She was all business on Capitol Hill this morning in her brown, no-frills suit. Hillary Rodham Clinton, former first lady, the junior senator from New York, and the designated Secretary of State, she basked in the enthusiastic Senate support for her nomination and deftly deflected expressions of concern about whether her husband’s foundation would pose real or perceived conflicts of interest for her in her new job.
With Senate confirmation of her nomination virtually assured, Mrs. Clinton gently rejected a suggestion from Richard Lugar, the ranking minority member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, that the foundation founded and led by her husband, former President Bill Clinton, renounce all foreign gifts while she is secretary of state. Such a step, he argued, would avoid the allegations and perceptions of conflict of interest that have dogged her since the foundation disclosed that it had raised almost $500 million in donations, much of it from foreign governments or leaders.
After ignoring the suggestion when Senator Lugar first offered it, Mrs. Clinton finally told him that she thought the conflict-of-interest agreement that the foundation had negotiated with the Obama transition team went far enough –- in fact, that it went way beyond what law or precedent required. She did not want the foundation’s work on combating AIDS in Africa and disease and poverty abroad to suffer, she added, stressing that neither she nor her husband received any compensation from the foundation itself.
Senator Lugar urged her to reconsider. She was noncommittal. Her staff directed inquiries about this issue –- and whether she would endorse Senator Lugar’s other suggestions for greater and timelier disclosure of the size and origin of such gifts — to President-elect Obama’s transition team. But spokesmen for Mr. Obama’s office were also mum on whether they would seek greater disclosures from the foundation.
Frankly, why should they? Even Senator Lugar said he intended to vote for her, whether or not his suggestions were adopted.
The hearing itself went without any other glitches. That is no surprise since Mrs. Clinton, or “Hillary” as several of her fellow senators called her, has talked personally to almost every one of them since her nomination. She has also responded in writing to 300 of their questions and vowed to answer new ones by noon tomorrow. Like the skilled pol and policy wonk she has proven to be, she deftly fielded the panel’s mostly softball questions about how an Obama foreign policy would differ from that of President Bush.
She endorsed what she called “smart power,” or foreign policy pragmatism. “Smart power” flatters liberals like Harvard professor Joseph Nye, who has advocated greater reliance on such “soft power” tools as diplomacy and cultural exchanges, as well as more conservative analysts who insist that such initiatives are more likely to succeed if they are backed by “hard power,” or the use, or threat of use of force.
Mrs. Clinton’s rhetorical straddle was reflected in her stance on Iran. While she endorsed the diplomatic outreach that President-elect Obama has embraced, she said she had “no illusions” about how tough such negotiations would be. And when pressed, she said that a nuclear-armed Iran would be “unacceptable.” No options were “off the table” if talks failed, she said, leaving vague the issue of what, precisely, the incoming Obama administration would do if Iran refuses to renounce terrorism and or halt its nuclear fuel enrichment efforts.