Diplomacy

Hillary Gets House in Order

Prepares to expand State Department’s power.

Barack Obama isn’t the only one hoping to hit the ground running: His Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, is looking to build “a more powerful State Department,” reports The New York Times, by growing its budget, appointing high-profile special envoys to trouble spots, and increasing its role in global economic issues. She is now recruiting Jacob L. Lew, her husband’s former budget director, to serve alongside James B. Steinberg, her husband’s former deputy national security adviser, as her top deputies. The goal is to win back power for the government’s main diplomatic arm after Bush handed so much of it over to the Pentagon, vice president, and intelligence services. “There’s no question that there is a reinvention of the wheel here,” said one public policy analyst. “But it’s geared not so much as a reaction to Bush as to a fairly astute analysis of what’s going to work in foreign policy.”