Hillary and the team of rivals

Madame Secretary quietly leads while special envoys Holbrook and Mitchell struggle.

HDS GreenwayOctober 26, 2009 19:33Updated May 30, 2010 12:11

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton smiles as she arrives in Dublin on Oct. 11, 2009. Clinton was in the Irish capital to hold talks with Ireland's Prime Minister Brian Cowen, with the focus on political developments in Northern Ireland. (Cathal McNaughton/Reuters)

BOSTON — When President Obama chose Hillary Clinton to be his Secretary of State, it was an attempt to unite a bitterly divided party that had fought the longest, take-no-prisoners primary in living memory.

The vice-presidency was out. Too much had been said for that, including Clinton’s famous remark about staying in a hopelessly up-hill fight because the assassination of Bobby Kennedy showed that you never knew what fate had in store. Secondly, no one in the Obama camp wanted Bill Clinton that close.

So he gave her what by tradition has been the premier cabinet post. In reality, Defense has become the bigger prize, but no matter, Hillary Clinton for State had all the symbolism to bring the disaffected Hillarylanders back into the fold.

He had to be concerned lest she try to set up a separate power center at State. By assigning such a high voltage envoy as Richard Holbrooke to the most difficult foreign affairs problem he had, the Afghan — Pakistan brouhaha, one suspects Obama wanted to keep Hillary a bit in the shade. Perhaps the same was true of assigning the hugely respected George Mitchell to the Palestine-Israel problem. Both of them had impressive records of mediation, Mitchell had been instrumental in bringing peace to Northern Ireland, while Holbrooke had ended a Balkan war with his tough negotiating tactics.

Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, had no real foreign policy experience other than following her husband around.

During the primaries, Hillary Clinton had mocked Obama as naive in foreign affairs, but as the old saying goes, keep your friends close, but your enemies closer, and State was about as close as Obama could afford to let Hillary Clinton get.

Now people are saying that Obama’s two top envoys have lost their luster. Mitchell, in his quiet, tortoise –like way, has patiently gone back and forth between Palestinians and Israelis, but has nothing to show for it.

Holbrooke, ever the hare, has dashed around the sub-continent, taking names and kicking ass, as they say, but when it came time to walk the Hamid Karzai cat back towards an election run off, Senator John Kerry was chosen for the job. Holbrooke and Karzai had had a celebrated row in August, Karzai saying that he had been bullied, and Holbrooke’s side saying that nothing of the sort had taken place.

Having met and interviewed Karzai and Holbrooke more than once, I can imagine that both were reporting the truth as they saw it. For Holbrooke, the encounter probably was nothing more than the normal. But to Karzai, the hard charging Holbrooke would seem threatening.