Civility | Democracy | News-Opinion
The Enemy in Foggy Bottom?
Aaron David Miller, Foreign Policy
A couple of weeks ago, I proposed a howler of an idea in this space: If Barack Obama is lucky enough to be reelected, he should choose his Republican opponent, Mitt Romney, as his secretary of state.
The idea wasn’t serious; the point behind it was. For the first time in a quarter-century, the United States has a bipartisan — even nonpartisan — consensus on many of the core issues relating to the country’s foreign policy. Briefly put, if you can get past the campaign rhetoric, there’s not much difference between the candidates on Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, fighting terrorists, avoiding costly wars, the Arab Spring, and even, in the real world of imperfect options, how to deal with recalcitrant Russians and Chinese.
That consensus may prove to be pretty durable. But to give it real meaning, whoever is elected president ought to choose a secretary of state clearly and unmistakably identified with the opposing party.
