Posted on 12/04/2016 7:20:37 AM PST by rktman
I suppose I have more faith in the innate ability of human nature to adapt and to learn than you do, and less apt to be in awe of what in the bottom line is a job with a title than you are. There is no “secretary of state” school, any more than there is a “president” school. And the SoSs have a small army of assistants and advisors to assist them to navigate away from making egregious errors. Maybe someone should get a grip.
And yeah, I will freely admit that I admire small business owners. In fact, I suspect that I respect the “right stuff” qualities of small business owners more than you evidently do.
Sheesh. :-(
Go to any major U.S. trucking firm and find a career truck driver who has racked up more than a million miles on the road with no accidents and violations. I guarantee you that guy would be better qualified to serve in any of the people whose names have been put out there for any of these positions.
I AM a small business owner.
Well then you should know better than to shortchange yourself.
I’m done with you.
Understood. I also wouldn’t hire Sarah Palin to run a department in my company with her resume and experience.
Great — thanks!
Could not have been said better. A Bolton choice would be like Bush picking Cheney - a disaster for America.
Bolton was given a bad rap (imo) when he was up for the top UN job in 2006 and had to be given a recess appointment by President Bush. Bolton has mellowed out somewhat over the past decade, but his nomination for SoS would undoubtedly rekindle fierce opposition in the US Senate. That's something the transition team has to take into consideration.
No doubt he's qualified to do the job though.
Bolton was always supportive of Trump early on, not a surrogate like Giuliani but supportive nonetheless.
Rand Paul has already made it clear, he will be against the appointment of Bolton. So, we will see where this takes us.
John Bolton has spent his career fighting for American sovereignty and pursuing American interests by dealing with global threats. You may not agree with his policies, but that doesn't make him somebody who pushes foreign interests, no more than it makes you a globalist because I disagree with your foreign policies.
What threat to American interests was involved in the late 1990s when this guy was pushing the Clinton administration to topple the Milosevic regime in Serbia?
Not ready to forgive Petraeus, unless he comes clean about the Benghazi talking points.
Remember that Petraeus defended the drastic revision of the talking points. I believe the final version was written in the White House, probably with the last draft produced by Ben Rhodes.
But somewhere in the process, Hillary had her input too. Petraeus knew that the original talking points, as produced by the intelligence agencies, had nothing about the silly video. I believe it was Hillary who inserted the absurd video narrative, and Petraeus originally agreed to go along with it.
IIRC, Petraeus's participation in the coverup happened just before the public revelation of his affair with Paula Broadwell, and his sharing of classified material with her. Coincidence?
It pains me but Palin's comment on Crane tells me she has been rejected for anything important. Just my opinion.
Until Trump came on line I was going to write Palin in no matter who won the primary, so I am by no means a Palin detractor.
One point I was trying to make (ahem) was that the article frames the boundaries of the solution space— the “box.”
People can argue and argue what is inside the box. Some folks are even well adapted to arguing what is inside boxes that they are given.
Arguing (or arguing endlessly, lol) about what is inside the box ignores the potential of what lies outside the box.
I think Trump is an outside-the-box thinker.
I also think that Palin is an outside-the-box thinker.
I also think or at least hope that outside-the-box thinkers tend to value each other more than others do.
For this reason I hope that Palin is not out of the running for a Trump Cabinet position. Given her out of the box thinking— to my mind, a valuable asset that still attracts flak from most if not all directions— and her willingness to speak out instead of being merely a yes-person, I would hope that she is still under consideration for something. Furthermore I think giving her Secretary of the VA, a relatively thankless position, would be OK but yields all the drawbacks of the negative MSM gauntlet while relatively little of the advantages of her O-O-B skills (this is just my current view, subject to revision as I learn and understand more). She’d be good in VA, but State needs someone fearless to shake it up, and IMHO over the years Palin has proven in spades that she is fearless.
For these reasons I am not as skeptical as you. Nor am I tracking the latest breadcrumbs since I think it would be like Trump to lead a false trail to put the MSM off the scent (so to speak) of his true intentions, giving him more motion to play the entire field instead of the few that will inevitably be held by others (eg in the MSM or even in the GOP) who presume they know more than he does.
To answer the question narrowly, I see less differences between the four folks listed than most. I think there is a chance that they all might work out, though I agree with the previously expressed doubts about Petraeus due to his role in Benghazi— puzzling to me to this day. A “problem” with someone like Guiliani or Bolton is that they are sometimes “too close” to the action, and therefore have a certain amount of relevant political baggage, or at least perceived political baggage. Such baggage leaves the field free for an able relative outsider to come in and “clean house.”
The decision making process is very simple: who does the left NOT want Trump to pick for SoS? Then you pick that person. And that person is Bolton.
I find little on Bolton and the Clinton/Blair bombing of Serbia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_R._Bolton
Looks like Bolton even came out against the creation of Kosovo.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouQwgLBtFcE
This does not mean I found out that Bolton did not advocate for bombing Serbia/Yugoslavia, I just find little mention of this.
I saw someone mention this in a post, Bolton did not serve Clinton of course.
If he bombed Serbia, that would be a deal breaker.
However, the risk of not telling Clinton what he wanted to hear constituted a clear and present danger to Bolton's career plans.
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