Joe Biden is at the top of the internal short list
Hillary Clinton’s transition team is preparing for her pick to be
secretary of state, reported political news agency
Politico.
This would be the first major Cabinet candidate to go public for
a campaign that’s insisted its focus remains on winning the
election, and perhaps the most central choice for a potential
president who was a secretary of state herself.
Neither Clinton, nor her aides have yet told Biden. According to
the source, they’re strategizing about how to make the approach to
the vice president, who almost ran against her in the Democratic
primaries but has since been campaigning for her at a breakneck
pace all over the country in these final months.
"He'd be great, and they are spending a lot of time figuring out
the best way to try to persuade him to do it if she wins," said the
source familiar with the transition planning.
The vice president, who chaired the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee before joining the administration, is one of the most
experienced and respected Democrats on the world stage. He’s also
coming to what would be the close of a 44-year career in
Washington, first with six terms in the Senate and then two terms
as President Barack Obama’s closest adviser — and the keeper of the
portfolio on some of the most difficult international issues,
including Iraq and Ukraine.
Those will carry over to the next administration, as will a
concern within Clinton’s circle and throughout the current White
House that Donald Trump’s campaign has created lasting damage to
America’s relationships around the world.
Biden’s already been deployed to mitigate that damage by Obama.
In August, he traveled to Latvia to assure NATO allies that
America’s commitment to them will hold, despite Trump’s questioning
of the alliance’s value and worries especially within the Baltic
region about Russian aggression.
Just on Monday, on a stop at a Clinton campaign office in
Toledo, Biden said that he’d spoken to the Latvian president, who’d
urged him to come to Europe and reassure people that if Russia
invades, NATO will defend them.
At that same stop, Biden said he’d hoped to continue some level
of involvement in domestic and foreign policy, but added, "I may
write a book. This might disappoint you, it won’t be a tell-all
book."
Clinton and Biden have a long history together, going back to
her days as first lady. They both lost to Obama in the 2008
primaries and went on to serve together in his administration — and
though they had regular lunches and a warm personal relationship,
feelings became rougher as her 2016 run came into focus and the
chances of his running again faded.
Biden bristled at being portrayed as a holdout in greenlighting
the raid that killed Osama bin Laden while Clinton was a seen as a
strong advocate, and the day before he pulled the plug on running,
publicly corrected the record to say he’d privately advised Obama
to go ahead with it.
In Biden, Clinton would be tapping a seasoned hand on foreign
policy, a glad-handing pol with a long memory and a well of deep
relationships around the globe.
But she’d also be choosing someone with whom she repeatedly
clashed as secretary of state, with the vice president often
playing the skeptic while she supported more aggressive action.
They differed over leaving troops in Iraq, the surge in
Afghanistan, and whether to arm Syria’s rebels and bomb Libya — and
Clinton took the more hawkish line in every case. During the Obama
administration’s lengthy review of Afghanistan policy early in his
tenure, for instance, a skeptical Biden urged the president not to
escalate the war, while Clinton backed Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s
request for 40,000 more troops.
Clinton’s campaign was anxious about Biden running — and was
watching carefully enough to be gaming out whether he’d announce in
an appearance on the "Late Show with Stephen Colbert" last
September, as shown in emails revealed by the WikiLeaks hack.
The speculation over who Clinton might pick to fill a job she
once held is a confounding one for Washington’s tight-knit foreign
policy community. Will she select a politician in her own mold, or
a career diplomat more in line with Foggy Bottom tradition?
Among the names most discussed: former undersecretary of state
Wendy Sherman, the point person on the Iran deal and a favorite
within the State Department; former Deputy Secretary of State Bill
Burns, who now heads the Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace; Nick Burns, the former under secretary of state of political
affairs under George W. Bush who’s been an active advocate for
Clinton this year; Kurt Campbell, Clinton’s assistant secretary of
state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs when she was in the job;
Strobe Talbott, the deputy secretary of state during Bill Clinton’s
first term and a longtime friend of the Clintons who’s now the
president of the Brookings Institution; and James Stavridis, the
retired admiral who earlier this summer made it into consideration
as the sleeper pick to be her running mate.
But none of those picks would come with the star power that's
been a feature for all recent picks for the job, and which Biden
would bring in buckets.
The Clinton campaign did not respond to several requests for
comment.