China. The foreign policy highlight of her White House years was a defiant 1995 speech on women's rights she delivered at an international conference in Beijing that targeted, among other things, the Chinese practice of killing baby girls.

Meanwhile, Steinberg, a Harvard and Yale Law School graduate who served as her husband's deputy national security adviser, worked extensively on U.S.-China relations during the Clinton presidency (and even has two adopted daughters from China). Her new assistant secretary for East Asia and Pacific affairs is expected to be Democratic foreign policy heavyweight Kurt Campbell, whose long resume underscores the post's importance, and who recently co-authored a book with Steinberg. And the head of the department's Office of Policy Planning--a kind of in-house think tank designed for the long view--is Princeton professor Anne-Marie Slaughter, who spent a year's sabbatical based in Shanghai and touring through Asia. Last May, Slaughter told Newsweek that "the biggest overall challenge [facing the United States] is managing the rise of Asia."


Hillary's big-think could extend beyond the regional to the global. Strobe Talbott, a longtime Clinton friend and former number-two at State, predicts an unprecedented focus on development programs. One of Hillary's pet causes as First Lady, after all, was pushing so-called "micro-loans" for Third World entrepreneurs. "Think of her slogan for the world being a variation on It Takes a Village," Talbott says. "Every time she says 'diplomacy,' she says 'and development.'" Talbott says Hillary is likely to elevate the oft-neglected posts of undersecretary for democracy and global affairs and undersecretary for economic affairs (which will be filled by economist Lael Brainard--who, illustrating the incestuous world of foreign policy mandarins, is Campbell's wife). "She has given a lot of thought to those two in particular," Talbott says, adding that Clinton will push for a new State focus on "sustainable development, global public health, the environment, and empowerment of women," a far cry from crisis management.


Subcontracting crises to focus on long-term strategy has considerable appeal. But it also brings real risks. The number of outsized personalities within the State Department, as well as the number of strong wills outside it with whom she will have to coordinate, will require Hillary to be a diplomat among the diplomats.

Already, there has been internal friction. Clinton's team ruffled feathers last month when it evicted the department's senior Foreign Service officer and number-three official, Bill Burns, from his offices to make room for Hillary's deputy secretary for management, Jack Lew. (Burns was moved down the seventh-floor hallway, farther from Clinton's door, according to a Foreign Policy magazine blog.) Then there was the shabby treatment of retired Marine General Anthony Zinni, who says he was promised the post of U.S. ambassador to Iraq, only to discover that the job would instead go to Christopher Hill, the Bush administration's lead North Korea negotiator. The Foreign Service, meanwhile, saw the Mitchell and Holbrooke appointments as a slight--a suggestion that career diplomats are not up to the job. "The message she wants to send is that diplomacy's back," says one former top Clinton administration foreign policy hand. "But the message that's received is, 'We're not good enough to do the hard stuff.'"

Hillary doesn't need additional adversaries. She is already said to resent Susan Rice, a top Obama campaign foreign policy adviser who is now ambassador to the United Nations. Rice was among the first ex-Clintonites to support Obama, she harshly criticized Hillary's Iraq war vote, and she accused her of "manipulat[ing] the truth" during the campaign. Obama has elevated the U.N. ambassador post to cabinet rank, creating another power center in a team already awash with them. And, while some interpreted Rice's job as a kind of exile to New York, she still has deep roots in Washington, where her children are in school and her husband, Ian Cameron, is executive producer of ABC's "This Week." "That's ripe for conflict" with Clinton, warns a former Bush State Department official.

The role of Dennis Ross could also cause tension. During the early primaries, Ross straddled the fence between Clinton and Obama. But he quickly emerged as a top Obama adviser last summer, suggesting to some Clintonites that he'd been less neutral than he appeared. As a result, Ross felt that "he wouldn't really be welcome in Hillaryland," says one source familiar with the situation. After the election, Ross and James Jones, Obama's pick to run the National Security Council, initially discussed a White House job coordinating all U.S. policy from the Middle East to South Asia. According to this version of events, supported by a second source with close State Department contacts, Clinton balked at seeing Ross with so much authority over her department's work and brought him to State. With other envoys assigned to the Middle East and Afghanistan-Pakistan, Ross will now focus on Iran, but, given the deep connection between Iran and Israel policy, it's unclear how he will coordinate with Mitchell. From another direction, meanwhile, Holbrooke is now considering a diplomatic approach to Iran to deal with neighboring Afghanistan's opium problem. "How do those Venn diagrams overlap?" wonders one close observer of Middle East politics.

The hard-charging Holbrooke remains the biggest question mark. Asked how Holbrooke managed to bargain the bullying Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic into a Balkan peace deal, Bill Clinton once replied: "Because he has the same character as Milosevic." Holbrooke has longed to be secretary of state for decades, and probably would have achieved his dream if Al Gore, John Kerry, or Hillary herself had been elected president. Thus, it's not hard to imagine him second-guessing Hillary, his student for many years. As Clinton herself told The New York Times last week: "Occasionally he has to be, you know, brought down to earth and reined in."

Holbrooke's assertiveness risks other potential clashes. He has never worked closely, for instance, with General David Petraeus, who now oversees the U.S. military operation in Afghanistan. The two egos were on display at a panel during last weekend's Munich security conference, where Petraeus cracked wise about his new partnership: "You know, it's every commander's dream to have an ambassadorial wingman who is described by journalists with nicknames like 'The Bulldozer.'" Then there's Vice President Joe Biden. The two men, while outwardly friendly, have been rivals for years. "Neither would mind if the other disappeared," says a person who has worked closely with one of them. Finally, there is Holbrooke's uncertain relationship with Obama himself. For much of the 2008 campaign Holbrooke was a bete noire in the Obama camp--a foe of Obama's top campaign foreign policy adviser, Anthony Lake, and a symbol to many of the ill-advised enthusiasm of Washington Democrats for the Iraq invasion. It was only in late summer that Holbrooke, through what one associate calls "a lot of lobbying," was accepted into the fold. Asked about the state of Holbrooke's relationship with the president, his friend Les Gelb says only, "I think it's coming."


When Hillary was unable to manage conflicting egos and power centers within her campaign, the result was confusion and even embarrassment. The outcome can be similar when top bureaucrats fight. "Stovepiping" among rivals can lead to incomplete or bad information and reveal to foreign capitals that the United States is not speaking with one voice. You don't want, to take a hypothetical example, Petraeus sending signals of support for Afghan President Hamid Karzai while Holbrooke is signaling that Karzai must go. One source recalls how a lack of coordination within Bill Clinton's Middle East team during the 2000 Camp David accords meant that other Arab leaders had not been briefed properly when Clinton needed to call them with urgent requests to help Yasir Arafat accept a peace deal. "Stovepiping is a historical curse of the place," says Strobe Talbott, who is optimistic that Hillary can "exorcise that curse" from State.


Fortunately, there are signs that Hillary is paying better attention to management principles than she did when running for president. Much as after her arrival in the Senate, she has been working hard to familiarize herself with the culture of her new institutional home. "She has been systematically calling people who have direct, and relatively recent, experience in the place and really drilling down on all kinds of questions--including how to make sure that various parts of the department are integrated," says one person with firsthand knowledge of that process. Since taking the job, Clinton has met or spoken with every living secretary of state. One advantage is her very close friendship with former secretary of state Madeleine Albright, who has schooled Hillary in Foggy Bottom's machinations since the late 1990s, and who has recently been counseling her on the department's mores.

Hillary's choice of Steinberg, who has caused precious little controversy and made few enemies during his long career in the Democratic foreign policy establishment, is also reassuring. He is widely viewed as a hardworking and reliable honest broker. According to Hachigian, who served as his special assistant at the NSC in the late '90s, Steinberg "has just an uncanny ability to strike at the heart of a national security issue--but also to understand all the politics that go into it--how the media is going to respond, Congress and the partisan politics of the Hill, bureaucratic infighting."

Indeed, Steinberg comes well-armed to challenges posed by rivalries within a foreign policy team. In January, he and Kurt Campbell published a book, Difficult Transitions: Foreign Policy Troubles at the Outset of Presidential Power, which warns against a reliance on "all-stars"--high-profile figures with no inherent loyalty to the president. "[T]heir lack of a previous working relationship with the candidate and an unknown level of commitment to the president-elect's programs means that the decision to appoint them is something of a gamble," they write. "At best, they have been marginalized or ignored in the decision-making process"--Colin Powell is cited here--and "at worst they have caused significant disruption as a result of being seen as not team players (Alexander Haig, Donald Rumsfeld)." Under Steinberg's definition, Hillary would certainly qualify as a potentially disruptive "all-star." One hopes that his study of the question will help him to maneuver Hillary away from "significant disruption." (For the record, Steinberg calls Clinton "a fabulous choice" who brings a rare mix of communications, political, and policy chops to the job. "That trifecta of skills is very rare," he says.)

What's more, Hillary has taken the unusual step of appointing a second deputy, Jack Lew, to focus explicitly on management. Lew, a Queens native and Harvard grad, is a former Clinton White House budget director--an important qualification for a woman whose primary campaign ran out of cash in February. Lew will be charged with battling Congress to win more budget authority for the State Department and also with keeping an eye on the department's internal workings. Says one friend, "He's extraordinarily competent and even-tempered and a kind of anchoring figure--someone who, if there were some turbulence among the key players, would be able to enforce a certain amount of discipline and serenity."

Serenity may be too ambitious a goal, but one former senior Clinton administration foreign policy official jokes that Hillary's delegation of crisis hotspots will at least enable her to spend more time in the Washington loop. "Colin Powell didn't travel much, because he said every time he went out of town Cheney and Rumsfeld would launch some new policy initiative," the former official laughs. Thus, you'll typically be able to find the secretary working hard on the seventh floor. Talk to Cheryl Mills for an appointment.

11) Hillary Clinton's North Korea naivete

The secretary of State doesn't seem to grasp the scope of the threat posed by Pyongyang's nuclear program. Perhaps her trip to Asia will change that.
By John R. Bolton

Hillary Rodham Clinton prefaced her first trip abroad as secretary of State with a speech Friday sketching out various Obama administration views regarding her Asia itinerary. Her approach on the crucial issue of North Korea's nuclear weapons program embodies an overwhelming -- and unfortunate -- continuity with the Bush administration. This is not at all surprising, given the president's campaign rhetoric.

What is surprising is the sheer innocence in which the substance has been packaged, a naivete extending well beyond North Korea. The secretary's attitude is potentially more troubling than the dull repetitiveness of the policy, which invokes the importance of the six-party talks and the need to "get the negotiations back on track."


Take, for example, her repeated references to "smart power," presumably meant to distinguish the brainy Obama team from its predecessor. Like Justice Potter Stewart's definition of pornography, we are apparently meant to know smart power when we see it. Every incoming administration is entitled to a few weeks of touting its superiority, but the bumper stickers need to disappear when overseas travel begins, replaced by real policy, not slogans. Otherwise, observers would conclude that the president, and perhaps his secretary of State, are still running for office, rather than realizing they are already there.

Clinton accurately called North Korea's nuclear program "the most acute challenge to stability in northeast Asia," and she established the objective that the North "completely and verifiably eliminate" its nuclear weapons activities. This familiar formulation implicitly -- and very unfortunately -- accepts that North Korea can keep a nuclear program as long as it is "peaceful." Whatever else it may be, this deal is not "smart." Leaving Pyongyang with any nuclear capability simply invites future abuse and a recurrence of the very problem we need to "eliminate."

Equally unfortunately, Clinton made no reference to the global scope of North Korea's threat, notably in the tumultuous Middle East, where the North's contribution to nuclear and ballistic missile proliferation has long stoked regional tensions. The omission is all the more striking because Clinton also said that "we can no longer approach our foreign policy solely country by country, or simply carving the world into separate regions." She then proceeded to do just that, ignoring, among other things, North Korea's missile cooperation with Iran and its attempt to replicate its Yongbyon reactor in Syria (until the site was destroyed by Israel in September 2007).


The secretary's comments at a subsequent news teleconference only compounded the speech's lack of strategic breadth. Asked her assessment of the Agreed Framework, the Pyongyang-Washington agreement concluded during her husband's presidency, Clinton regretted that "the Bush administration completely walked away" from the agreement. She said that "information" about North Korea's uranium enrichment efforts "should have been dealt with very seriously" but "in addition to the Agreed Framework," not in place of it.

This is a breathtakingly confused position. First, North Korea's repeated violations of the Agreed Framework breached the agreement, not the Bush White House. Pyongyang cheated on the agreement's central premise -- the North's denuclearization -- and lied about it.

And adhering to U.S. commitments under the framework while the North was violating its obligations would have been a classic case of rewarding bad behavior -- exactly what the Clinton administration did wrong. Given North Korea's flagrant, ongoing violations, what possible reason could be advanced to believe that the North would honor a new agreement to forgo uranium enrichment? Moreover, by continually casting doubt on the very existence of Pyongyang's uranium enrichment program, Clinton is only reinforcing the North's determination not to allow meaningful verification of its nuclear program.

Stressing that "we have not forgotten the families of Japanese citizens abducted to North Korea," Clinton promised to meet the families "on a very personal ... human basis." Although empathy is commendable, it would have been more encouraging had the secretary emphasized the important conclusion that North Korea's state terrorism, as exemplified by these families' stories, vividly reveals the character of that criminal regime.

This is an important matter of statecraft and politics in Japan, and on which the abductees' families themselves are clear and persuasive, just as it would be here if our citizens were being kidnapped. The families appreciate empathy, but what they really want is accountability from Pyongyang.

Clinton emphasized that she was prepared for "active listening" on her trip. One hopes that she will be particularly active in listening to South Korea and Japan, where the North's repeated acts of duplicity have sunk in far more profoundly than at the State Department. Although there seems to be little reason to hope that the Obama administration will actually offer "change" on North Korea policy, perhaps Clinton will at least return from Asia sobered by the depth of the North's regional and global threat.