Hillary Clinton: 'It's going to be hard'

by Mark Silva

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived at the State Department this morning, and President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden will follow at Foggy Bottom this afternoon -- as a sign of the importance the new administration will place on diplomacy.

Clinton, speaking of the "potential and possibility'' of American foreign policy, drew a warm welcome from a diplomatic bureaucracy that has played second fiddle to military policy for much of the Bush adminstration's two terms.

There are three legs to the stool of American foreign policy, Clinton said: Military power, diplomacy and development -- and two of those reside at the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development. At State, where career diplomats complain that U.S. military policy has overridden diplomacy for eight years, Clinton's words of encouragement were met with repeated applause this morning.

"I want you to think outside the proverbial box,'' Clinton told her audience, applauding this and many other lines. "I want you to understand that there is nothing that I welcome more than a good debate.

"We need to collaborate, and we need to have a sense of openness and candor in this building, and I invite that,'' Clinton said. "Not everybody's ideas will make it into policy, but we will be the better because we have heard from you.''

Clinton plans to drop in at USAID tomorrow - "because they will be our partners.''

"This is not going to be easy. I don't want anybody to leave this extraordinarily warm reception thinking, 'Oh good, this is going to be great.' It's going to be hard.''

She said, to laughter, that she had come to learn that "there is this living, organic creature known as the building.'' The president and the vice president will come here this afternoon -- and lots of applause this.

"We want to send a clear and unequivocal message,'' she said. "This is a team. There isn't anything that I can get done from the seventh floor or that the president can do from the Oval Office without this team.'' She called for an end to "the divisiveness that has "paralyzed'' us. The president, she said, is coming "to let all of you know... how seriously committed he is to working with us.''

"We'll have some ups and some downs. We'll face some obstacles along the way,'' Clinton said. "But be of good cheer, be of strong heart, and do not grow weary as we attempt to do good... this is a time of such potential and possibility. I don't get up in the morning thinking about the dangers and threats, as great as they are... I get up thinking about who we are and what we can do... Now, ladies and gentlemen, let's get to work.''