The media’s good old boys seem to be getting over Hillary Clinton’s success as our top diplomat as more of them have grudgingly begun to acknowledge the warm reception she receives – including standing ovations - wherever she travels and the progress she’s making in restoring America’s relationships with other nations around the globe.
Nevertheless, news writers and pundits have to find something to quibble about and in this morning’s Boston Globe, Glenn Kessler thinks it’s newsworthy the secretary of state occasionally changes her tone depending on where she happens to be at the time – you’d think that would be an early lesson in Diplomacy 101.
Still, Kessler leads off with kudos to Clinton for her celebrity status (emphasis mine):
ANKARA, Turkey - When Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton meets with foreign officials, the initial welcome is formal, as in "greetings, madame secretary." But invariably, the officials slip into calling her "Hillary" - a global brand name on par with "Diana" or "Tiger."
Clinton's celebrity status - and her skill at exploiting it - were again apparent during her first visit as secretary to the Middle East and Europe this past week.
At a private dinner with European foreign ministers in Brussels on Wednesday, she was the center of attention, patiently answering questions from her counterparts - who took the unusual step of bursting into applause after the meal.
When she spoke to hundreds of young political activists at the European Parliament on Friday, Hans-Gert Poettering, the president of the parliament, gushed that there is "enormous goodwill toward you" in Europe. He later paid her what he probably considered the ultimate compliment - that her answers "mostly could have been said by Europeans."
Here’s where Kessler interjects his astute observation concerning Secretary Clinton’s change in tone:
But compared with her visit to Asia last month, this trip displayed a different side of America's top diplomat.
In Asia, Clinton generated headlines with frank remarks, such as when she questioned the efficacy of sanctions against the repressive junta in Burma, spoke openly about a possible succession crisis in North Korea, and said she expected to make little progress on human rights in China.
This past week, she was more cautious, especially in the Middle East. She was often careful to hew to talking points, and her answers to reporters' questions were often vague. She also was less available for sustained give-and-take with the reporters traveling with her. Not counting short news conferences, she conducted one briefing for reporters on her plane in seven days of travel.
That might have had something to do with the tensions in the Middle-East, Glenn. But let’s give our intrepid reporter credit; he at least noticed the secretary was preoccupied with – with - with diplomacy:
But, in contrast to the "listening tour" of Asia, Clinton was much more diplomatically active. Throughout the week, she tried to reach out to nations, especially adversaries, that the Bush administration had spurned.
She dispatched two senior US diplomats to meet with top Syrian officials on Saturday; she extended an invitation to Iran to be part of an international gathering on Afghanistan; and she tried to "reset" relations with Russia by winning NATO approval to restore high-level meetings and by having dinner with her Russian counterpart.
Kessler even noticed our star diplomat made progress:
By week's end, Clinton could claim progress, at least in terms of process. In Syria, Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem and other officials met for about four hours with Acting Assistant Secretary of State Jeffrey Feltman and White House official Dan Shapiro.
At a news conference Saturday in Ankara, where she held talks with Turkish officials, Clinton said it was too soon to say whether the United States would send an ambassador to Syria for the first time since 2005. But she emphasized that the administration will press for peace talks between Israel and Syria.
On Saturday, Iran responded positively to Clinton's plans to invite it to the conference on Afghanistan, an overture that could bring the secretary face to face with her Iranian counterpart by the end of the month.
And get this:
The dinner meeting in Geneva on Friday with the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, yielded no breakthroughs on arms control, missile defense, or other thorny issues. But the atmospherics were strikingly different than Lavrov's often-stormy sessions with Clinton's predecessor, Condoleezza Rice.
No comments:
Post a Comment