Secretary of State Sweepstakes

As Sunday talk shows are flooded with possible VPs for both tickets, political junkies start the next round of speculation--about the best Secretary of State to help the US repair its relations with the rest of the world.

In the Christian Science Monitor, its former editor John Hughes, who served as an Assistant Secretary under Reagan, gets the ball rolling with a rundown of possible choices for an Obama or McCain Administration.

After owning up to a prejudice for his former boss, George Shultz, now 87, Hughes gets more realistic by touting Robert Gates, the current Secretary of Defense as "an advocate of a strong military supplemented by vigorous 'soft power,' or public diplomacy, and economic aid. Remarkable for a secretary of Defense, he has argued that the State Department is under-budgeted and understaffed."

Runners-up are Dick Lugar and, raising some doubts about Hughes' judgment, Condoleeza Rice.

For Obama, if they don't get the VP nod, Joe Biden and Sam Nunn head a list that includes foreign policy advisors Susan Rice, Dennis Ross and Tony Lake, all with high-level State Department experience.

But perhaps the most intriguing possibility is former Rep. Lee Hamilton, 77, who earned bipartisan respect as co-chair of both the 9/11 Commission and the Iraq Study Group, one of the most universally admired politicians of his generation.

Once Dick Cheney vacates the VP office, the Secretary of State may very well revert to being the most influential member of an Administration facing challenges in every part of the world. Voters won't get to make that choice, but it's worth keeping in mind when they pick someone who does.

A Sane Re-Start for the Iraq Debate

After all the wishful thinking and political posturing on all sides, a basis for serious discussion makes the “tenuous case” for staying in Iraq while scaling down our presence.

The report urging “strategic patience” is by Anthony Cordesman, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank chaired by former Democratic Senator Sam Nunn, with a bipartisan board including Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski and William S. Cohen, a former Republican Senator who was Secretary of Defense under Bill Clinton.

Some recent advances in Iraq, Cordesman writes, are the result of “sheer luck,” such as Sunni tribesmen turning against Al Qaeda insurgents. He quotes an unnamed U.S. official as describing our situation as "three dimensional chess in the dark while someone is shooting at you."

Rejecting the extremes of staying the course or immediate withdrawal, Cordesman makes a case for phasing down troop levels starting early next year.

His analysis and recommendations will draw fire for being too qualified, too middle-of-the-road and politically unsatisfying. But they have the ring of reality, something so rare in the furor over Iraq that has made Americans unhappy with both the Bush Administration and the Democratic Congress elected to oppose him.

Here, at least, is a starting point for facing the true options and thinking seriously about them.

As Cordesman writes, “The U.S. will ultimately be judged far more by how it leaves Iraq, and what it leaves behind, than how it entered Iraq.”

We’ve lost the war. Can we win the withdrawal?