Politics: The Tragedy of Richard Holbrooke

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Politics The Tragedy of Richard Holbrooke The mismatch between an old foreign-policy hand and a new president: An excerpt from James Mann's The Obamians. By James Mann Posted Thursday, Jun 14, 2012, at 10:45 AM ET Following is an excerpt from James Mann's The Obamians, out today from Viking. It seemed almost foreordained that Richard Holbrooke would have a difficult, unhappy stint in the Obama administration. He had the wrong history, personality, and operating style to fit in with the Obama inner circle, much as Holbrooke struggled in his own fashion to do so. He was of the wrong generation, serving at the wrong time. Holbrooke was a living symbol of the foreign-policy establishment against which the Obama team had campaigned. He had been serving Democratic presidents since the 1960s. The Obamians saw themselves as insurgents; Holbrooke had always tied himself to power, to worldly, prosperous Democrats like Averill and Pamela Harriman, Clark Clifford and the Clintons. Holbrooke would almost certainly have been secretary of state if Hillary Clinton had won the presidency. He might also have landed that job if Al Gore had won in 2000 or if John Kerry had beaten George Bush in 2004. After Obama appointed Clinton as secretary, she hoped to name Holbrooke her deputy, but Obama gave that job to Jim Steinberg, who had been a leading candidate for national security adviser. Instead, in 2009, eager to return to government, Holbrooke took the lesser job he was offered, as the president's special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, or "Af-Pak," as he soon called it. He found himself, for the third time in his career, working within but not quite at the top of a Democratic administration, obliged to ... To continue reading, click here. Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum What did you think of this article? POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES Also In Slate Dispatch From Syria: The Fledgling Protest Movement Hasn't Been Deterred by the Recent Violence Do Kids Really Need Standardized Tests for Art, Music, and PE? It's Getting a Little Easier To Be Gay in the Mormon Church	Advertisement
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