Richard Lugar Should Top an Obama Secretary of State Short List

The post of Secretary of State is one of the more important positions that President-Elect Barack Obama must fill. People mentioned for the job include Senators Hillary Clinton (D-NY), John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a Democrat.

We have covered Senator Hillary Clinton elsewhere, so we can proceed with examining the other three.

John Kerry would tend to be the most controversial of the three. When Kerry was running for president, he suggested American foreign policy should not be motivated by American interests, but by something he called a "global test." By "global test," it was meant that certain foreign countries, especially those in Europe, would have to approve and be comfortable with American foreign policy decisions before they could be made.

The problem with John Kerry's "global test" is that it fails to take into account the unique leadership role the United States has had thrust upon it. The knee jerk reaction of quite a few countries, especially in Europe, to a foreign crisis, such as Iran acquiring nuclear weapons, is appeasement. The United States has to cajole, persuade and occasionally compel other countries to go along with necessary measures, whether they be economic sanctions or even military action, to deal with foreign threats. To wait upon the approval of France, for example, before doing anything is just the same as doing nothing.

Bill Richardson once served as American ambassador to the United Nations, and thus has some actual foreign policy experience. While at the UN, Bill Richardson was pretty much in the mainstream of Democratic foreign policy thinking and did not behave too alarmingly. The one drawback to a Bill Richardson appointment is his involvement in the Monica Lewinsky scandal, during which he offered a job to Lewinsky at the UN. Richardson may have concealed some of his knowledge about the scandal during grand jury testimony.