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Competing Viewpoints

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Los Angeles Times

Published: December 1, 2008

WASHINGTON - President-elect Barack Obama says he wants to lead an administration in which strong-willed senior officials are ready to debate forcefully for differing points of view.

It appears that in two months, he'll get his wish, and then some.

Obama's new national security team probably will be led by three veteran officials who have differed with each other - and with the president-elect - on the full menu of security issues, including Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, nuclear weapons and the Arab-Israeli conflict.

The president-elect is expected today to begin introducing a team that includes Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton for secretary of state; retired Marine Gen. James Jones, the new national security adviser; and Robert Gates, who has agreed to stay on as defense secretary.

But Obama will have some clear choices among their views, which differ in nuance in some cases, and more starkly in others. Obama appears to be determined to keep them in line; advisers say he believes the Pentagon has become too strong in the Bush years, and he wants to reassert White House control.

Obama also planned to name Washington lawyer Eric Holder as attorney general and Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano as homeland security secretary. He also planned to announce campaign foreign policy adviser Susan Rice as U.N. ambassador.

HILLARY CLINTON

SECRETARY OF STATE

Obama's choice of Hillary Clinton was an extraordinary gesture of goodwill after a year in which the two rivals competed for the Democratic nomination in a long, bitter primary battle.

They clashed repeatedly on foreign affairs. Obama criticized Clinton for her vote to authorize the Iraq war. Clinton said Obama lacked the experience to be president and she chided him for saying he would meet with leaders of nations such as Iran and Cuba without conditions.

The bitterness began melting away in June after Clinton ended her campaign and endorsed Obama. Advisers said Obama had for several months envisioned Clinton as his top diplomat, and he invited her to Chicago to discuss the job just a week after the Nov. 4 election. The two met privately Nov. 13 in Obama's transition office in downtown Chicago.

Clinton was said to be interested and then to waver, concerned about relinquishing her Senate seat and the political independence it conferred. Those concerns were largely resolved after Obama assured her she would be able to choose a staff and have direct access to him, advisers said.

BILL CLINTON'S CONCESSIONS

Bill Clinton's far-flung business, social and charitable dealings around the world appeared to be the biggest hurdle for Hillary Clinton's appointment as the top U.S. diplomat in the new Obama administration.

Lawyers for the former president worked with Obama transition team attorneys to hammer out a deal to remove potential conflicts of interest and inadvertent clashes with State Department policy. Bill Clinton agreed to:

•Disclose the names of every contributor to his foundation since its inception in 1997 and all contributors going forward.

•Refuse donations from foreign governments to the Clinton Global Initiative, his annual charitable conference.

•Cease holding CGI meetings overseas.

•Volunteer to step away from day-to-day management of the foundation while Hillary Clinton is secretary of state.

•Submit his speaking schedule to review by State Department and White House counsel.

•Submit any new sources of income to a similar ethical review.

JAMES JONES

NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER

Jones, an admired former Marine commandant and supreme allied commander of NATO, was appointed last November as a Bush administration envoy charged with trying to improve the often dysfunctional Palestinian security forces. As part of that assignment, he drafted a report that caused a stir in Israel by criticizing the Israeli Defense Forces' activities in the Palestinian territories.

Jones has separated himself from Obama on a few issues. In 2007, he warned that setting an arbitrary deadline for removing U.S. troops from Iraq, which presumably would include Obama's campaign call to remove combat units in 16 months, would be "against our national interest."

In other areas, Jones is more in harmony with Obama. He has agreed with the president-elect that the focus on Iraq has distracted from a needed emphasis on Afghanistan.
ROBERT GATES
DEFENSE SECRETARY

As defined by his commander in chief, the mission of Defense Secretary Robert Gates for the past two years has been to win the war in Iraq.

But beginning on Jan. 20, Gates' mission will be to end the war in Iraq. That contrast might seem to leave Gates consigned to serious whiplash.

There are points of clear agreement between Obama and Gates, with both saying that U.S. force reductions in Iraq should allow more troops to be sent to Afghanistan.

Early in his tenure at the Pentagon, Gates mounted a remarkable inside initiative to reverse Bush administration policy and close the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, although he was overruled.

ERIC HOLDER

ATTORNEY GENERAL

CURRENT JOB: He is a partner at the Washington, D.C., law firm of Covington & Burling.

CREDENTIALS: Holder served as co-chief along with Caroline Kennedy of Obama's vice-presidential selection process; he is a graduate of Columbia University and Columbia Law School; he served as a federal prosecutor, a District of Columbia Superior Court judge, U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia and deputy attorney general during the Clinton administration.
JANET NAPOLITANO
HOMELAND SECURITY

CURRENT JOB: Governor of Arizona; Democrat.

CREDENTIALS: Former U.S. attorney and state attorney general; first woman to serve as chairman of the National Governors Association; attorney for Anita Hill in her sexual harassment case against Clarence Thomas.

SUSAN RICE

U.N. AMBASSADOR

CURRENT JOB: Obama's senior foreign policy adviser
CREDENTIALS: Assistant secretary of state for Africa under President Clinton; senior adviser to Kerry-Edwards campaign. A graduate of Stanford University, she earned a Rhodes scholarship and a doctorate in international relations from Oxford University.

Information from The Associated Press, The New York Times, The Washington Post and McClatchy-Tribune was used in this report

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