My Exchange With Secretary of State Hillary Clinton

I must apologize for not posting to this blog for an unwarranted amount of time. Some other things, family, work and teaching concerns took over my life, a trip to California and now an upcoming trip to Brazil, but I thought I could make up for it by posting the following exchange I had yesterday with Hillary Clinton at the State Department. The setting was a town hall meeting she held with foreign service retirees, an annual meeting, but her first as Secretary.

For a full transcript and full video of her remarks and other Qs and As, go to:

http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2009a/05/122534.htm

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QUESTION: Good morning, Mrs. Clinton. I’m Dan Strasser and had the pleasure of meeting you over a decade ago when I was the executive director at Val-Kill and you were the First Lady. And I want to thank you for all the work you did to promote Mrs. Roosevelt’s legacy in our work then, and I’m sure she’s smiling down on you right now wishing you all the best and very proud of what you’ve accomplished even in the short time you’re here.

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My question – I should mention right now I work for General Mattis at Joint Forces Command and still actively engaged in the issues that this Department is involved in as well. My question actually is this, or proposal – many years ago when the last Clinton Secretary of State, Warren Christopher, first came to the Department, he had a big town hall meeting like this for the staff, which was very good. And I asked a question then. I said, “Mr. Christopher, we just finished the Cold War and we know that a great diplomat came up with a concept to how to deal with the Cold War, and that was containment.”

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And I asked him, “Do you have a concept to deal with the post-Cold War period that we’ve now entered?” And being the lawyer that he is, he basically said, “Well, no, we’ve got to deal with each problem one at a time.” I was never really satisfied with that answer. And listening to the various things that you are doing and also Deputy Secretary Burns – Under Secretary Burns’ list of things, I wonder if you feel that you have an umbrella over – an umbrella concept, an overarching concept in which to contain what it is that this Administration and you are trying to do to deal with what I call the problems of galloping globalization in the world. And I do hope that you might have one.

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SECRETARY CLINTON: (Laughter.)

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QUESTION: May I – I know you’ve talked about the three --

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SECRETARY CLINTON: Do you have any ideas?

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QUESTION: Yes.

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SECRETARY CLINTON: Good. (Laughter.)

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QUESTION: I nominate the concept of global governance, which I know that Anne-Marie Slaughter knows a lot about, and which was proposed back in the late ‘90s when you were in the White House by the UN Commissioner on Global Governance. I believe it still has a lot of very good proposals that probably need to be updated, but recommend to you, considering global governance, as that concept for this Administration. Thank you.

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SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, I can just imagine what Lou Dobbs will say about that. (Laughter.)

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QUESTION: You know what? Who cares about Lou Dobbs? (Laughter.)

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SECRETARY CLINTON: I agree with that. (Laughter.) We – you mentioned Anne-Marie Slaughter, who some of you may not know is our policy and planning director, first woman to have that job, former dean of the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton. And we’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this. I mean, we don’t want to get hung up on coming up with a word. But we do have a pretty clear idea of the kind of approach that we’re taking. But I think she would be very disappointed if I were to preview any of it right now, so give me a little – give me a few weeks, okay?

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QUESTION: Okay. Well, I’m going to try to talk to her --

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SECRETARY CLINTON: Talk to her, (inaudible).

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QUESTION: -- as well.

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SECRETARY CLINTON: Good.

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QUESTION: Thank you very much.

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SECRETARY CLINTON: Go lobby her,
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QUESTION: Yeah. (Laughter.)

SECRETARY CLINTON: Yes.