DAVIS: Obama-Clinton: A great team of rivals

• Article
• Comments ()
• Click-2-Listen
• Videos

By Lanny Davis

OPINION/ANALYSIS:

The positive media and bipartisan praise of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's leadership at the State Department -- she is called a "superstar" by the top Republican on the House panel that oversees State and has an approval rating of 80 percent -- misses an important point: This is not about Mrs. Clinton alone. This is about powerful synergy between President Obama and Mrs. Clinton.

Together, with complementary views and approaches to foreign policy, they have already created a serious change in American foreign policy as compared with the Bush administration. And they almost certainly constitute the most powerful and effective POTUS-Secretary of State combination since Abraham Lincoln and William H. Seward.

With some danger of oversimplification, it is possible to divide American history before the Obama administration into two distinctive approaches to the outside world: the first in the late 18th and 19th century, the second in most of the 20th century up to George Bush, although the seeds of the third Obama-Clinton approach began in the 1990s under President Clinton.

For the first 112 years, from George Washington in 1788 to William McKinley in 1900, American foreign policy was essentially non-interventionist and even isolationist.

Then, beginning with Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson in the early 20th century, came a new moralistic, interventionist attitude - preaching the superiority of American democracy and values - and then virtually a straight line (except for the Clinton years) through World Wars I and II, the United Nations, the Cold War, the War in Vietnam, all the way through the "war of choice" in Iraq.

And now a "third way" is presented by the Obama-Clinton combination in the post-Bush era.

Of course, there are still important continuities, too: a commitment to a strong military; protection of U.S. security from the threats of terrorism; military intervention where necessary, such as in Afghanistan to defeat al Qaeda and the Taliban; and a clear American commitment to democratic values and human rights.

But the Obama-Clinton approach is fundamentally different from that of the Bush years and most prior administrations in at least two ways.

First, both Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton truly believe in discussion and engagement with foreign government leaders - friends and foes - and greater reliance on what Mrs. Clinton has described as "smart power" - less reliance on military force, but more reliance on diplomacy, international economic development (not just "foreign aid"), and, most importantly, listening more than preaching.