So, former VP Dick Cheney says "The performance now of Barack Obama as he staffs up the national security team for the second term is dismal... Frankly, what he has appointed are second-rate people." Well, to be charitable to Barack's second-raters, at least our third-rate president has learned one leadership axiom -- surround yourself with people smarter and more capable than you are. Yet what a tragedy to waste even second-raters on a national security policy that is but a portfolio of indifference and cynicism. "What Difference Does It Make?" Madame Secretary Hillary Clinton's now infamous nihilistic retort to pesky questioning from Wisconsin's senator Ron Johnson capped nearly a century of profoundly second-rate performances from Democrats. It started with William Jennings Bryan succumbing to a severe case of mal-de-mer as Woodrow Wilson's top diplomat following President Wilson's stern rebuke to Germany for having torpedoed the Luistania in 1915. Of course Bryan and Mrs. Clinton arrived at the State Department with identical motivations. Neither was the slightest bit qualified -- Bryan the Great Plains populist and perennial presidential aspirant, finally exhausted, pledging his support for Wilson in 1912; Hillary, the undistinguished convenient U.S. senator, merely stoic collateral from her husband's serial philandering, losing to Obama via suspect primary vote tallies. Both appointed as neat political tucks conveniently designed to marginalize one-time rivals. What a contrast to George C. Marshall and Dean Acheson, considered among the top ten secretaries of state since Thomas Jefferson held the job under President Washington, the only modern-era Democrat secretaries of state to be considered "first-rate". Marshall and Acheson, appointed by a first-rate president, actually brought legitimate credentials to the job. In fact, since Marshall, the Democrats haven't proffered a single distinguished secretary of state. So why start now?
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