Glenn Beck and Anti-Intellectualism

The New York Times Magazine has a profile out on Glenn Beck this weekend, but they have a preview available now. After reading it, I felt like it wandered. It was neither revealing of Beck's ethos, nor critical of the misstatements and intimations he dresses up as "history." But that's not what bothered me.

What bothered me was Beck's concept of populist intellectualism, where the "common man" gets it and the college educated mess it up. This was best represented in a comment by an attendee at Beck and Palin's Anchorage performance who remarked, "[Woodrow Wilson] was the start of the Progressive Era. He believed that college intellectuals should decide how the world should be run."

Now beyond the contradiction of deifying the founding fathers, (Thomas Jefferson graduated from the College of William and Mary in 1762 and passed the Virginia bar in 1967) and finding Woodrow Wilson's "college intellectuals" repugnant, there are broader concerns I have.

What's wrong with being a college educated intellectual? Why is this a perceived cause for a fissure in our social fabric? Is this now the great societal divide in America?

The rising tide of anti-intellectualism is one that has increasingly concerned me. It seems politically advantageous to pick on the smart kids. That's dangerous thinking. The college educated should not lord over those that don't have a college education, and perhaps that is the perception. Perhaps that is the reality. Young, college educated students are being tapped to manage older, more experienced professionals that haven't earned that piece of paper called a college diploma.

If that garners resentment, I understand it to a point, but to deride the educated as shysters because they are educated seems like a really good way to prevent the country from moving forward. Maybe that's the idea.

I meandering post to say the least. Maybe if I'd finished that graduate degree it would make more sense. Course, then I'd have to hate myself more.

The Least Deliberative Body

It has become cliche to refer to the US Senate as the world's most deliberative body. In policy circles it would seem to serve as a reason for the Senate's inaction on any number of issues, and yet, after reading George Packer's piece in The New Yorker I was left thinking that the cliche is all wrong.

Deliberative

-adjective

1. having the function of deliberating, as a legislative assembly

2. having to do with policy; dealing with the wisdom and expediency of a proposal

What struck me about Packer's article is, as Sen. Merkley mentions in the article, is how there really isn't any deliberation. There isn't debate. There's posturing, procedural maneuvering, and pedantic speeches given to CSPAN cameras, but no deliberation.

The Senate has been reduced from what de Toucheville once described as a place where "they represent only the lofty thoughts [of the nation] and the generous instincts animating it, not the petty passions," to a place where arcane rules are wielded to grind everything to a halt.

I think there are 3 reasons for this:

1) Fund-raising

2) Eternal Elections

3) A perversion of well-intentioned rules

The Constant Cash Scramble

I once read that a Congressperson needs to raise $10,000 per week from the moment they take office in order to be competitive in the next election. The infusion of money into the political system is not new, but the seeming acceleration of that infusion should frighten people. Sure every voter gets a vote, but how is that going to compete against a few million dollars from a specific industry with a targeted agenda? The Senators now serving have to play to these interests because this is where the big dollars are coming from. That means a lot of little favors that snowball into big hurdles for really moving things forward.

The Eternal Election

If you watch cable news, when's the last time you heard "possible presidential candidate, so and so?" Our media has become captured by the horse race and so have our elected officials. For the Senate that means really just three days of legislating every week. It also means the senators aren't talking to each other. They aren't spending time together. This isn't a wish for Harry Reid and Richard Shelby to go skipping down the Capitol steps together, but if you don't know someone how can you hope to negotiate with them? If you don't trust, don't know enough to respect them how do you deliberate anything? What's clear from Packer's article is you don't.

Rules Perversion

Most of us know there's a rule in the Senate that any senator can place an anonymous hold on an appointee and that rule has been used rather frequently (and frivolously) in the recent past. What I did not know until reading Packer's article was that the hold was originally intended to give a Senator that had to travel some distance (on horseback no less) to hold up confirmation until they could ask the appointee questions. It was never intended to be an instrument to hold an administration hostage. This is one example of several that Packer outlines where rules with good intentions have been perverted to satisfy a senator's "petty passions."

So what do we do about it?

If these are the main reasons (I'm quite certain there are others) then what is to be done to change things? First, we have to start taking the money out of politics. The Supreme Court set us back with that with the Citizens United decision. I, like many liberals, disagreed with that decision for one main reason. The decision, in essence, equated money with free speech. I think this is a dangerous precedent and a threat to a democracy. If we are truly a country of "one person, one vote" then we need to ensure that the rules of campaigns and fundraising follows along similar lines. This would allow senators to think grander and not feel so beholden to special interests.

Second, we need the media to stop reporting the horserace and start reporting the issues. There's a disincentive to do this. The horserace is cheap to report, flashy, and constantly evolving to satisfy the appetite of a news cycle that people feel the urge to constantly feed. But if the consumer demanded more, if it was as much about policy as it is about personality we would be taking a step in the right direction.

Third, the Senate needs to take steps to fix itself. This is probably the hardest and most perplexing aspect. The only people that can make the Senate more efficient are the same people that made it inefficient. There are some freshmen senators with an eye towards a rules change, but the old-timers are hesitant and as the freshmen become the old-timers they will likely be co-opted by the system they currently loathe. The Senate has the power to change, perhaps it lies in the people to give them the will.

What's next?

The cynic in me figures there will be a rash of blog posts (not unlike this one) decrying the Senate and urging change. That drum beat will quickly fade and nothing will happen. The optimist in me thinks that maybe these young guns in the Senate will force some change. The revolutionary in me thinks we're reaching a tipping point in our government, a dangerous tipping point where the people see the ineffectiveness of government and lash out against it. This could be a time of renewal and positive realignment where Congress can get back to the people's business. But there is so much anger, so much rage focused on an enemy, but not an alternative that this realignment could be a major step backward.

We did this to ourselves. We are all of us complicit in the degradation of a once deliberative body. We have the power to make the changes needed. Do we too have the will? The humility? The attention span?

UPDATED:

David Broder steals my line. Irrelevant that his was published before mine.

Cutting through the bullsh*t

I quick linked a posting from the Economist a couple days ago, but their reporters continue to get to the heart of the matter on the oil spill. Column inch after column inch and minute after minute of cable news channel cacophony demands that President Obama be more angry, be more present in the gulf. They demand he spend more time on the ground. What they don't tend to discuss is what exactly the president should be DOING, just that he should be LOOKING angry.

I find this commentary ridiculous and I'm not alone in that. The Economist again has a blog post up on this subject. They quote Clive Crook of The Atlantic when he says, "Apparently it is a great idea to elect a president who is calm in a crisis, except when there's a crisis. Then what you need is somebody to lead the nation in panic."

The President of the United States MUST do more than one thing at a time. I am frustrated with people who complain about the optics, but have very little in the way of criticism for the substance of the government's and the president's reaction. Serious problems demand serious people.

Pawlenty, the Right, and the Dangerous Game

Joe Klein, in condemning Bill O'Reilly and the folks at Fox News, is more strident than I was when condemning Gov. Tim Pawlenty in this space a few days ago:

I'd say that the constant wink-wink implications that the President is (a) a communist or socialist, (b) not an American, (c) maybe a Muslim, (d) a friend of terrorists, (e) a front man who is taking orders from...others, (f) committed to misreading or abrogating the Constitution of the United States or (g) a threat to our basic institutions--these approach sedition. [emphasis added]

On Media, Deliberation, and General Silliness in the Healthcare debate

In a blog entry for Newsweek, Jenny Hontz discusses the influence of Facebook on healthcare reform, and spuriously concludes that it has some. In contrast to some other shameless glorifications of technology in the media, Hontz at least provides some evidence for her inference: one advertising cliche, one B-list celebrity, and 7 or 8 anecdotes/off the cuff comments from "experts." The reality is that there is no evidence to support the idea that Facebook status updates have ever affected major policy decisions, and no reason to believe they ever will.

Hontz's reference to social networks as "the real town halls" leads to me to believe the root of this general silliness in the media lies in a popular, and fundamental, misunderstanding of the nature of democratic politics. Much animosity and general frustration generated by the healthcare debate would be ameliorated if we just dispensed with the myth that American democracy is somehow deliberative. Over 50 years ago, Joseph Schumpeter conceived of democracy as a marketplace in which political entrepreneurs compete for customers in the form of voters in elections. Democracy is not a process by which reasonable people come together to discuss differences and arrive at a common good, which becomes policy. Politicians make policy, or don't, because of their calculations about what will win them elections, not by getting together in the Senate chamber and changing each others' minds about what serves the best interests of society.

Viewed in this sense, the healthcare debate looks less passionate and more rational. The idea that town halls are deliberative is silly. Elected representatives in opposition are in the privileged position of not having to make policy. Instead the opposition just does what it does best- oppose. Not with specific alternatives or reasoned debate, but with misinformation, name calling, and general populist rhetoric. Of course they have no incentive to reign in this type of rhetoric at town halls, because town halls are primarily a mechanism for the transmission of voters' intentions, not for deliberation.

Analogously, there are two mechanisms by which online social networks might affect policy. The first is that they facilitate deliberation, which Hontz argues is occurring on healthcare, a proposition for which there is absolutely no evidence. Second, networks may facilitate the transmission voter intentions. This mechanism is certainly more plausible, but the evidence that representatives respond to these intentions is thus far scant. As Hontz rightfully notes, updating your Facebook status is cheap talk, and may not be a credible signal of your intention to support. In any case, a more careful consideration of the democratic process, and more accumulation of serious evidence is necessary before we start declaring that "Facebook Revolts" are shaping policy making.

Bill Clinton Remains a Bad Ass, John Bolton Remains a Tool

Pardon the juvenile title. I could have used softer language. I could have thought of synonyms for “bad ass” and “tool” but irrevocably something would have gotten lost. The title reflects both the respect I have for former president Bill Clinton and the seemingly boundless loathing I have for former ambassador to the UN John Bolton.

Let’s start with President Clinton. You want to talk about bringing the goods. Five hours in country and he’s met with Kim Jong-Il and secured the release of Laura Ling and Euna Lee. Take that Jimmy Carter (not that I have anything again President Carter). This was reportedly a private trip, though it came with tacit approval of the White House and presumably the State Department. Now the interplay between President Obama, Secretary Clinton, and President Clinton leads to all sorts of arm chair psychology (see Maureen Dowd’s driveling column in today’s New York Times for an example) about how much approval there was, who showed up whom, and if the Clintons aren’t just vying against each other for the limelight. That all seems pretty irrelevant to me and more of the horse race garbage that permeates political news these days.

I think it’s also a real safe bet that Ms. Ling’s and Ms. Lee’s families couldn’t care less about what leader gets the credit for their release. All they know is their loved ones are home and safe. I do have questions about what Clinton said, what, if any, concession he made, and how this visit will impact formal nation-to-nation diplomacy between the US and the DPRK. Maybe there were no deals, maybe Bill Clinton shook Kim Jong-Il’s hand, flashed that natural smile and that’s all it took. I kind of hope so, because North Korea has done nothing deserving of a reward. Answers to my questions will come out sooner or later, but for now it’s great news these two women are free and safe and home. It also goes to show how much a little face time can achieve when you send the right face to the right place.

Turning our attention to Mr. Bolton. He wrote a hastily prepared op-ed in the Washington Post yesterday claiming “the Clinton trip is a significant propaganda victory for North Korea” and that a high-profile, private citizen going to DPRK to try and “secure the release of two American reporters, held unjustifiably by North Korea for nearly five months” is in effect negotiating with terrorists. My first beef with Mr. Bolton is his seemingly dutiful effort to avoid naming the “two American reporters” by name. Ms. Ling and Ms. Lee are real people with real families who have been suffering for a long time. That incredibly human element should not pull us into the weeds, but can not justifiably be denied either. I’ll chalk this up to Mr. Bolton’s repeated inability to appreciate the human impact on his numerous “policy prescriptions.”

My second beef is his characterization of this whole experience as negotiating with terrorists. This was a conference with a nation-state, not some non-state actor or insurgency. The US has largely held to the line of not negotiating with terrorists, but the DPRK is not a terrorist organization. Indeed they can not be classified as a state-sponsor of terrorism (as is often reported) and simultaneously be considered a terrorist organization. This might seem like splitting hairs, but clearly Mr. Bolton is trying to frame this issue as an issue of terrorism thus making it easier to decry any private citizen negotiating with them.

My third and greatest beef with the column is really twofold. One, Mr. Bolton and those of his ilk have absolutely zero credibility in the international affairs realm at this point. Nearly every major policy prescription they advanced has been discredited or abandoned on the grounds it was ineffective or just outright destructive to the goal of securing American and advancing our foreign policy goals. Two, Mr. Bolton has taken more column inches then he deserves to criticize President Obama’s foreign policy, but as an indication of how discredited he is he never offers any alternatives. Are we to do nothing Mr. Bolton while two Americans sit in a North Korean jail facing twelve years of hard labor? Do you honestly believe behind the scenes discussions haven’t been going on between the US and DPRK through a third party trying to secure the release of Ms. Ling and Ms. Lee? What would you have us do Mr. Bolton? Because it is irresponsible to do nothing. Of course when the intellectual framework you have stood by becomes discredited, it can be hard to find a new one to add to the discussion without sounding like the old out of touch pol that you are.

A couple final thoughts: First, why is the Washington Post publishing this guy’s work and with such frequency? I have been disappointed by the lack of intellectual honesty The Post has required of its columnists and contributors, and while no voice should be silenced I would hope The Post would hold to a higher standard.

Finally, despite my disdain for Mr. Bolton and his column, this is a very happy day for two families. The denial of freedom is something many of us will never understand. It will remain something we see on the news through impersonal accounts of detainees in Afghanistan, political prisoners in Iran, journalists in North Korea, and “criminals” in the United States. I have never had my freedom so completely taken away from me as Ms. Ling and Ms. Lee have over these past five months. I am happy they’re safe and that they’re home, and even as we debate what course of action is the best we should never forget the human impact of our policies. I fear for too long the US has with dire unintended consequences. Welcome home Laura Ling and Euna Lee. I hope the United States seems better then when you last saw it.

Canadian Healthcare

A number of ads have appeared on television recently, warning of the horrors of a Canadian-like healthcare system in the US. These ads play on the conventional wisdom that the Canadian healthcare system is so bad that gravely ill people are forced to wait in line; that these people frequently must choose between death and paying out-of-pocket for a trip to the United States and treatment there. Meet Shona Holmes, who testified a few weeks ago before the House Energy and Commerce Committee:



I confess, I generally ignore the conventional wisdom that the Canadian Healthcare system is so bad that people die while waiting in line. It seems to me that, like the babysitter that microwaves the dog, everyone knows someone who knows a Canadian who nearly died. But, because I tend to ignore this meme, it never occurred to me to investigate it. Fortunately, On the Media did just that.

On this weekend’s show, On the Media interviewed Maureen Taylor, the National Health and Medical reporter for CBC Television. Taylor expressed surprise at the negative portrayal of the Canadian Healthcare system in American media, claiming that a majority of Canadians have a favorable disposition to their healthcare. Taylor then debunked Shona Holmes’ ballyhooed claim that, had she not escaped the catastrophe of Canadian care, she would have died. According to Taylor, Holmes’ brain tumor was in fact a cyst on her pituitary gland. It was not cancerous and, according to Taylor, not life threatening. In fact, as Taylor pointed out in her interview, all the relevant information about Ms. Holmes’ condition is available at the Mayo Clinic’s website. The Mayo Clinic describes Holmes’ ailment thus:

Dr. Naresh Patel, neurosurgeon, diagnosed Holmes as having a Rathke's cleft cyst (RCC). The rare, fluid-filled sac grows near the pituitary gland at the base of the brain and eventually can cause hormone and vision problems.

Rather than life threatening, Dr. Patel “was concerned that the pressure on Shona’s nervers [sic] was causing her to become blind . . . we needed to remove the cyst to save her vision.” While, Ms. Holmes was doubtlessly uncomfortable, contrary to her claim, the five or six month wait would not have killed her. Ms. Holmes illustrates the manifold problems of relying on anecdotal evidence.

Never mind, the conversation in the States is not about grafting a Canadian-like healthcare system onto Columbia.

You Know It's a Slow Newsday When

CNN turns these comments by Secretary Clinton:

"I don't know, but I doubt very much that anything like [running for President] will ever be part of my life," Clinton, who would be 68 in 2016, told the television station, according to the Associated Press.
"I tried to be the president and was not successful," she added.

Into this headline: "Ticker: Clinton to run for president again?"

Friedman and Afghanistan

Tom Friedman’s latest column in the New York Times begins:

I confess, I find it hard to come to Afghanistan and not ask: Why are we here? Who cares about the Taliban? Al Qaeda is gone. And if its leaders come back, well, that’s why God created cruise missiles.

And then Friedman writes, “But every time I start writing that column, something stills my hand.”

What stills Friedman’s hand? Does he recognize the folly of ignoring the Taliban? Does he realize that on-going instability in Afghanistan stokes instability in Pakistan? Does he describe the peril inherent in proliferating failed states? Does he recall America’s experience with the limitations of cruise missiles?

No. What stills Friedman’s hand is the opening of a new girls’ school in a remote Afghan village. Doubtlessly, such schools are valuable – both from a humanitarian perspective and from a strategic perspective, which Friedman identifies. But, that Friedman could begin today’s column as he does, requires either a willful disregard of history or a rather complete failing of critical thought.

Oh, the Myth-making You’ll Do!

Webster’s defines renegade as:
1. a deserter from one faith, cause, or allegiance to another
2. an individual who rejects lawful or conventional behavior

Unfortunately, in America, the renegade – much like the cowboy or the maverick – is a political motif. The renegade is an estimable figure, one not beholden to any party or interest group. The renegade will speak truth to power and damn the consequences.

While Sarah Palin may be a Webster’s renegade (“a deserter from one faith, cause, or allegiance to another”), she is not one to speak truth to power – nor, if you take the fruits of Andrew Sullivan’s obsession, one to speak truth period. She is rather, simply, a prima donna. I doubt anything could do so much to resuscitate her reputation as slapping an image of her on Time Magazine and labeling her renegade.

But that’s ok, there’s no chance that this label will stick and drive the narrative of every news story about her forever. No, that’d be like letting a failure from Connecticut buy a ranch in Texas and transfigure himself into a cowboy, or like describing a party functionary as a maverick, despite his near slavish party-line-toeing.

John Bolton Strikes Again

It is stunning – stunning! – that the Washington Post publishes the screeds of a man so thoroughly discredited as John Bolton. Bolton’s Op-Ed in today’s WaPo, advocating for the immediate bombing of Iran (“Israel's decision of whether to use military force against Tehran's nuclear weapons program is more urgent than ever”), is a terrifying, deceitful and invective-filled piece. In sum, it is what we’ve come to expect from Bush’s ambassador to the United Nations.

The point of Bolton’s Op-Ed is that time is out, or is nearly out, and we must, or the Israelis must, bomb now and force regime change. This is also the point of his June 26, 2009 Op-Ed in the L.A. Times. It is the point of he made a year ago in a July 15, 2008 Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal. It is a point he has made frequently – and for quite some time. And every time he makes it, the “time is now” to bomb Iran.

In today’s twist, the time to bomb Iran is now because the uprising in Iran is over and, that the uprising occurred at all, simultaneously demonstrates: that the regime cannot be dealt with; that if we could deal with them, doing so would be an abomination; and in the uprising’s wake, no policy or regime change is forthcoming.

It would be a convincing argument, were it not nonsense. First, given that Mousavi, Karroubi, and Khatami have just gone out on a limb in open defiance of Khamenei, I think they would be surprised to discover that the uprising is over. Moreover, as Colin pointed out in comments to Kennedy’s post a few days ago, the 1979 Revolution took place over more than a year and experienced periods of relative quiet; I am not yet willing to declare this uprising over.

Leaving aside the relatively difficult question of whether the Iranian uprising continues, we are left with this notion that the regime can’t be dealt with, that dealing with it would be an abomination, and that no regime or policy change is forthcoming. As I argued here, it may well be an abomination to negotiate with the Iranian regime in the wake of its crackdown but the crackdown itself changes nothing of the essential calculus governing Iran’s relationships with the United States, Israel and the rest of the world. Iran is and remains a rational actor, self-interested state. Khamenei remains a leader that seeks, at bottom, the preservation of his position and his system of government. Such regimes can be dealt with, have been dealt with, and indeed are the basis for traditional realism.

Finally, Bolton seems to still be gripped with the delusions that pervaded neoconservative circles before the invasion of Iraq. He seems to suggest that a newly installed regime will give up Iran’s nuclear program simply by virtue of it being a new regime. He also explicitly suggests that a public diplomacy campaign will convince the Iranians not to hate us for bombing them. Like the idea that the Iraqi people would greet the US invasion with cheers and roses, this argument ignores Iranian nationalism. It also ignores history. Iran did not begin its nuclear program under the current regime. No, Iran first started its nuclear program under the Shah. Khomeini initially gave up the quest for the bomb, believing it to be anti-Islamic. The current regime began the program in the wake of the devastating Imposed War. Never mind that every nation is entitled to the pursuit of nuclear power – as opposed to nuclear weapons – under the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

The Terrible Journalism of Alessandra Stanley

Alessandra Stanley should go back to writing about television. I gather she wasn’t very good at that, either, but her pieces – and I shudder to call them pieces – on politics and the economy that have appeared over the last month in the New York Time have been wretched. The first piece she wrote that caught my attention covered President-elect Obama’s press conference unveiling Sen. Clinton as Secretary of State-designate. It was a horrible, hack-job of a piece, widely reviled for Ms. Stanley projecting – and projecting enough to generate a thousand almost wholly fictional words. Now, she’s written a piece bemoaning the loss of the sex scandal due to the recession.

Most of us spent the last decade or more wishing that the news would begin covering, you know, news again. The endless drumbeat of non-stories and scandals pushed people away from politics and the political process. They also served as cover for perhaps the most disastrous Presidency this country has ever seen. Rather than covering the many, many sins of this administration, the media was, until late in 2006, mostly cowed by the administration. It seemed that no sin-not the bungling of an unnecessary war, not a war of choice, not the bungling of an arguable necessary war, not violating the principles that gave us our nation, not torture, not abuses of power, not intimidation, not politization of every facet of government-was sufficient to shine real scrutiny on this administration because at least there was no sex.

What a farce. Go away, Ms. Stanley. And take your nonsense journalism with you.

Man Throws Shoe, Fails as Journalist

At a press conference in Baghdad on Sunday, President Bush nearly got knocked upside the head by a pair of size 10 dress shoes.
Journalist Muntadar Al-Zaidi was no more than 20 feet from the president when he shouted “This is a gift from the Iraqis; this is the farewell kiss, you dog!” He then hurled his shoes towards the podium. President Bush narrowly avoided getting hit and al-Zaidi was detained and carried off by security personnel. But rather than discuss the moral implications of hurling footwear at a visiting head of state, I’d like to examine how Al-Zaidi has failed as a journalist.

Officials at the Cairo based Al-Baghdadiya are calling for the immediate release of their colleague, citing that any actions taken against him would be a throwback to the oppression of Saddam Hussein. Clearly, the higher-ups at Al-Baghdadiya missed the memo about their duties as members of the Fourth Estate. The job of a journalist is not to engage in combat, but in discourse. Democracy means that the press has the right to criticize the government, not to commit assault. Furthermore, I believe that al-Zaidi has damaged the reputation of his news organization. What government official will grant a press pass to a news agency that hires such volatile reporters? What if they’re never allowed to enter Iraq? Has anybody really thought about the implications of this action?

I don’t care if he’s being feted by a hero by the Arab street. Even if he’s released without being charged, I would argue for his immediate suspension or termination from Al-Baghdadiya.

When there’s no story, why not just make up some Clinton-Obama drama?

This piece in the New York Times yesterday really perturbed me but I didn’t feel that I would be able to articulate clearly what’s so desperately wrong with it. Fortunately, Matt Browner Hamlin manages to do a bang up job.

A MASH note from Hitchens to Sen. Clinton

Christopher Hitchens writes in Slate an article attacking the notion of Sen. Clinton becoming Secretary of State. He simultaneously reminds most of the world why they despise him, but might want to get drunk with the famous imbiber. Hitchens is a good writer-an entertaining and passionate scribe-but he is, above all, intellectually dishonest. He allows his personal biases, of which there are many, to color his thinking to the point of producing utter nonsense. His disdain-it may not be too much to call it hatred-for the Clintons leads him to write: “In matters of foreign policy, it has been proved time and again, the Clintons are devoted to no interest other than their own” – a statement so false its very utterance is an obscenity to truth, in an article rife with accusation by innuendo, most of which has patently nothing to do with whether or not Sen. Clinton would make a good Secretary of State.

It is too bad. Well, Hitch, I’d still like to have a drink with you, maybe at the next Vanity Fair party you throw in Adams Morgan, but lay off the rye before you hack out another piece on Sen. Clinton – she’d make a fine Secretary of State and her commitment to both human rights and the interests of the United States is beyond question.