Hydrablog

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/25/world/asia/25diplo.html
July 25, 2009
News Analysis
Asia Trip Propels Clinton Back Into Limelight
By MARK LANDLER [Obama White House] [111th congress, 1st session] [Obama’s diplomatic team, state department bureaucracy and so forth] [SecState Clinton] [after an impressive start, a broken arm (contre temps) has slowed her down and created drag where there was once movement] [use psci355] [she is the sort of person who will compete so long as she’s the boss of state; and I respect her stamina and determination] [on DPRK and a raft of bilateral and multilateral issues, not least of, nukes] [SecState Clinton is the sort who makes her own luck] [cross in individual-role] [*]
PHUKET, Thailand — At every stop during her visit to Southeast Asia this week, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton delivered the same message: “The United States is back.” She was talking about America’s role in a region where its visibility had dimmed during the Bush years, but she might as well have been talking about herself. [don’t kid yourself, she was] [it was no mistake that she used the pronoun we; she used it as the US on the one hand and she, the secretary of state, on the other hand] [*]

After being sidelined at home in recent weeks by a broken elbow, Mrs. Clinton thrust herself back into the limelight, making headlines with unexpected statements about Iran, North Korea and Myanmar — at least one of which her aides felt obliged to clarify. And she reaffirmed that overseas, at least, she is not just the nation’s chief diplomat but one of its most reliable celebrities, trailing perhaps only President Obama in star power.

In India, Mrs. Clinton was a ubiquitous presence on the three main news channels, giving interviews, sipping coffee with tycoons in Mumbai, marveling over climate-friendly buildings and dining at a New Delhi [*]restaurant where one of the menus is named after her husband, former President Bill Clinton.

In Bangkok, she bantered with two Thai journalists in a televised town hall meeting, which, like previous public events with Mrs. Clinton in Turkey, Japan and South Korea, ended up being a cross between a Council on Foreign Relations panel and an episode of “Dr. Phil.” [*] [she gets too little credit for the remarkable makeover] [she was once seen as cold fish with pure ambitions] [she’s now seen as a warm, carrying, saavy political operator with bureaucratic chops par excellence] [*]

What, the secretary of state was asked, does she talk about with her husband? “We talk about our dog, who got sick and had to go to the vet,” she said.

And what does she make of the beleaguered American economy? Mrs. Clinton invoked the name of Ben S. Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, and his recent Congressional testimony before lamenting that unemployment was still high in many parts of the country. “We’re not out of the woods,” she said, in a guarded tone. “I guess that’s the best way to say it.” [*]

Mrs. Clinton batted away suggestions that she had been marginalized. That, she said, was a canard propagated by the news media, which jumped on the fact that her recovery from the elbow injury forced her to cancel two foreign trips, including one with Mr. Obama to Russia. [I think Gates is confident enough that he doesn’t feel challenged by a strong woman as SecState and Clinton has handled that well] [remember she had so much to overcome from the campaign and she has seemingly done so effortlessly] [not meaning no effort but, rather, a substantial effort but made to seem as if little effort] [*]

“I’m not with the president on the trip and all of a sudden everybody goes, ‘Oh, where is she? She’s gone, disappeared,’ ” Mrs. Clinton said in a tone of mock horror, as the audience giggled.

Certainly, she seemed determined to continue her breakneck schedule back home. On Friday, after flying from Thailand, she scheduled a full day of meetings, including one with the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. On Sunday, Mrs. Clinton is to appear live on “Meet the Press.” And next week, she will be co-chairwoman of a high-level meeting with Chinese officials, along with Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner.

Mrs. Clinton stayed in the news, even from unlikely places like Phuket, a lush beach resort that played host this week to a meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. [I’d like going to the ASEAN meetings] [*]

She warned about nuclear links between North Korea and Myanmar. And she offered a rare glimpse into what the United States might do if Iran did not respond to its diplomatic overture. Her comments about the possibility of extending a “defense umbrella” over the Middle East ricocheted around foreign-policy circles.

Mrs. Clinton’s aides did their best to convince reporters traveling with her that she was not signaling any change in administration policy. But when a secretary of state muses publicly about one of the world’s most sensitive diplomatic problems, the story quickly takes on a life of its own. [she must be terribly careful not to bigfoot the president even if she were a man and she handles

In India, Mrs. Clinton encountered a different problem: a savvy environment minister, Jairam Ramesh, who seized on a visit by her to a “green building” outside New Delhi to repeat India’s rejection of American demands that it accept binding cuts in its greenhouse gas emissions.

Fortunately for her, most of the audiences seemed to care less about greenhouse gases and security umbrellas than about hearing dish from her about her life, her ambitions and, particularly, her relationship with Mr. Obama.

On the inevitable question of how she felt working for the man she had fought in the primary campaign, she said, “The president is the president; I tried to be the president and was not successful.”

Nor did she bite at questions about whether she would ever run for the White House again. “That’s not anything I’m at all thinking about,” she said. Mrs. Clinton did offer some morsels about Mr. Obama’s courtship of her to be the secretary. She said she resisted his initial job offer and gave him names of people she thought would be suitable candidates. Mr. Obama told her he needed her, however, and his persistence wore her down.

“He gave me an enormous amount of authority as secretary of state, and really everything I asked for so that I could the job that he wanted me to do,,” she said, “and I was running out of excuses.”
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company