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There are, however, three qualities that could make her a memorable Secretary of State. She brings a vision of departmental reform - the need to elevate foreign aid programs to the same status and rigorous scrutiny as diplomacy - that could change striped pants into chinos in the developing world. She is also the first elected politician to hold the office since Edmund Muskie briefly did during the Carter Administration, which has enabled her to better understand and interact with the politicians who run places like Afghanistan and Pakistan. But most important, she is an international celebrity with a much higher profile...
Traditionally, the Secretary of State is judged on his or her ability to formulate policy, negotiate deals and manage the striped-pants bureaucracy. Clinton has no history as a global strategist, although her performance in the 2008 campaign indicates that she is a bit more conservative than the President, more the foreign policy realist than the Wilsonian idealist. It is also too early to judge her skill as a manager or negotiator - although her performance in Jerusalem indicates that she needs a few lessons in Middle East Haggling...
During her three days in Pakistan, she ran a gauntlet of town-hall meetings and media interviews that may have been unprecedented, to use the word of the week, for a U.S. Secretary of State. The trip, planned by Holbrooke and Pakistan specialist Vali Nasr, offered an unusually subtle itinerary for a U.S. diplomatic mission. A visit to a Sufi mosque that had been bombed by Sunni extremists, for example, sent a powerful message to Pakistan's moderate Islamic majority. "We saw her praying there," an academic named Shala Aziz told me, "and, for the first time, I'm thinking...
...hosts and Pashtun elders - and that, on occasion, she pushed back, raising incredibly sensitive issues, like why no one in the Pakistani government knew where Osama bin Laden was, even though he had been in the country since 2002. Press accounts either emphasized the embarrassment of a Secretary of State's getting pummeled or fixed on Clinton's undiplomatic bluntness. But they missed the point: her candor, her willingness to listen to and acknowledge criticism, had begun to undermine the prevailing Pakistani image of the U.S. as arrogant and bossy, more interested in having the Pakistani military fight...
Transformative Experience There are no toasts at state dinners in Pakistan, because there is no alcohol. There are opening statements, though, and Clinton's - delivered impromptu on the first night of her trip after tossing aside her notes - was surprisingly emotional. Earlier in the day, President Asif Ali Zardari, the widower of Benazir Bhutto, had presented the Secretary with an album of photos from her first visit to Pakistan, in 1995, and a framed photo of Bhutto and her two sons with Clinton and daughter Chelsea. "It did bring tears to my eyes," Clinton said at the state dinner...