UM, AREN'T YOU LEAVING SOMETHING OUT?:

Back on World Stage, a Larger-Than-Life Holbrooke (JODI KANTOR, 2/08/09, NY Times)

Already, [Richard] Holbrooke’s return to Washington has caused tremors. His arrival at the State Department has rattled colleagues who remember him as someone who cultivates the powerful and tramples those with less to offer. Others worry about his assiduous courtship of the news media. Judging from interviews with several officials, there seems to be confusion about whether the American Embassies in Pakistan and Afghanistan will be controlled by Mr. Holbrooke or the regular State Department overseers.

And even friends acknowledge that Mr. Holbrooke is intently focused on his own legend. (Many people have personal trainers; Mr. Holbrooke has a personal archivist.) [...]

Every December, Mrs. Clinton can be found in Mr. Holbrooke and Ms. Marton’s apartment, laughing through an annual dinner they hold in her honor. The guests and the entertainment have varied — Glenn Close has sung carols, Robert De Niro and Matt Damon have sat alongside business figures and writers, and one of the tamer toasters called Mrs. Clinton the nation’s “first shiksa,” or gentile. But Mr. Holbrooke and Ms. Marton always give Mrs. Clinton lavish toasts of their own.

Mr. Holbrooke served as a foreign policy adviser to Mrs. Clinton from the beginning of her Senate career, contributing ideas for major speeches and weighing in on crises. Sometimes, Mrs. Clinton or her staff reached out to him, aides said. But Mr. Holbrooke was not exactly shy about calling or sending e-mail messages on his own. The moment the Democratic primaries ended, Obama aides say, Mr. Holbrooke showered them with ideas as well.

“I did not cross the DMZ until a cease-fire was declared,” he now says jokingly.

By the time Mr. Obama sat down for a sustained conversation with Mr. Holbrooke, he was president-elect, and Mrs. Clinton was already the leading candidate for secretary of state. Once she took the job, Mr. Holbrooke was considered for the deputy post, but the idea was quickly rejected: he was a negotiator, not an administrator, and the secretary and the president wanted to put a powerful person in charge of dealings with Afghanistan and Pakistan, State Department officials said.

“Richard represents the kind of robust, persistent, determined diplomacy the president intends to pursue,” Mrs. Clinton said in an interview. “I admire deeply his ability to shoulder the most vexing and difficult challenges.”

Note that the tone of the entire piece changes if you acknowledge that what the President was actually seeking was someone to handle Pakistan, Afghanistan and India but that the last--our ally--had to be dropped from the brief because Mr. Holbrooke is unacceptable to them. It's just another example of how Mr. Obama's bizarre belief that certain Democratic functionaries are somehow irreplaceable men is damaging his Administration and the national interest.

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• LEAVE IT TO THE rEALISTS TO SCREW UP OUR MOST IMPORTANT ALLIANCE: (brothersjuddblog.com)

Posted by Orrin Judd at February 7, 2009 8:40 PM