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Hillary a ‘Natural Diplomat’?

James at OTB: [1]

Having initially been highly skeptical of Hillary Clinton’s appointment as Secretary of State [2], partly on the basis that she had neither diplomatic experience nor a diplomatic temperament, I feel obliged to pass on this observation from Joe Klein [3] (via Andrew Sullivan [4]):

Clinton, who can be spiky, has re-emerged as a natural diplomat. When she heard that Holbrooke and General David Petraeus had never met, she invited them over to her Washington home on a Friday night before the Inauguration. The two men spent two hours in front of a roaring fire with Clinton, getting to know each other, talking about the diplomatic and military division of labor in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Clinton’s was an Obamian gesture — enticing the lion to lie down with the lion — the sort of attention to detail that seems to have been replicated across the policymaking spectrum during the Obama transition.

Me in the comments section: [5]

hillary-ugh [6]Frankly, James, my own initial reaction is that if Hillary Clinton is to be considered a natural diplomat, given all the baggage she brings with her, it does not speak well of people already in the field of diplomacy, in terms of honesty, termperment, and so on.

I would certainly expect Saint Andrew the Incontinent and Klein to both be scrambling to find warm and fuzzy things to say about her; their position as shills for the left having been long ago secured; They’re simply holding up their end. (Which in Sullivan’s case, brings up mental pictures best left alone)

But If I’m in the field of diplomacy, I think I’ve just been insulted in the worst way.

On the other hand, if the statement is true, perhaps we have now a better understanding of why diplomacy in the hands of the Democrats has been such an abysmal failure. The Middle East, and Jimmy Carter, for example… and if so, that would seem to suggest we’re in for a number of even more glorious failures at the hands of the left because of their over-dependence on ‘diplomacy’… at a time when we can least afford such.