The Queen: The Epic Ambition of Hillary and the Coming of a Second "Clinton Era" (6 page)

Ms. Abedin served as one of Secretary of State Clinton’s top staffers and advisers at the State Department. As I’ve previously detailed, during that time, the State Department strongly supported abandoning the federal government’s prior policy against official dealings with the Muslim Brotherhood. State, furthermore, embraced a number of Muslim Brotherhood positions that undermine both American constitutional rights and our alliance with Israel. To name just a few manifestations of this policy sea change:

•   The State Department had an emissary in Egypt who trained operatives of the Brotherhood and other Islamist organizations in democracy procedures.

•   The State Department announced that the Obama administration would be ‘satisfied’ with the election of a Muslim Brotherhood–dominated government in Egypt.

•   Secretary Clinton personally intervened to reverse a Bush-administration ruling that barred Tariq Ramadan, grandson of the Brotherhood’s founder and son of one of its most influential early leaders, from entering the United States.

•   The State Department collaborated with the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, a bloc of governments heavily influenced by the Brotherhood, in seeking to restrict American free-speech rights in deference to sharia proscriptions against negative criticism of Islam.

•   The State Department excluded Israel, the world’s leading target of terrorism, from its ‘Global Counterterrorism Forum,’ a group that brings the United States together with several Islamist governments, prominently including its co-chair, Turkey—which now finances Hamas and avidly supports the flotillas that seek to break Israel’s blockade of Hamas. At the forum’s kickoff, Secretary Clinton decried various terrorist attacks and groups; but she did not mention Hamas or attacks against Israel—in transparent deference to the Islamist governments, which echo the Brotherhood’s position that Hamas is not a terrorist organization and that attacks against Israel are not terrorism.

•   The State Department and the Obama administration waived congressional restrictions in order to transfer $1.5 billion dollars in aid to Egypt after the Muslim Brotherhood’s victory in the parliamentary elections.

•   The State Department and the Obama administration waived congressional restrictions in order to transfer millions of dollars in aid to the Palestinian territories notwithstanding that Gaza is ruled by the terrorist organization Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestinian branch.

•   The State Department and the administration hosted a contingent from Egypt’s newly elected parliament that included not only Muslim Brotherhood members but a member of the Islamic Group (Gamaa al-Islamiyya), which is formally designated as a foreign terrorist organization. The State Department refused to provide Americans with information about the process by which it issued a visa to a member of a designated terrorist organization, about how the members of the Egyptian delegation were selected, or about what security procedures were followed before the delegation was allowed to enter our country.

•   On a trip to Egypt, Secretary Clinton pressured General Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, head of the military junta then governing the country, to surrender power to the parliament dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, and the then–newly elected president, Mohamed Morsi, a top Brotherhood official. She also visited with Morsi; immediately after his victory, Morsi had proclaimed that his top priorities included pressuring the United States to release the Blind Sheikh. Quite apart from the Brotherhood’s self-proclaimed ‘grand jihad’ to destroy the United States… the group’s supreme guide, Mohammed Badie, publicly called for jihad against the United States in an October 2010 speech. After it became clear the Brotherhood would win the parliamentary election, Badie said the victory was a stepping stone to ‘the establishment of a just Islamic caliphate.’

As more recent events remind us, this is not an exhaustive account of Obama-administration coziness with the Muslim Brotherhood. It is just some of the lowlights.

When a handful of House conservatives tried to draw the attention of the State Department’s Inspector General to some of these matters—wondering how on earth someone with Ms. Abedin’s background could have qualified for a top-secret security clearance—they were castigated by the Obama White House and the Beltway Republican establishment. As reaffirmed in the last 24 hours, Ms. Abedin’s connections to prominent Islamic-supremacist figures and groups are deemed unsuitable for public discussion—Egyptians may be able to eject the Muslim Brotherhood. But in today’s Washington, it is raising questions about the Muslim Brotherhood that gets you run out of town.

Naturally, what did get Washington chattering was a scandal far more typical in Clinton circles—the lucrative arrangement Ms. Abedin struck with Mrs. Clinton’s State Department that allowed her, after returning from maternity leave, to draw a $135,000… salary while remaining in New York, not actually working at Foggy Bottom, and moonlighting as a ‘strategic consultant’ for an outfit called Teneo–founded by Bill Clinton’s chum Doug Band. What a racket. The marriage to Huma Abedin, a Clinton insider, enables Anthony Weiner to resurrect a debased career and deflect attention from his psychotic antics even as he continues them. The marriage to Anthony Weiner, a prominent Jewish progressive, enables Huma Abedin to deflect attention from her associations with various Islamic supremacists even as, during her tenure as a top State Department official, American policy embraces Islamic supremacists.

But let’s not discuss that.

A note for your campaign team: You must begin the discrediting of Andrew McCarthy immediately, and scream whenever and at whoever books him that he is a bigoted anti-Muslim and a crank. Of course he is not. He is the man who put the Blind Sheik away for good and knows the subject area of Islamist radicalism better than anyone. He is, in short, the best sort of patriot. But this is the sort of article that
condensed and repeated on television throughout your campaign, even if you take the necessary step outlined below, could kill your campaign.

You see, Mrs. Clinton, Huma is a problem. A serious one as the country emerges from its Obama-induced haze into an era of Islamic State-induced resoluteness about national interest and national security. She will not pass unnoticed through the next 15 months. Indeed, the “McCarthy perspective” is already well known, and while understood to be dangerous to one’s social status to discuss, it is nevertheless passing from email to email like Samizdat used to circulate in the Soviet Union. Officially, it is ignored by the ruling class, read by the ruling class, even more widely read by the elites surrounding them, and of course by the world at large.

You may sincerely believe that Huma has nothing to do with the Muslim Brotherhood, or that its members are misunderstood reformers who were wrongly tossed from power in Egypt because of the Sisi coupists for selfish reasons and not because they are Sharia absolutists rejected by a country-wide convulsion of fear and disgust. It really doesn’t matter what you think. What matters is that the campaign will turn on national security and you cannot have Huma anywhere near it, especially as you will be obliged to denounce Islamist extremism again and again and again and to pronounce your failed policies in Libya, Egypt, Turkey and above all Iraq and Iran to be the eye-opening doses of reality that have made you the perfect person to be tougher on the Islamist threat than any of the Republican rookies lining up to take you on.

This is a delicate dance, but one that cannot even begin until Huma is well and truly exiled. Again, a public speech will be necessary, like the one that you needed to locate Bill for the chattering class on their ever-changing map of the DC power grid. Huma must be off of it.

This “staffing speech” will have to be made, the one in which you trumpet how “girl power” will truly flow in the West Wing, in which you name your core staff. It will also conspicuously deal with Huma. It must.

Its timing depends upon when the issue of who will run the trains
first begins to appear in the world of Mike Allen. You will disguise it as a speech on transition planning, which Mitt Romney turned into not only an acceptable but a necessary enterprise, and one to be discussed publicly like the hyper-experienced, responsible presidential image you will campaign on. Tucked into that speech you will see this paragraph:

“Many have asked what role Huma Abedin will have in my administration. They know of our long and deep friendship. It is in fact a love that comes from the same source, though, of course, not of the same depth or intensity as my love for Chelsea and Charlotte. Huma is a wonderful, wonderful, strong woman, who has helped me a great deal. But she will not be a part of this campaign or my administration. This is not because of the slanders against her as a secret agent of the Muslim Brotherhood traded in by fanatical anti-Muslim extremists like Andrew McCarthy and Frank Gaffney. No, Huma is not being cast out because of the alleged sins of her parents or her youthful writings. She is simply on a different course in her life, one that simply will not include another wearying stretch at my side. Her husband failed in his bid for mayor of New York. It is my hope that Huma succeeds in hers. No, she has not committed to such a run, but it is my earnest hope that this most capable young leader begin her own career, not continue to serve mine.”

There. Done and done. Everyone will know why you have exiled Huma: she cannot be Caesar’s wife on an issue in which everyone near you will have to be Caesar’s wife. You cannot credit the allegations, but you cannot ignore them either. So you just denounce them even as you cast her out.

There will be tears. There always are. But this is the presidency. And you must win if you are to create a “Clinton Era.”

Which brings us to your vice president, and the very, long game.

CHAPTER 6

Your Vice President

Vice presidents have posed problems since George Washington puzzled over what to do with John Adams. Your political ancestor, Aaron Burr, schemed to deny the White House to Jefferson, to whom he had pledged absolute support.

More recently, W was so well-served by Cheney that the idea of the super-competent “non-successor” as adjunct to the inexperienced but promising youngster was re-energized. The trouble is party succession. Cheney was never an option as Bush’s replacement, and the GOP suffered for years and years because of it, even during Vice President Cheney’s greatest moments of contribution. There was no unifying force as the GOP was obliged to endure the intrigue between John McCain and Mike Huckabee that blocked Mitt Romney from an Iowa primary win, and then one in West Virginia. Either would almost certainly have kept the widely acknowledged (quite a feat), least trustworthy person in today’s politics, Charlie Crist, from delivering a victory in Florida’s 2008 primary to McCain and with it the 2008 GOP nomination. Had Cheney been replaced by anyone but McCain in 2004, W’s re-election would have been easier and 2008’s many GOP fiascos avoided.

Now, the unique circumstances of Obama’s selection of Biden are unlikely to ever recur, and never had a president been as reckless with a selection as Obama was with Biden (except that McCain’s selection of Palin was its equal in terms of pushing forward an incredibly
unprepared-to-be-president individual too near the Oval Office). The Biden-Palin debate will forever remain the low mark of American politics, screaming out at history: This was the best they could do after 200 years of practice—a lovable dolt and a wholly unprepared governor from a minor state?

No, you will have to be like W. Jeb, Rubio, Cruz or Walker will have to be like W, as well.

Truth be told, any of those four—indeed, any GOP nominee not named Bush or Romney—ought to ask Romney to serve as their VP for their
first
term, and
only
for their first term—thus borrowing the 2012 GOP nominee’s immense credibility, fundraising lists, and organizational expertise for a first term—and yet assuring the loyalty of all would-be successors through the selection of VP Romney’s replacement in the summer of 2020. Indeed, this move is so obvious that we will know the quality of your opponent by how early he embraces the selection publicly. If he does not, we will know their fault line is insecurity, and you can act on that through the campaign.

Your choice is much more difficult, because, truth be told, your proposal to amend the Constitution to remove the two-term limit on the presidency will pass Congress and be ratified by the states (for in it is contained the promise of a return of Obama, fire on the fuel of his acolytes’ many altars) and this will greatly complicate the family succession. Chelsea will easily win her Senate seat when you appoint Senator Gillibrand to the Supreme Court, and she will be ready for the VP slot when your time is complete, whether at the end of a second or a third term. Whom could you trust to keep the bargain to name her when the time comes?

Of course, you could name her yourself, if a third term at 77 was plausible. By that point re-election will be assured by the changes made to citizenship and registration laws. But assume the worst: You die or are incapacitated before you have the opportunity to elevate Chelsea to the Naval Observatory.

(The critics of this book will think the idea of Chelsea as senator,
much less VP, far-fetched. The whole idea of “family succession” will be mocked as absurd, dismissed as similar to the fever-swamps warnings about your husband refusing to leave in 2000 and the current round of internet nuttiness about President Obama’s intentions to declare martial law and stay past January of 2017. The scoffers ignore how the speed of events has accelerated, as well as the deep desire for stability in DC court life, and how these will combine to declare your radical proposals to be bold “breakthroughs” promising an end to “gridlock” once they are unveiled. These are the same fools who thought Obama as president far-fetched in 2004, and have forgotten that they scoffed then. They thought you as president far-fetched in 2009, and have forgotten that they scoffed then. They thought amnesty for illegal aliens by executive order far-fetched in 2011, and have forgotten that they scoffed then. The same scoffers who though the Islamic State the “jayvees,” and never dreamed a sitting Secretary of State could or would maintain her own e-mail server vulnerable to a hundred foreign intelligence agencies and yet not only get away with it but gleefully delete what she chose not to turn over to the record keepers at State!