It appears that the process of rolling out Barack Obama’s foreign policy team is being delayed by one woman:
CHICAGO — Over here at the Midwest branch of the White House, the game of musical chairs has shifted into high gear.
Just under a week after news broke that President-elect Barack Obama met with Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to discuss naming her the Secretary of State, Mr. Obama’s aides announced that the job of White House counsel was going to Gregory B. Craig, Mr. Obama’s longtime foreign policy adviser.
Now, wasn’t Mr. Craig supposed to be getting one of the foreign policy jobs, like deputy secretary of state or national security adviser? After all, he’s been meeting with officials in the various embassies in Washington for months, getting advice on how a President Obama might handle everything from Iran’s nuclear ambitions to Middle East peace negotiations to the worsening situation on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.
The official word out of the Obama camp was that Mr. Craig, who represented Bill Clinton during the House impeachment trial, was always viewed as a natural for White House counsel, a job that would take advantage of his years as a Washington powerhouse lawyer.
But several Obama advisers acknowledged privately that Mr. Craig couldn’t take a foreign policy job if Mrs. Clinton ended up at State — too much animosity and bad history there.
In fact, all of the foreign policy jobs in the administration have been held up because of the uncertainty over the appointment of Mrs. Clinton. Once that’s cleared up, Democratic aides said, the rest of the national security team will follow.
So, once again, everyone’s waiting on Hillary and focusing their attention on her.
Which may be exactly what she wants.
