Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post
Newsgroups: americast.wpost
From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com
Organization: American Cybercasting
Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com
Subject: Will Clinton Tap the Carter State Prime Candidates for Senior
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 92 05:02:45 EST
Message-ID: <53.1992Nov16.050246@AmeriCast.com>

Will Clinton Tap the Carter State Department?; Prime Candidates
for Senior Foreign Policy Posts May Be Branded by 1980 Iran Hos-
tage Crisis<By John M.  Goshko=Washington Post Staff Writer=

Speculation about whether Warren M.  Christopher, director of
president-elect Clinton's transition team, will become secretary
of state has raised the companion question of how many people
from the presidency of Jimmy Carter will return to run the
government.

So far, many names from the Carter years, 1977 to 1980, have
popped up on the ever-expanding lists of who's who.

After 12 years out of office, the Democrats can dip into a talent
pool for domestic policy and find experienced people in academia
and industry and at the state and local levels.  But in the
foreign affairs and national security areas, when it comes to
hands-on experience in making and implementing foreign policy,
the Democrats' pool is smaller and may be limited almost ex-
clusively to those, like Christopher, who worked in the Carter
administration.

That could cause problems for Clinton, because the American
public's memory of Carter's foreign policy record is branded in-
delibly by a single event that, fairly or unfairly, became the
standard by which his presidency was measured: the 1980 Iran hos-
tage crisis.  By far the largest number of Clinton's advisers on
foreign policy are graduates of the Carter administration. Chris-
topher was deputy secretary of state; Samuel Berger, named last
Thursday as Clinton's transition director for foreign policy and
national security, was deputy head of policy planning at the
State Department during that period. Dozens of others who colla-
borated on giving advice and briefings and writing campaign posi-
tion papers for Clinton held a wide range of senior policy posi-
tions at the State and Defense departments and the National Secu-
rity Council.

"If you liked the Carter administration, you're going to love a
Clinton State Department," said one former official who has held
important foreign policy posts under three presidents.

That prediction could be premature, however. Everyone connected
with the Clinton transition team insists that questions about ap-
pointments have not been addressed. At this point, they say, no
one knows what jobs  are likely to go to Christopher or anyone
else.

Nevertheless, Clinton, whose campaign included promises to bring
new faces and ideas into government, will encounter the kind of
Most of the new faces will land on the lower rungs of the poli-
cymaking apparatus.<

>

problems that confronted Carter after his election in November
1976 when he tried to distance himself from  the Democratic es-
tablishment associated with the unpopular 1960s Vietnam War poli-
cies of Lyndon B. Johnson.

In the end, Carter did what all other recent presidents, Republi-
can and Democrat, have done: He staffed his administration by
giving the top jobs to influential party figures who had climbed
through the ranks of earlier administrations (Cyrus R. Vance and
Zbigniew Brzezinski, for instance) and backed them up with
younger-generation loyalists eager to get their toes on the
ladder.

When Clinton makes appointments, there undoubtedly will be some
new names. If experience is any guide, they will come largely
from university faculties and the staffs of Democratic members of
Congress.

Some - like Michael Mandelbaum, an academic, and Nancy Soderberg,
a former aide to Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) who was named
deputy to Berger last week - are newcomers who gained prominence
during the campaign.  But most of the new faces will land on the
lower rungs of the policymaking apparatus.

For the more important jobs - those ranging from Cabinet posi-
tions down through the ranks of undersecretaries, assistant
secretaries and ambassadors - Clinton has only three or four
places in which to look for foreign policy expertise.

Some spots will be filled by members of the Foreign Service and
other parts of the career bureaucracy. The president-elect also
can look to Capitol Hill, where powerful Democrats such as Sens.
Sam Nunn of Georgia and Bill Bradley of New Jersey can stake a
claim to certain jobs if they want them.

Other congressional Democrats, such as Rep. Stephen J.  Solarz of
New York, lost bids for reelection and now hope to transfer the
foreign policy expertise they gained as legislators to the execu-
tive branch.  And there are several neoconservative Democrats,
among them Richard Schifter, Joshua Muavchek and Penn Kemble, who
have returned to the fold after deserting the party during the
Carter years.

However, when Clinton sifts through the re'sume's, he will find
that the biggest list of potential appointees - one with more
names than it is possible to mention - goes back to the Carter
administration. And, while they collectively are tied to memories
of the year-long crisis in Tehran - what television called "Amer-
ica Held Hostage" - their overall mark on foreign policy actually
was much more complex and far-ranging.

For most of its first three years, the Carter administration had
a foreign policy record that, while controversial, was largely
successful.  It introduced human rights as a major factor in U.S.
policymaking. It took a large agenda of unfinished business left
over from earlier administrations - the Panama Canal treaties,
the opening to China, the lifting of Congress's aid embargo
against Turkey - and handled it successfully.

And, in what was its high point, the Carter administration spear-
headed the Camp David accords that made peace between Israel and
Egypt and that now have been resurrected, after more than a de-
cade in limbo, to form the basis of the current Middle East peace
talks.

In the 12 years since Carter officials left government, many of
the issues they grappled with, such as the Cold War, have disap-
peared or changed considerably. Others, such as trade and mone-
tary policy, are likely to take on increasing importance.

Former Carter people have been engaged in other fields since
1980: practicing law, acting as business consultants and lobby-
ists, teaching at universities. Some no longer want to be in
government.  But, as their eagerness to aid in Clinton's campaign
made clear, many would respond favorably to being called back.
What Clinton must decide now is how many will get the
chance.<02:51 11-16C9999-----

Copyright 1992, The Washington Post.  This story is from the
Washington Post's Capitol Edition On-Line and is not to be ar-
chived or redistributed.

For more information, send-email to American Cybercasting Cor-
poration (usa@AmeriCast.COM)