Among one of the more prominent Podesta hack revelations to emerge in the past three weeks was an email by Ron Klain, who was Vice President Joe Biden’s chief-of-staff for the first two years of the Obama administration, who wrote to Clinton Campaign chair JOhn Podesta about playing a role in the “demise” of Biden’s 2016 presidential run. He thanked Podesta for helping him land on his feet in the Hillary Clinton campaign.
She was great last night. Thanks for inviting me into the campaign, and for sticking with me during the Biden anxiety. You are a great friend and a great leader. It’s been a little hard for me to play such a role in the Biden demise – and I am definitely dead to them — but I’m glad to be on Team HRC, and glad that she had a great debate last night. Thanks John.
As the NRO previously reported, on October 21, 2015, a week after Klain’s e-mail to Podesta, Biden announced that he would not seek the Democratic nomination. The announcement came in a strange, lengthy Rose Garden speech, with President Obama by the vice-president’s side. For much of the speech, Biden sounded more like he was starting a campaign than pulling the plug on talk of one. Naturally, that led to speculation that he’d fully intended to run but was somehow persuaded not to at the last minute. During the Clinton administration, Ron Klain had been chief-of-staff to Vice President Al Gore. Klain had been central to the Obama administration’s Solyndra debacle – the green energy firm backed by Obama donors into which the administration poured $535 million even though it was in terminal financial condition even as Obama and Biden touted it. Nevertheless, when the Ebola controversy arose in October 2014, the president made Klain the administration’s point man. A year later, Klain apparently played “such a role in the Biden demise” that he had become “dead to them” – presumably the White House, or at least Biden’s part of it. But he emerged “glad to be on Team HRC.”
In other words, Hillary may have had a mole in Biden’s organization who ultimately led to the collapse of a campaign many said could challenge that of Hillary’s.
So now it’s payback time, and as Politico reports, Hillary Clinton is considering tapping Vice President Joe Biden as secretary of State should she win in November
“He’d be great, and they are spending a lot of time figuring out the best way to try to persuade him to do it if she wins,” a source familiar with the transition team’s plans told Politico.
The source said that Biden has not been approached yet about the possibility; then again thanks to the Podesta files we also learned that the Clinton campaign lied about not notifying her VP running mate Tim Kaine until the last moment, so it may very well be that Biden is fully aware of his role should Hillary win.
Before becoming vice president in 2009, Biden served as a senator for 36 years, chairing the Senate Foreign Relations Committee off and on toward the end of his tenure.
As The Hill notes, Biden and Clinton reportedly clashed over foreign policy while Clinton served as secretary of State. She is known to have advocated for interventionist measures, while Biden often called for a lighter footprint on the world stage.
Other names that were floated for the gig include former Undersecretary of State Wendy Sherman; former Deputy Secretary of State Billy Burns; Nick Burns, an undersecretary in the George W. Bush administration; Clinton’s former Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell; and James Stavridis, a former admiral who Clinton reportedly considered tapping as her running mate.
While it is unclear if Biden would take Vladimir Putin, or Assad, “to the back of the barn” to resolve the ongoing diplomatic fiasco between the US and Russia, the prospect of such an outcome alone may be worth giving Joe the opportunity to “fix” America’s struggling foreign policy.
via http://ift.tt/2eOaIcl Tyler Durden