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young. And this is true moving forward. Some men in the White
House are on the “society” side; some women in the State
Department are on the “government to government” side. And many
officials switch sides (and can switch back again) amid the long hours
of debate. The most common sentiment among foreign-policy
veterans reflects another familiar Bill Clinton line: “It sure was
simpler during the Cold War.”
For Hillary, the crisis mentality must eventually give way to the more
mundane realities of running the department. She is midway through
a five-year plan to increase the size of the State Department’s foreign-
service staff by 25 percent and double USAID. And she’s taken a leaf
from the Pentagon playbook and launched a “Q.D.D.R.”—
Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review. The idea is to ask
all the agencies housed at Foggy Bottom the larger questions—like
whether they are even focused on the right things. It’s a huge
structural project.
Hillary prides herself on sweating the small stuff, too. She’s big on
feedback—an intranet “Secretary’s Sounding Board” is bringing the
suggestion box into the modern age. She gets high marks from the
high-tech community for “21st-century statecraft” like using texting
to raise money for Haiti-earthquake victims and an Internet freedom
agenda she is pushing aggressively. She’s popular with State
Department employees for practical changes like providing full
benefits for same-sex partners (“Fix it!” she scolded bureaucrats who
were dragging their feet) and building showers to accommodate
people who cycle or run to work. In the past, meetings with foreign
ministers featured nothing more than bottled water. Hillary was
incredulous: “You can get coffee, tea, nuts all over the world, and in
Washington you get a bottle of water?” She was told, “That’s the way
we do it here.” Her chilly retort: “Not anymore.”

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