President Obama's appointment of UN Ambassador Susan Rice
as his National Security Advisor was a great move for two reasons. Rice has the
same superb qualifications that would have made her an exemplary Secretary of State.
This is the post that GOP obstructionists worked feverishly to insure that she
didn't get. This is the second reason why Rice is the right choice for NSA. It
sends the message that the Obama Administration has not tossed in the towel and
capitulated to the GOP's unyielding campaign of bullying, intimidation, and
vilification of Obama nominees and appointees to cabinet and administration
positions. The GOP sniffed that the Benghazi debacle and Rice's alleged role in
misrepresenting and mishandling it could pay big political dividends. GOP
senators then shamelessly used Rice as a surrogate in part to politically batter
Obama, and in part to paint the administration as incompetent, neglectful and
duplicitous on crucial Middle East policy matters.
Rice's appointment as NSA is
bulletproof in the sense that she is not subject to Senate confirmation.
However, this doesn't mean that Rice or Obama is out of the woods completely
with her appointment. Arizona Senator John McCain who beat the war drums the loudest
and longest against any thought of a Rice nomination for Secretary of State was
terse that he still didn't agree with the Rice appointment as NSA. Other GOP senators that were fierce Rice
antagonists were more guarded in their comments about her appointment. They
could afford to appear more conciliatory to Rice at this point for one very
embarrassing reason and another politically cagey reason. The embarrassment to
the GOP was the smoking gun emails between leading administration officials in the days
immediately after the Benghazi attack that proved what the Obama administration
had contended all along and that was Rice had no role in cobbling together the
talking points on the attack that she used on Sunday television talk shows to
paint the attack as an anti-U.S. protest and not a planned terrorist attack.
The GOP got a lot of mileage out of that falsehood. But there's still the
political calculation about Rice.
The GOP almost certainly will keep her as their trump
card to play each and every time that it wants to tweak, scold or outfight
assail an alleged stumble by Obama on a Middle East policy issue. It could be a
terrorist atack, the Syrian civil war, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the
Afghan war, the threat of Iran's nuclear development program, and Iraq
instability. The aim as always is to
taint and discredit Obama's foreign policy initiatives.
However, this in itself won't be the distraction that the
GOP would like it be for Obama. He, as other presidents, have faced some
backlash from real or manufactured controversies by opponents over an appointee
or nominee. In an exact reverse situation when then President Bush nominated his
NSA Condoleezza Rice for Secretary of State. Rice was slammed hard by some
Democratic senators for helping sell Bush's falsehood on Iraq's weapons of mass
destruction. The threat to delay Rice's confirmation in the Senate quickly
fizzled out, and she was confirmed. This did not distract or dampen Bush in his
pursuit of his key initiatives. There was not the slightest inference that in nominating
Rice, and standing behind her in the face of Democrats grumbles about her would
pose a moral threat to his administration's larger agenda items.
The political reality is that the legislative business that
Congress and the White House must do never has been shut down by any political
squabble over a presidential appointee. Rice will not be Obama's only
appointment in the still early stages of his second term. He will -- as all
presidents -- see a small revolving door of some cabinet members and agency
heads that will leave, and must be replaced. There almost certainly will be
another Obama pick that will raise some eyebrows and draw inevitable fire from
either the GOP or some interests groups. Just as other presidents, Obama will
have to weigh carefully the political fallout, if any, from his pick. But as is
usually the case, the likelihood of any lasting harm to the administration will
be minimal to nonexistent.
It took time, but Rice got the reward that she deserved.
As Obama's eyes and ears on crucial foreign policy matters, and his
troubleshooter and advisor on hot spot issues, she will be a key player in the
Obama administration. This is only fitting for someone who had the right stuff
to ably fill the role as the international face of Obama administration foreign
policy decisions if she had gotten the Secretary of State job. It's an even
more fitting rebuke to a GOP that did everything it could to make sure she
didn't.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His
new ebook is America on Trial: The
Slaying of Trayvon Martin ( Amazon ).
He is an associate editor of New America Media. He is a weekly co-host of the
Al Sharpton Show on American Urban Radio Network. He is the host of the weekly Hutchinson
Report on KTYM 1460 AM Radio Los Angeles and KPFK-Radio and the Pacifica
Network.
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter:
http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson
