while she was walking down the corridors and riding in the elevators. You could hear her coming a mile away.
âIâve been at State since the mid-1980s, and Iâve never seen such acrimony,â said a Foreign Service officer. âI had heard stories about Hillaryâs problems with anger management, but I didnât believe them until I saw them with my own eyes. After a telephone argument with Valerie Jarrett, Hillary threw a heavy water glass across her office and sent shards flying.
âAnother time,â this person continued, âafter a telephone argument with President Obama, she took her right arm and cleared off her small working desk, sending pictures, glasses, everything crashing to the floor.
âThe two times when she fainted [while boarding a plane in Yemen in 2011 and working in her office in 2012] were periods of stress brought on by furious arguments.
âAfter the episode with President Obama, I heard her tell Huma, âI donât want Bill to hear anything about this.ââ
Before she became secretary of state, Hillary had spent a great deal of time discussing with Bill the pros and cons ofObamaâs offer. She was suspicious of Obamaâs motives and skeptical that he would allow her to put her stamp on foreign policy.
âI donât want to be a pantsuit-wearing globetrotter,â Hillary told Bill in the presence of several friends.
To allay her fears, Bill asked his right-hand man, Doug Band, to negotiate an agreement with the White House. A âmemorandum of understandingâ was drafted and signed by both Clintons and by the White House counsel. The memorandum stipulated that Hillary would have a free hand to choose her own deputies and run the State Department as she saw fit. In return, Hillary agreed that the Clinton Foundation would not accept contributions from foreign donors as long as she was at Foggy Bottom, and that Bill would seek the Obama administrationâs approval of all his speeches.
Bill agreed to these stringent conditions because he saw the State Department job as an important station on Hillaryâs march to the White House. It would allow her to remain in the public eye during Obamaâs term in office and give her an opportunity to fill in her résumé as a woman who had the grit to deal with the worldâs toughest male leaders.
Bill had grandiose plans for Hillary: she would make peace between Israel and the Palestinians, open a dialogue with North Korea, bring pressure to bear on Iran, and force the ayatollahs to end their nuclear program.
Who knew? She might even end up with the Nobel Peace Prize.
There was only one problem with Billâs vision for his wife. It turned out that Hillaryâs paranoia about her enemies in the Obama White House was well founded.
Chief among the enemies were members of the triumvirate that ruled from the Oval OfficeâBarack Obama, Valerie Jarrett, and Michelle Obama. They never intended to let Hillary run foreign policy.
In her confrontations with Hillary, Jarrett had a formidable army to back her up: Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, and chief political adviser David Axelrod. Denis McDonough, a foreign policy adviser who ultimately replaced Emanuel as the presidentâs chief of staff, referred to Hillary as âthe principle implementer â of policy, not its architect.
Hillary was forced to assume therole she had most wanted to avoidâa pantsuit-wearing globetrotter. As one official told Politico , Hillary practiced âodometer diplomacy,â with âa focus on globetrotting to bolster Americaâs relationships abroad coupled with attempts to cope with an array of pop-up crises.â
When Caroline Kennedy was appointed ambassador to Japan, she asked Hillary what she could expect when she took up her post in Tokyo.
âDonât expect to get your real marching orders from State,â Hillary told Caroline.
âIâve been at State since the mid-1980s, and Iâve never seen such acrimony,â said a Foreign Service officer. âI had heard stories about Hillaryâs problems with anger management, but I didnât believe them until I saw them with my own eyes. After a telephone argument with Valerie Jarrett, Hillary threw a heavy water glass across her office and sent shards flying.
âAnother time,â this person continued, âafter a telephone argument with President Obama, she took her right arm and cleared off her small working desk, sending pictures, glasses, everything crashing to the floor.
âThe two times when she fainted [while boarding a plane in Yemen in 2011 and working in her office in 2012] were periods of stress brought on by furious arguments.
âAfter the episode with President Obama, I heard her tell Huma, âI donât want Bill to hear anything about this.ââ
Before she became secretary of state, Hillary had spent a great deal of time discussing with Bill the pros and cons ofObamaâs offer. She was suspicious of Obamaâs motives and skeptical that he would allow her to put her stamp on foreign policy.
âI donât want to be a pantsuit-wearing globetrotter,â Hillary told Bill in the presence of several friends.
To allay her fears, Bill asked his right-hand man, Doug Band, to negotiate an agreement with the White House. A âmemorandum of understandingâ was drafted and signed by both Clintons and by the White House counsel. The memorandum stipulated that Hillary would have a free hand to choose her own deputies and run the State Department as she saw fit. In return, Hillary agreed that the Clinton Foundation would not accept contributions from foreign donors as long as she was at Foggy Bottom, and that Bill would seek the Obama administrationâs approval of all his speeches.
Bill agreed to these stringent conditions because he saw the State Department job as an important station on Hillaryâs march to the White House. It would allow her to remain in the public eye during Obamaâs term in office and give her an opportunity to fill in her résumé as a woman who had the grit to deal with the worldâs toughest male leaders.
Bill had grandiose plans for Hillary: she would make peace between Israel and the Palestinians, open a dialogue with North Korea, bring pressure to bear on Iran, and force the ayatollahs to end their nuclear program.
Who knew? She might even end up with the Nobel Peace Prize.
There was only one problem with Billâs vision for his wife. It turned out that Hillaryâs paranoia about her enemies in the Obama White House was well founded.
Chief among the enemies were members of the triumvirate that ruled from the Oval OfficeâBarack Obama, Valerie Jarrett, and Michelle Obama. They never intended to let Hillary run foreign policy.
In her confrontations with Hillary, Jarrett had a formidable army to back her up: Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, and chief political adviser David Axelrod. Denis McDonough, a foreign policy adviser who ultimately replaced Emanuel as the presidentâs chief of staff, referred to Hillary as âthe principle implementer â of policy, not its architect.
Hillary was forced to assume therole she had most wanted to avoidâa pantsuit-wearing globetrotter. As one official told Politico , Hillary practiced âodometer diplomacy,â with âa focus on globetrotting to bolster Americaâs relationships abroad coupled with attempts to cope with an array of pop-up crises.â
When Caroline Kennedy was appointed ambassador to Japan, she asked Hillary what she could expect when she took up her post in Tokyo.
âDonât expect to get your real marching orders from State,â Hillary told Caroline.
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