Watched the Tillerson hearing - haven’t heard him speak before - I was impressed - I mean, there’s not much substance goes on in these things and you have to put up with the grandstanding from pols, but you do get a feel for people by how they respond, and I liked Tillerson.
What I’m wondering though is what the hell happened to Marco Rubio? His whole line of questioning was ridiculous - he really expected Tillerson to call Putin a war criminal? Seriously? I’m sure Tillerson understands that Putin is a ruthless autocrat [not sure Trump does] but it would serve absolutely no good whatsoever starting the new administration out by calling Putin a war criminal - can’t crawl down from that - and guaranteed Putin would find a way to make you pay for it. With Putin, you gotta give him as few openings as possible and then slowly try to work him to a position where, if you can’t exploit him to your advantage, then at least you limit the harm he can do. With Obama, Putin had a weak hand but played it extremely well - brilliantly one might say - but key to that ‘win’ was Obama taking a strong hand and entirely forfeiting the advantage out of weakness and highly misguided policies. What Rubio seems to want may be rhetorically the opposite of that weakness, but is no more nuanced or realistic in it’s thinking - your opening move in this game cannot be calling Putin a war criminal, that's idiotic. Very disappointing from Rubio, who I once had high hopes for.
[but haven’t you been saying that Trump is too soft on Russia and needs to toughen up? Yes, but calling Putin a war criminal isn’t toughening up - it’s going postal. What I want from Trump is something very neutral re Russia - realism - you act like you want good relations but you subtly let it be known that you understand completely what Putin’s game is - you want to telegraph as little as possible because, as I’ve said, Putin has the weak hand, he’s the one who desperately needs to find the advantage - and if you play it smart that becomes your advantage - calling the guy a war criminal is not playing it smart]
[didn’t watch afternoon hearing - apparently went badly? Dunno - but if did sounds like for reasons I’m not bothered by - ie, did not give politically correct responses - politicians are masters at saying a lot while saying nothing at all - works I guess to get them elected but holds zero interest for me - foreign policy is about long term goals and tradeoffs - my impression of Tillerson was he gets that - maybe I’m wrong, but I go back to Rubio’s attack - it was completely idiotic - Tillerson’s response made sense - I‘ll leave it at that]
