Presidential candidate no more

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been more refreshingly honest and open about policy than her predecessor, Condoleeza Rice, who mostly just stuck to the official government position whenever she was asked a question.

However, Clinton’s sometimes sharp responses to questions posed by Pakistani citizens last week were overly negative and distracting from the trip’s purpose: selling United States policy to a population whose support is critically important to the U.S.  

While it is certainly a good thing that we have a Secretary of State who actually exposes herself to the regular people in the nations that she is dealing with, it defeats the purpose of conversing with them if you are going to engage in a caustic debate about U.S. policy. Exposing yourself to official dignitaries is a bad thing, but getting in verbal boxing matches with everyday citizens isn’t much better. 

Much of the criticism leveled at Clinton during the discussions was well-founded. The U.S. has killed thousands of Pakistani civilians through the controversial use of unmanned drones on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, and the presence of U.S. troops in Afghanistan has to some extent destabilized Pakistan and made it more violent.

Secretary Clinton would have earned a lot more respect from the Pakistanis she was conversing with if she had responded with sympathy and understanding instead of immediately striking a harsh defensive stance. 

The dialogues and town hall meetings that have marked Secretary Clinton’s tenure have, overall, been effective, but the ones that she had during this trip went wrong.
They could have been about explaining and building support for U.S. policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan by conversing directly to the Pakistani people instead of through the media or political officials.

Instead, they disintegrated into  hostile bickering between the population of a country critical to our interests and our nation’s top diplomat.

Having a positive open dialogue about U.S. policy with the Pakistani people is a good thing, and Clinton should continue to engage in positive discussions with the populations of the world.

But Clinton also needs to make sure that next time she is confronted with harsh and heated criticism of U.S. policy that she responds like a diplomat would, not like a candidate during a presidential debate.