STEVE PIECZENIK TALKS

Memorandum to POTUS

Subject: Appointment of SecState-Susan E. Rice? 

Issue: Recent allegations concerning possible WH ‘interference’ in Benghazi Affair places an undue burden on your second term requiring excessive political capital to be dispensed on Ms Rice’s nomination.

Ms. Rice, despite an impressive personal history of education-National Cathedral Girl’s School  Valedictorian—no minor point as well as attendance at Stanford University and Oxford makes her appear highly  erudite and knowledgeable. 

But quite frankly, Mr President,  I have friends and family (women) who attended National Cathedral School and Stanford and I would happily attest to the fact that none is suited to be SecState.  So in terms of education, there really is very little here to qualify her for SecState. 

It is documented that Ms Rice has a very mercurial temperament not suitable to the Senior StatesPerson for the USA.  As you well know, she was described ‘as blustery’ when she was Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs. 

Example: as the UN Envoy she wrote on Twitter ”Disgusted that Russia and China prevented the U.N. Security Council from fulfilling its sole purpose.”

Even I can do better controlling my own brash, insolent behavior (well, …maybe not but) I would never nominate myself as Sec State let alone UN Envoy.

Frankly,  as a former DAS under Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Bush Sr, I am not clear how any one of those great SecStates put up with my ‘Rice-like’ behaviors.  So I can’t condemn her for behavior which I, supposedly a mature psychiatrist,  demonstrated—demanding, insulting, arrogant and ‘damn-the-torpedoes’ attitude. 

  But in my defense, if there is any, I was really in and out of State to ‘accomplish’ strategies and tactics and negotiations that in retrospect may have require more tact on my part.

  I must say though, I do sympathize with Ms Rice on the abysmal handling and malignant negligence that President Bill Clinton demonstrated in his allowing 800,000 Rwandans to be slaughtered.  But I blame that on Clinton’s basic ‘cowardice’ and ‘Hillary’s manly  advice not to get her Bill involved in a ‘genocide’.   Rice was furious as she should have been.  But it would have been more impressive if she resigned on her differences from a morally impoverished sociopath like Bill Clinton.  From that point of view,  Ms Rice appears to be politically too ambitious and eager for her ‘raisin in the sun’. 

Mr President, the US is in a state of international crises spanning from the Middle East to Asia.   Ms Rice has never been involved in those areas of the world and her lack of poise, knowledge and expertise makes her both a political and an intellectual liability. 

Constructive Alternatives: 

Mr President, as you know, it is always easier to eliminate a candidate for Sec State but I want to offer you the perfect candidate who is a seasoned, knowledgeable and highly trusted Professional Diplomat which is quite frankly what this country needs for now. May I take the liberty, of course without his permission or knowledge to nominate, Career Ambassador [the highest rank in the US Foreign Service] Thomas R. Pickering who had been UN Ambassador from 1989-1992.  At that time, the NY Times declared Pickering to be “arguably the best-ever US representative to that body”. 

 I have worked with him over twenty or more years in many incarnations and I have never met a better candidate for Sec State than Ambassador Pickering. 

But please do not take my word for it despite the fact that I may have been the first Conservative Nixon Republican who voted for you!

Let’s go over his incredible resume and compare…
  Before joining the State Department, he served on active duty in the US Navy from 1956-1959. Then he remained in the Navy reserve as LT Commander. His military service would make him unique in that our military officers feel much more comfortable with someone who has voluntarily served our country. We have not had a SecState since James Baker who has served in the military.

Most importantly, his four decades in the Foreign Service included Ambassador to Russia [1993-1996]; India[ 1992-1993]; Israel [1985-1988]; El Salvador[1983-1985]; Nigeria [1981-1983]; and Jordan [1974-1978].  He was also Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs from 1997-2000 . 

  As a former participant with Israel in a multitude of negotiations including helping to design the Camp David Peace Accords [to which you should really consult President Jimmy Carter who deserves sole credit for it rather than Bill Clinton], I can personally testify that no other FSO or American could have dealt so skillfully with Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir [ex-Chief of Mossad -- a failed Jewish businessman  can you believe that? -- and a former terrorist in the Irgun Zvai Leumi].

Not surprisingly,  King Hussein of Jordan for whom many of us in the State Department admired for his sagacity and temperance declared Pickering as “the best American Ambassador I’ve dealt with”.  

From 1978-1981,  Pickering served as Assistant Secretary of State for Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs before he became Ambassador to Nigeria and then Ambassador to El Salvador, where there were ‘attempted assassination threats’ against Pickering  from the right wing politicians. 

He is fluent in French, Spanish, and Swahili languages. And he has a working knowledge of Russian, Hebrew and Arabic.

Mr President, he is the LeBron James of Diplomacy. 

Ms Rice should not be dismissed but rather, she might serve as your next National Security Advisor while Tom Donilon,  John O. Brennan, and others in the WH take  a much needed respite from ‘screwing up’ our foreign policy.  She needs some more time in the oven before she is ready…better for the country, better for the world, better for you and better for her (you pick the order of importance).

The choice is yours of course.

  But one thing I have learned working for five previous Presidents: Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan and Bush Sr,---this second term is a chance to correct the mistakes you made in the first term. Of course we don’t need to go over them here.  Most importantly, you need to demonstrate to the American people (all of us) that you UNDERSTAND how important it is to work with congress (especially the senate) in terms of foreign policy- this is not a one man show, don’t destroy your legacy…be smart and use the talents of the elected team in this game.

  Most importantly, Mr President, you now have to consider how you want future generations to regard you as the first African-American President in the glorious history of this country.

  Your legacy will not be written on the basketball courts playing with your buddies, including Ms. Rice, but on what you accomplished domestically and internationally. 

To make my point a little more blunt, let me say that each of the POTUS who I had served had made their mark on history.

Nixon, despite the Watergate disaster, he had a ‘grand strategy’ for working with and against the Soviet Union and China. No personal blemish can take his foreign policy accomplishments away from him.

  Ford, took over the Presidency at a very tumultuous time when ‘all hell could have broken loose’ but he gave back this nation it’s rightful sense of dignity and propriety. He is in my opinion a very underrated president. 

 As for Carter, whom you and your colleagues seem to denigrate, there is much you can learn from him.  No man has created more peace in this past fifty years, than Jimmy Carter who singlehandedly orchestrated and placed himself in ‘harm’s way’ to negotiate what then seemed like an impossible task: The Israeli –Egyptian Peace Treaty.  He was also wise enough to fire over four thousand CIA operatives who were as Eisenhower correctly stated to Allen Dulles, creating ”A Legacy of Ashes”. 

  Ronald Reagan was well read about Foreign Policy way before he came into the WH.  So within one hundred days,  he initiated the ‘take down of the Soviet Union’ . But strategists like me were first sent to Rand in Santa Monica to develop the Political /Psychological Blueprints in conjunction with an ‘effective, committed, non-contracted CIA’. 

Bush Sr was a very modest man and never really talked about his accomplishments in foreign affairs.  So I will take a few minutes to explain that although Reagan had initiated the Soviet Union Regime Change, it was really Bush Sr and his exceedingly talented team of Baker and Zoelleck who completed that initiative. 

Similarly that same team along with a professional Diplomat by the name of Chester Crocker,  spent over eight years of his professional life to affect the elimination of Apartheid in South Africa. 

  You see, Mr President, it’s not people like Clinton—Hillary or Bill or even Susan Rice –that really move the  insurmountable mountains like ‘the elimination of Apartheid’.   It’s quiet diplomats like Chester Crocker and a professional team from State and England [which also deserves a heartfelt gratitude for their reconciliation efforts] who make history. 

  But these professionals including Bush Sr, don’t talk about their accomplishments. He and Brent Scowcroft and others on his team—Don  Gregg , James Lilly, Paul Redman, and many others, were simply professionals who just did their jobs as ‘good americans’. They were proud to be silent heroes. 

  It’s the insolent, irreverent ones like me,  who were fortunate enough to have worked with such great men.

Now, it’s your turn, Mr President. 

Are you going to reach out and write the next chapters for the history books so that your lovely daughters can one day say at Stanford University, to their  respective friends  ‘you see what my father accomplished as POTUS!’

IF not for them, please make your wise choices for us, all the people of the United States and for world peace.

What better way to honor the life/death of slain Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens than to appoint a career foreign service officer like Thomas R. Pickering.

It’s that simple!!!

Good luck!