Obama Cabinet Watch: Abandon All Hope Now

Governor “Kim Jong” Bill Richardson is reported to be in the running for appointment as Special Envoy to North Korea, a position the Democrats are talking about dual-hatting with the position of special envoy for human rights. As I noted previously, Richardson’s statements to or about North Korea are conspicuously devoid of any references to North Korea’s death camps, its malign neglect of millions of starving people, or public executions.

Worse, Richardson actively sought out photo ops with officials of the genocidal regime as a marketing gimmick to burnish his foreign policy credentials and sell his ability set aside moral trivialities for the sake of “peace.” What’s the matter, don’t you like peace?

Richardson has three big strikes against him in which I’d invested a lot of optimism: first, he crossed the Clintons (“Judas!“), who must not want him meddling in their foreign policy fiefdom now. Second, he’s under an ethical cloud related to the alleged steering of contracts. Third, the Obama people are reportedly upset that Kim Jong Bill wasn’t up-front about said ethical cloud while he was under consideration for Commerce Secretary.

If Richardson gets the position, I’d say with high confidence that it’s time to abandon all hope for change, and that the Obama Administration will do even worse than the Bush Administration did on pressing this issue with the North Koreans. To make Kim Jong Bill our point-man on getting the North Koreans to do anything we want them to do would be the equivalent of putting Jack Madoff in charge of the S.E.C.

If ever there was a nomination that deserved to be held up, this is it.

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Not surprisingly, Hillary Clinton has no better ideas about how to deal with North Korea than the way Chris Hill has been doing it. Bob Gates is ambivalent at best.

And there’s this: “The Barack Obama administration should seek behavioral change from North Korea rather than a sudden collapse of the regime, says the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations, which advises the Barack Obama administration. In a report released Wednesday, the CFR also calls for close cooperation with neighbors including China to avoid conflict.” Given China’s generosity to the Clintons, I’m sure there will be plenty of cooperation.