The Hillary Nutcracker: Rewind

This morning, dear friend, Hillary Clinton loyalist, and fervent reader PCFS sent me the NYT Magazine article, Hillary Clinton’s Last Tour as a Rock-Star Diplomat,  released today,  along with a comment about how sad she feels that Hillary Clinton's tenure at the State Department is winding down.  Certainly this prospect saddens her followers here who like to keep up with her work, but I believe I am not alone in my ambivalence.  While I love following her, I also sometimes notice the toll it takes (pictures I refuse to post - sometimes refuse even to collect) and wish for her the R and R she so richly deserves  and has more than earned in these years of service from the White House through the Senate to the State Department.   Other times I feel a certain frustration with some foreign policies that I wish she did not have to implement (or lack of real policy when I know she would have a clear one).  At those times I feel she cannot get away from Foggy Bottom fast enough.

The infernal fact of life is that no human can sustain indefinitely the pace at which Hillary Clinton has carried out her tasks, and next to nothing will jar her from her post earlier than she has  said she would leave. No one knows who will replace her. (The truth is that HRC is irreplaceable.)

I rarely - very rarely - use secondary sources in announcing her planned travel.  Perhaps I have done that three times over the lifetime of this blog, but when I saw this headline  I was stricken with a moment of gratefulness.  Dr. Morsi is going to be a very tough nut for American diplomacy to crack, the fact that his children are American notwithstanding.  Thank God, I thought, that Hillary Clinton is still Secretary of State.  Thank God it's Hillary.  I cannot think of anyone else who has a chance of winning him over to our way of seeing things.

Clinton will be first foreign official to visit President-elect Morsi

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to visit Egypt's President-elect Mohamed Morsi to discuss Camp David and rights of Christian minority among other matters, say sources

Ahram Online , Wednesday 27 Jun 2012

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will be the first foreign official to visit Egypt's President-elect Mohamed Morsi, sources at Cairo International Airport told the Al-Ahram Arabic language news website Wednesday.

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She has managed to befriend Lavrov.   In the beginning, many thought that would be impossible, but they teamed up and got the New START treaty done.  Dr. Morsi reminds me, in some ways, of Israel's Avigdor Lieberman - her counterpart - with whom she has met,  as SOS, many fewer times than with Peres, Netanyahu, and Barak and who appears impermeable to her personal qualities.  I wonder how she will succeed with Morsi.  Better than Obama did with Putin, I hope.  I am having second thoughts, as a result, on my long-held disdain for the Hillary Nutcracker.   Sometimes she has had to be just that with certain tough nuts.