[NYTr] George Bush smooths path for Hillary

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

[What is happening at Murdoch's Times of London??]

sent by Steven L. Robinson Oct 8, 2007

[Democrats are quietly being placed into key positions in the Defense
and Treasury Departments as the Bush Administration seems intent on a
smooth transition. As part of this transition is the intent by some -
at least - in the Bush Admnistration to form a bipartisan consensus on
key issues, foremost among them US policy toward Iran and Iraq that
will hold no matter who gets elected.

(Note quote by Peggy Noonan at the end of the article.) SR]

The Sunday Times of London - Oct 7, 2007
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/us_elections/art
icle2604138.ece

George Bush smooths path for Hillary

by Sarah Baxter

BUSH administration officials are paving the way for a smooth
transition to a possible Democratic presidency as Hillary Clinton
consolidates her position as the overwhelming favourite to win her
party's nomination for the 2008 election.

Clinton has powered her way to the top of the Democratic pack,
establishing a 33-point lead in one poll last week over Barack Obama,
her nearest rival.

She raised $7m more than Obama in the last quarter and attracted more
individual contri-butors than the Illinois senator, proving her
popularity with grassroots Democrats.

With Clinton looking the near-inevitable nominee, Bush officials intend
to hold her to her promise to be tough on defence and national
security. Robert Gates, the defence secretary, is hoping to establish a
bipartisan consensus on defence that will last beyond next year's
election.

In the clearest sign of a shift in gear, Gates is to appoint John
Hamre, a former official in President Bill Clinton's administration, to
chair the Defense Policy Board once led by Richard Perle, a leading
neoconservative advocate of the invasion of Iraq. The board's job will
be to prepare for the transition to a new administration in 2008,
according to a Pentagon spokesman.

Hamre, who was Bill Clinton's deputy defence secretary in the 1990s, has
been highly critical of the conduct of the war on terror. In The
Washington Post last year he wrote: "The policies that led to
Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, secret renditions and warrantless wiretaps
have undermined America's towering moral authority."

In common with Gates, Hamre is sceptical about the value of the Iraq
troop surge. He recently served on a bipartisan commission on Iraq
chaired by James Jones, the former Nato commander. In evidence to
Congress last month, Hamre said: "Absent political reconciliation, it's
hard to see how this [the war] ends well."

However, Hamre, who heads the influential Center for Strategic and
International Studies in Washington, also argued that America "will be
hurt if we crawl out or run out of Iraq". He believes the next
president should maintain a vital but scaled-down presence in the
country in order to oversee the training of Iraqi security forces and
to "direct operations against known bad guys".

Lawrence Korb, a defence expert at the Center for American Progress, a
Democratic think tank, described Hamre's imminent appointment as a
"brilliant move" which would mark a dramatic break with Perle's era.
"Most people think the next president will be a Democrat and Gates, who
has been around for a long time, believes it is his job to ensure that
national security is not affected," Korb said.

Clinton has been sidestepping calls to pull US troops out of Iraq if she
wins, sticking to a broader promise to begin a phased withdrawal. In a
recent television interview, the New York senator refused to state that
all US combat troops would leave Iraq by the end of her first term in
office. She voted in the Senate last month to designate the Iranian
Revolutionary Guards a terrorist organisation.

Perle believes that Clinton might be prepared to order military strikes
against Iran if President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad takes Tehran's nuclear
programme to the brink. "If President Clinton is informed in March 2009
that we've got ironclad intelligence that if we don't act within the
next 30 days it's going to be too late, I wouldn't begin to predict
what she would do," Perle said. "Nobody wants to act before it is
absolutely essential . . . but things can change very quickly."

Perle is generous about the appointment of Hamre, arguing that the
Defense Policy Board has a tradition of bipartisanship. "He's an
experienced professional and a very good choice," Perle said, noting
that George W Bush had kept on George Tenet, a Clinton appointee, as
CIA chief after winning the 2000 election.

Bush believes Clinton will win the Democratic nomination and has
privately advised her not to voice antiwar rhetoric on Iraq that she
may come to regret, according to a new book, The Evangelical President,
by Bill Sammon. "It's different being a candidate and being the
president," Bush said. "No matter who the president is, no matter what
party, when they sit here in the Oval Office and seriously consider the
effect of a vacuum being created in the Middle East . . . they will
then begin to understand the need to continue to support the young
democracy."

The Treasury, under Henry "Hank" Paulson, has also been appointing
Democrat supporters to senior positions. Robert Novak, the conservative
columnist, reported that Paulson last week named Eric Mindich, a
leading Democratic fundraiser, for a key role as an adviser on
financial markets. One Republican in the Bush administration wrote
disapprovingly in an e-mail: "This leads some to wonder whether this
Treasury has become the preplaced Hillary Clinton team."

Clinton's domination of the Democratic field may prompt her leading
opponents to sharpen their rhetoric against her. So far the contest with
Obama and John Edwards, the former senator from North Carolina, has been
remarkably civil.

Edwards upped the ante against Clinton last week by attacking links
between Mark Penn, her senior adviser and poll-ster, and Blackwater,
the private security firm that was accused of recklessly killing 11
Iraqi civilians last month. "We don't want to replace a group of
corporate Republicans with a group of corporate Democrats," he said.

Edwards and Obama have rarely criticised Clinton directly by name, but
David Axelrod, Obama's campaign manager, said his candidate would
rather show a "common purpose to our politics rather than divisiveness
and political point-scoring".

It was too soon for Clinton's coronation, Axelrod said: "How-ard Dean
had plenty of momentum in the fall of 2003, when everyone was anointing
him the Democratic nominee. I'm happy if the Clintons want to do
victory laps in October; I'll take ours in January and February" when
the primary votes are counted.

Obama is still hoping to win the Iowa caucus, where Edwards is also
performing well. Michelle Obama, his wife, who will be visiting Britain
on a fundraising mission next week, let slip recently: "If Barack
doesn't win Iowa, it's just a dream."

Obama upset traditional voters last week by saying that he was against
shows of patriotism, such as wearing a pin lapel of the American flag.
"I decided I won't wear that pin on my chest," he said. "Instead I'm
going to try to tell the American people what I believe will make this
country great."

Peggy Noonan, President Reagan's former speechwriter, said the Clintons
had the Democratic party in a trance. She wrote in The Wall Street
Journal: "The Bushes are wired into the Republican money-line system;
the Clintons are wired into the Democratic money-line system. For two
generations now they have had the same dynamics in play . . . Is this
good for our democracy, this air of inevitability?"