IS THIS STRANGE, OR WHAT? – AT 9:01 A.M. ET:  Usually, Hillary Clinton is more astute than this, but, if you remember her campaign for president, she sometimes comes down with tin-ear syndrome.  It's happened again.  From the Washington Times:

President Obama's diminished political power as a result of fights between the White House and Congress has damaged both his and the country's image abroad, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Wednesday.

Even as she thanked Congress for its bipartisan support for many of the Obama administration's foreign policy goals, Mrs. Clinton said during two Senate committee hearings that recent bickering on domestic issues concerns her and that she hopes "we can figure out a better way to address it."

Oh now, come on.  We have a system here called democracy.  It's messy.  It's contentious.  Sometimes it doesn't look as neat and clean as dictatorships.  But don't tell us we have to alter our system to become more "popular" abroad. Not worth it, Hillary.  We're not running a high-school popularity contest, and I wish the Obama administration, with its adolescent mentality, would figure that out.

"We are always going to have differences between the executive and legislative branch, but we have to be attuned to how the rest of the world sees the functioning of our government, because it's an asset," the secretary told the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on state, foreign operations and related programs.

"People don't understand the way our system operates. They just don't get it," she said. "Their view does color whether the United States — not just the president, but our country — is in a position going forward to demonstrate the kind of unity and strength and effectiveness that I think we have to in this very complex and dangerous world."

If they don't understand it, we have to explain it.  A good chunk of the world lives under systems we would never tolerate.  As one comedian used to say, comparing the Soviet Union and the United States:  "They both have freedom of speech.  But in America there's freedom after the speech."  And that's the way we'll keep it.

We should explains the rigors of democracy, not try to put on an artificial happy face.

I'm afraid Clinton's statement reflects more than a bit of elitism – the view of some elites that democracy is a bit too stressful and messy for them.  Choose another line of work. 

While Mr. Obama's approval ratings have been sliding in recent months, Mrs. Clinton has been scoring much higher than the president, according to several opinion polls. One of them, conducted by Gallup, showed this month that 51 percent of Americans approve of the president's job performance, while 43 percent disapprove. Mrs. Clinton's approval rating has been around 70 percent.

That's true, but she's not in the direct line of political fire.  She manages to avoid it.  Put her back in the arena, and she'll take some serious hits.

February 25, 2010