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state requires more than energy, brains, and celebrity. Dean Acheson
helped rebuild Europe after World War II. Henry Kissinger, who
acted like the secretary of state for Richard Nixon even before he got
the job, engineered the opening to China. But does anyone think
Colin Powell left State with a better reputation than he had before
becoming secretary? Madeleine Albright and Condoleezza Rice
broke the gender barrier and were competent enough, but left no
historic imprint. The State Department isn’t called “Foggy Bottom”
for nothing.
For any secretary of state, the prerequisite for success is a strong
relationship with the president. “He’s hard for her to connect with,”
admits one of her top people. “It’s hard for her to break through to
the more-than-polite level.” That isn’t meant to suggest chilliness or
dysfunction. “Is it Bush-Baker?” the aide continues, referring to the
relationship between the first President Bush and James Baker, who
was so tight with his boss that he felt obliged to resign as secretary of
state to run Bush’s ill-fated re-election campaign in 1992. “No. But
there’s a lot of mutual respect, and she feels like she’s always got a
shot with him.” Imagine how it feels to be a supplicant, looking for
her “shot” at impressing the president. It was only four years ago that
Hillary said her main opponent in the Democratic primaries was
“irresponsible and frankly naïve” when he promised to meet with the
leaders of Iran, North Korea, and other rogue regimes without
preconditions during his first year in office. She hasn’t forgotten who
turned out to be right on that one.
One day I asked Hillary point-blank how she gets along with Obama,
with whom she meets a few times a week when neither is on the road.
She gave me a predictable answer, that her relationship is “not only
very good professionally but very warm personally.” Of course,
“warm” is just another term of art in Washington, where the advice to
anyone looking for a friend has long been to get a dog. When I ask

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