Former secretary of state and United States senator Hillary Rodham Clinton enters the 2016 presidential race as the presumptive Democratic nominee. She has by far the greatest name recognition of any potential candidate of either party. She was in the public eye as first lady for eight years before serving in the Senate for eight years and in the State Department during President Obama’s first term in office.
On the surface, at least, her resume is among the most impressive of any recent White House aspirant. And she burnished her public personae in her battle with Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination in 2008, event though she ultimately lost that contest.
Indeed, a Pew Research Center poll conducted March 25-29 reported that 59 percent of Democratic voters said there was a “good chance” they would vote for Mrs. Clinton. This is higher than the 52 percent of Democrats who said there was a good chance they would back her at a comparable point in 2007. According to the poll, only about one in five Democratic voters say there’s a good chance they might support another candidate.
For our community, Mrs. Clinton’s foreign policy record will doubtless attract the most attention. And it is a most interesting one. Despite her strong support for Israel while serving in the Senate, there are aspects of her decades in the public eye that cast some doubt as to how solid her support really is.
On a trip to Gaza in 1999, she joined Suha Arafat, the wife of then-PA chairman Yasir Arafat, on a visit to a Palestinian kindergarten in the West Bank and listened silently while Mrs. Arafat accused Israel of poisoning the Palestinian water. After those remarks, she kissed Mrs. Arafat on the cheek; a photo of the episode appeared in newspapers around the world.
A day later, as the furor grew over her seeming passivity in the face of a clear blood libel against Israel, Mrs. Clinton condemned Mrs. Arafat’s remarks, claiming she was unaware at the time of just what Mrs. Arafat had said.
Also in 1999, Mrs. Clinton told a Jewish audience that she viewed Jerusalem as the “eternal and indivisible capital” of Israel and would champion moving the American Embassy in Tel Aviv to Jerusalem if she were elected to the Senate.
As secretary of state, however, she said the question of Jerusalem’s status should be decided in negotiations with the Palestinians and the U.S. should take no action that would jeopardize those negotiations.
And it was as secretary of state that she took traditional U.S. opposition to Israeli settlements to a new level, affirmatively going on the attack and dismissing the “natural growth” exception – “no settlement building, no ifs ands or buts” is the memorable way she put it. To be sure, she could argue that she was merely carrying out Mr. Obama’s foreign policy. But there was something about the passion and anger with which she condemned the settlements that suggested otherwise.
There are also general concerns about her service as secretary of state that will undoubtedly trouble many voters. Serious questions about her role before and after the Benghazi episode linger. Did she do everything possible to avoid such occurrences? Did she participate in a cover-up when – well past the time the administration knew otherwise – she claimed the attack was a spontaneous reaction to an anti-Muslim video?
And there are questions about Russia’s belligerent challenges to Georgia and Ukraine (as well as President Putin’s overall assertiveness) and China’s aggressiveness in the South China Sea, all of which happened on her watch. Issues also remain concerning the lack of a coherent U.S. response to the fallout and disruptions arising out of the Arab Spring and the unhinging of the Middle East peace process resulting from the administration’s ill-advised outreach to the Arab world.
Were appropriate precautions taken by Secretary of State Clinton to combat Iran’s notorious support for terrorist groups throughout the Middle East and Gulf region or to thwart the rise of ISIS?
Again, Mrs. Clinton will no doubt say she was implementing the policies of her boss, President Obama. But the problem is that in touting to voters her experience as secretary of state, it will hardly do for her to claim her service was merely ministerial.