Tag Archives: ashton carter

How Hillary Clinton can get her groove back: paid parental leave

One way for Hillary Clinton to align her message and draw support from both the hard left and the center-right is to embrace paid parental leave. (Facebook)
One way for Hillary Clinton to align her message and draw support from both the hard left and the center-right is to embrace paid parental leave at the center of her campaign. (Facebook)

It’s not been a great night for former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton, who is losing the New Hampshire primary to Vermont senator Bernie Sanders by a margin of more than 20%USflag

Though there’s reason to believe that Clinton will bounce back in the Nevada caucuses on February 20 and the South Carolina primary on February 27, there’s one low-hanging piece of fruit that she could pluck that might instantly boost her campaign’s chances. It’s a policy that could attract Sanders supporters, emphasize the historic nature of her candidacy to become the first female president of the United States and put the eventual Republican presidential nominee on the defensive, all at once.

It’s paid parental leave — and the United States is one of the few countries in the developed world that doesn’t guarantee it. The OECD average is 17 weeks of maternity leave, the United Kingdom offers 39 weeks, Mexico offers six weeks, and many European countries offer far more to both mothers and fathers (though not always paid at 100% of one’s income):

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(OECD)

In fact, extending Australia’s paid parental leave was at the heart of former prime minister Tony Abbott’s successful 2013 bid to return his conservative Liberal Party to government. Indeed, it was his subsequent u-turn on parental leave that cost Abbott his popularity and, ultimately, his premiership.  Continue reading How Hillary Clinton can get her groove back: paid parental leave

Ashton Carter will be Obama’s fourth defense secretary

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Just a week after US president Barack Obama in essence fired his defense secretary, former Republican senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, he has apparently found a successor — Ashton Carter.USflag

Carter served as deputy secretary of defense between October 2011 and December 2013 under both Hagel and Hagel’s predecessor, Leon Panetta, a longtime Democratic operative, former budget chief, Clinton administration chief of staff and California congressman.

Carter, who graduated from Yale University with majors in medieval history and physics, has an extensive background as under secretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics. He is a Rhodes scholar with a doctoral degree in physics as well.

As a defense secretary, he will be more like Panetta or Robert Gates, a master of the Pentagon and its bureaucracy and budget. He isn’t expected to be a visionary, like former Bush-era defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, which is just as well, given that so much national defense policymaking is centered in the White House, not at the Pentagon. Nevertheless, The Atlantic‘s editor-at-large, Steve Clemons noted earlier on Tuesday on Twitter that Carter is hawkish with respect to Iran, which could nudge administration policy, a week after stalled negotiations over Iran’s nuclear weapons program were extended until July 2015.

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RELATED: Hagel’s exit symbolizes Obama policy shift

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Unlike Hagel (or even Panetta), Carter is not a politician, but rather a career technocrat and policy wonk.  As an assistant secretary of defense under US president Bill Clinton, Carter was responsible for international security policy, and he has written extensively on the topic of nuclear non-proliferation.

When Obama was looking to replace Panetta two years ago, Carter was on the short list as well, and there were indications that Hagel and Carter didn’t always see eye-to-eye at the Pentagon, one reason why Carter may have stepped down as deputy secretary late last year.

His background from the immediate post-Cold War period makes Carter especially cognizant of many issues in the former Soviet Union, perhaps an especially relevant qualification as Russia’s aggression toward Ukraine (and perhaps the Baltic states and Georgia) increases.

Carter is easily expected to win confirmation by the US Senate, which will be Republican-controlled as of early January, following Republican gains in both houses of the US Congress in November’s midterm congressional elections.

Hagel’s exit symbolizes Obama policy shift

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The headline should have read yesterday:USflag

“US President elected to end military quagmires in the Middle East fires prominent anti-quagmire Defense Secretary, ramps up for ambiguous Middle Eastern quagmire.”

Whatever the reasons for US president Barack Obama’s decision to fire defense secretary Chuck Hagel, it’s clear that Hagel’s brand of foreign-policy realism is falling ever further out of favor, as the Obama administration moves toward a more interventionist approach to foreign policy in its final two years.

Though the decision, in superficial ways, is similar to the 2006 resignation of former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, which also followed a devastating midterm election for president George W. Bush, Hagel’s experience at the Pentagon had little in common with Rumsfeld’s tenure.

Hagel, his worldview forged as a squad leader in the US army infantry during the Vietnam War, was always a cautious prairie conservative. As a former US senator from Nebraska, Hagel stood up to his own Republican Party over the conduct of the US occupation of Iraq in the mid-2000s.

That skepticism seemed to be pitch-perfect for the Obama administration in earlier years, when it was taking pains to extricate the United States from internal conflicts in the Middle East.

Obama successful ended the US occupation of Iraq, he studiously avoided taking sides in the Syrian civil war (even when it meant swallowing criticism for backing away from his ‘red line’ statement about the use of chemical weapons), and he kept US military assistance to a minimum in the NATO-led effort to support anti-regime rebels in Libya.

Critics have argued that the Obama administration has pursued a disengaged approach to world affairs, thereby explaining both Libya’s disintegration into chaos and, in no small measure, the vacuum that allowed the Islamic State group (الدولة الإسلامية‎) to wreak havoc throughout traditional Mesopotamia — eastern Syria and western Iraq.

That criticism seems to have resonated with Obama and his foreign policy and national security team, and Obama’s apparent decision to make a personnel change seems more important than the fact that Hagel is out and someone new is in. Telescoping that decision comes with the real costs involved with pushing a high-profile nomination through what will be a Republican-controlled Senate in January 2015. Hagel stumbled from the beginning, starting with the Congressional hearings upon his appointment and who seemed to lack the presence for the role. But neither he nor his successor is likely to call the shots on foreign policy.

Continue reading Hagel’s exit symbolizes Obama policy shift