Silent Rex's Last Act

When I saw the news today about President Trump dismissing Silent Rex, my first thought was that the decision might have been precipitated by his press release of yesterday about the killing of a Russian ex-spy in Britain, since that statement differed from one released by the White House.

However, it now seems the decision was made a day earlier. That means the last independent act of SecState Tillerson was to issue this statement attributing responsibility for the nerve agent attack in the U.K.:

The United States was in touch with our Allies in the United Kingdom ahead of today’s announcement, including in a call between Secretary Tillerson and Foreign Secretary Johnson this morning. We have full confidence in the UK’s investigation and its assessment that Russia was likely responsible for the nerve agent attack that took place in Salisbury last week.

There is never a justification for this type of attack – the attempted murder of a private citizen on the soil of a sovereign nation – and we are outraged that Russia appears to have again engaged in such behavior. From Ukraine to Syria – and now the UK – Russia continues to be an irresponsible force of instability in the world, acting with open disregard for the sovereignty of other states and the life of their citizens.

We agree that those responsible – both those who committed the crime and those who ordered it – must face appropriately serious consequences. We stand in solidarity with our Allies in the United Kingdom and will continue to coordinate closely our responses.

All questions of that particular killing and our response to it aside, how can any official USG statement say "there is never a justification for this type of attack – the attempted murder of a private citizen on the soil of a sovereign nation?" Targeted killings are still targeted killings whether a nation does them with up close with poison or from far away with armed drones.

The press reported how Obama decided whom to kill with the aid of a 'disposition matrix.' Here's a handy flowchart that spells out the Obama administration's justifications for the killing of private citizens on the soil of sovereign nations. The Trump administration presumably does the same.

But, but, didn't Obama have magic bombs that never killed the wrong person? Actually, no, as the Obama White House admitted in 2016, its drone strikes had killed 64 individuals conclusively determined to be non-combatants, in addition to 52 individuals whose status remained in doubt. Private monitoring organizations such as the Long War Journal, the New America Foundation, and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, have estimated there were several times that number of non-combatant casualties.

Personally, I support the use of targeted killing in at least some cases. And, if the USG wants to issue threats to Putin and demand consequences for the attack in the U.K., that's also okay by me.

But, so long as the USG conducts such attacks itself, please spare us the sanctimony.

Tillerson In Vienna, and a Townhall is Scheduled for Next Week

Silent Rex stopped in Vienna and delivered remarks to staff that were heavy on defense of the Department redesign effort and debunking media reports of a hollowed-out workforce. There was one new twist, referring to spouses and their employment. But the big news came out separately today via a notice to staff. Tillerson will hold a townhall meeting for employees next Tuesday, December 12.

A few excerpts from his remarks in Vienna:

I want to also recognize our three charge d’affaires, Young, Kamian, and Shampaine, and thank them for their leadership of all three of these missions. I know, as I’ve said many times, and I want to say this because a lot of stuff gets written out there in the media about the hollowed-out State Department and the empty hallways that I’m walking in, where all I can hear are the echoes of my footsteps. (Laughter.) And it’s not true. And I tell people everywhere it’s not true. We have great, competent, capable career people that have stepped up in leadership positions while we’re working to fill those roles, and we haven’t missed a beat. Not one. And I want to thank all three for their leadership at the missions here. I know it’s not the easiest thing to do when you’re put in an acting role like that, but we have not missed a beat on the leadership. The three charges here are very competent with the team we have.

-- snip --

I want to say a real quick word, and I’m not going to talk long because you don’t want me to talk long – (laughter) – but I want to say a little bit of a word about the redesign at the State Department because there’s been – a lot of other people seem to want to say a lot about it, whether they know anything about it or not. And so I want to tell you what’s going on. And we are moving – we’ve completed phases one and two now, and this is an entirely employee-led effort. Your colleagues are the ones doing all the work, they’re the ones making the recommendations, they’re the ones developing the various projects that we’re going to be undertaking.

-- snip --

But what it fundamentally comes down to – and we’re going to start holding some town halls now that we’re moving from phase two to phase three, which is execution, and share with you exactly what is being done.

-- snip --

And so some of this when – a lot of concern people have about we’re going to reduce the staffing by X amount, or we’re going to close this office or that office – there’s nothing planned to close any embassies, and there’s nothing planned in terms of a specific target for the staffing levels. What we did say is to the OMB, because we owe them a number and the reason we put the hiring freeze in place, is – and we said, look, we’re going to at least capture what normal attrition would be through these efficiencies, and that’s about 8 percent over the next few years.

-- snip --

So there may be redeployments of talent, but we’re going to use the talent, and we’re going to use it and provide a system of how we do that that makes people say, we need to modernize our policies and recognize the amazing working families today. Our policies are stuck in about the 1980s, as I look at them. So we need to recognize it. In today’s world, there’s a lot of two-career families, and we need to have our policies that are responsive in recognizing both members of that couple are very talented and they have a lot they can do. So a lot of what we’re getting at is capturing all that talent as well.

Let me just say, lastly, on the hiring freeze, just to correct a few numbers that are out there that scare people, I’ve approved over 2,400 exceptions to the hiring freeze for EFMs. I’ve approved a number of exceptions for promotions. We’re hired 300 new Foreign Service officers this year already. The total number of Foreign Service officers in the department is within 10 of what it was in October 2016, and that’s out of a base of about 1,080. We’ve actually had fewer people retire this year than we had last year.

-- snip --

So I’m very excited about it. They’ve got great ideas. They’re your ideas. We want to just unleash all of that. So lastly, thank you again. Thanks for what you do for us here day in and day out. And I appreciate every one of you. Thanks.

Silent Rex Tillerson spoke to staff and families of the U.S. Missions in Brussels today, which I guess must mean that the packout from his Washington residence has been delayed yet again, because I've been reading for months now about how every day is his last.

Anyway, while he is still on the clock he made some further remarks about the redesign effort. One new tidbit: he says it is now beginning the implementation phase, which means they'll be some announcements in the next couple of weeks and townhall meetings before the end of the year.

Here are the complete remarks:

I want to say just a couple of words about the State Department. The redesign, which everyone seems to be an expert on – (laughter) – we’re actually going to be doing some town halls here before the end of the year, because the teams, your teams – and this is an employee-led effort – all the teams are led by your colleagues at the State Department. We’ve had multiple teams working on the redesign. We’ve been through phase one, now we’ve just completed phase two, and we’re going to transition to phase three, which is now execution.

And so now we’re in a position to really talk about some concrete things. And there’s two kind of broad elements of this, if I could have you think about it this way: There’s a huge leadership element where we see we need to do some things with a lot of the systems and developing people, servicing their needs, and a lot of leadership areas that we’re going to address. And then there’s what I call the modernization of the State Department. And modernization is anything from having an IT system that’s in the cloud and lets you work efficiently, to modernizing a lot of our practices and policies and principles to recognize today’s working families. The workforce has changed, and over the last 20 years State Department policies haven’t necessarily changed with it. So we have a lot of modernization to do from a policy standpoint.

We have some modernization to do with how we get things done efficiently and effectively – again, using today’s approaches. So again, your colleagues have really led this effort. They’ve met with a lot of great ideas out, and now we’re ready to begin to execute against those. So we’ve got some programmatic areas and we’ve got some projects to undertake. We’re going to talk some more about that in the coming days and share with you the specifics.

We’ve got what we call some quick wins. I think you’re going to be happy with some of the quick wins that we’re going to announce here in the next couple of weeks because I think they get right to some of the issues that we’ve heard from you in the listening exercise. And for those of you that participated back when we did the survey, 35,000 of you responded. That’s where all these ideas came from. Over 300 face-to-face interviews. And we’ve kept the portals open so you can continue to put things into the process, and I can tell you that people look at every idea that comes in and it gets incorporated into the work that others are doing.

So we’ll have more to say about that to you in the next couple of weeks, before the end of the year. We’ll share some things with everyone so you know where this is going. It really has one objective in mind, and that’s to allow you to be more effective at what your talents already allow you to do, and also to prepare you to do more and allow you to have a much more rewarding career and do it in a way that isn’t so frustrating sometimes because some of the processes you have to interface with are frustrating. So we’re going to be addressing a lot of that, and hopefully when it’s all said and done you’re going to have a much more satisfying work environment, a great career ahead of you, and we’re going to be much more effective and much more efficient in how we do it. That’s really the objective of the whole exercise. There’s nothing more to it than that.

Is "Enablement" a Word?

Silent Rex likes to keep you guessing. Tomorrow he'll resign - Breaking! Sources say! For real this time, not like the last ten times! - but yesterday he delivered some pretty extended remarks on his Department redesign planning during the Q&A after an address at the Wilson Center.

Here they are:

MS HARMAN: Mindful of your time, I just want to get in a few questions about other topics, including questions from the audience. But I would note that an interesting point you made in your talk was about Turkey, that Turkey now has a choice: It can become more connected to Europe, which is a huge advantage, and to us, or not. And I heard that loud and clear.

I want to turn to the question of State Department funding and organization, something that many people are interested in. Every organization needs renewal. The Wilson Center needs renewal. And surely, everyone here, including long-serving Foreign Service officers, think the State Department needs renewal. However, questions have arisen about the steep cuts in your budget proposed by the Office of Management and Budget – that doesn’t mean that’s what Congress will enact – and what some claim is a hollowing out of your department. Most recently today, two valued friends of the Wilson Center, Nick Burns and Ryan Crocker, both of them enormously experienced Foreign Service officers and ambassadors, wrote a piece in The New York Times with a lot of information about who’s leaving and what its implications are.

My understanding is there is another side to this story. And so I would like to ask you to tell your side of this story and give us your vision for what the State Department should become.

SECRETARY TILLERSON: Well, let me start quickly with the budget, because it’s – I think it’s the easier – actually easier question to address. The budget that the State Department was given in 2016 was a record-high budget – almost $55 billion. This was above what traditionally has been a budget that runs kind of the mid-30 billion level. And this was ramping up over the last few years, in many respects for some good reasons. But as we look at that spending level, quite frankly, it’s just not sustainable. It is very difficult to execute a $55 billion budget and execute it well. That’s a lot of spending and deployment of resources, and I take our stewardship of those dollars very seriously, and I take the congressional oversight obligations on us very seriously and am not going to brush them aside light handedly. So part of this was just a reality check: Can we really keep this up? And the truth of the matter is, it’d be very difficult to keep it up and do it well.

And secondly though, part of this bringing the budget numbers back down is reflective of an expectation that we’re going to have success in some of these conflict areas of getting these conflicts resolved and moving to a different place in terms of the kind of support that we have to give them. So it’s a combination of things – that sustainability, a recognition that those numbers are really the outliers. The numbers we’re moving to are not the outliers; they’re more historic in terms of the levels of spending.

As to the State Department redesign – and I use the word “redesign” because it would have been really easy to come in on day one and do a reorg. A “reorg,” when I use that word, is moving the boxes around on the org chart. When I showed up in the State Department, I was stunned when I got the organization chart out and I had 82 direct reports to the Office of the Secretary, to me – 82. Now, almost 70 of those are special envoys, special ambassadors, positions that have been created. So we immediately undertook an examination of just what’s a reasonable way to run the place, and that isn’t it. Having run a large global organization – and I have been through three major reorganizations in my history and actually enjoy doing it – it’s always focused on how do we help the people be more effective, how do we get the obstacles out of their way.

So we undertook a different approach, and since I don’t know the department and didn’t know its culture, we had a massive listening exercise. We had 35,000 people respond and we had over 300 face-to-face interviews, and we continue an active dialogue with people today about what is it – if I could do one thing for you that would make you more effective and make you – make your work more satisfying, what would that be. And we got hundreds of ideas. We’ve actually selected about 170 of those ideas that we are now perfecting.

The reason we call it a redesign is most of these have to do with work processes internally and work processes with inter-agencies that we should be able to improve the way people get their work done. Some of it is tools and enablement, so things like – we have a really antiquated IT system. I was shocked when I went down to spend an afternoon with the A Bureau, and I said, “What’s the one thing I could do?” And they said, “Get us into the cloud.” And I looked at them. I said, “What do you mean? We’re not in the cloud?” And they said, “No, no. We’re still on all these servers.” Well, that’s a big cyber risk, first. But it really made it very cumbersome for people, and when I started using my own computer I started realizing just how cumbersome it was.

So a lot of the projects that have been identified out of the redesign are process redesigns and some enablement for people, and it’s all directed at allowing the people of the State Department to get their work done more effectively, more efficiently, and have a much more satisfying career. We have a lot of processes in the HR function that have not been updated in decades, and they need to be updated. How we put people out on assignment – we invest enormous amounts of money in people that we deploy to missions overseas, and I was stunned to find out in a lot of the missions these are one-year assignments. So we invested all this money; we send them out to the mission. They’re there for one year, and about the time they’re starting to figure it out and have an impact, we take them out and we move them somewhere else. Well, a lot of people have said to me, “I would really like to stay another year and start contributing.” So it’s a lot of things like that that came out of the listening exercise.

So the – so we have five large teams. They’re all employee-led. I’ve brought in some consultants to help us facilitate, but the redesign is all led by the employees in the State Department.

The issue of the hollowing out – I think all of you appreciate that every time you have a change of government you have a lot of senior Foreign Service officers and others who decide they want to move on and do other things. We’ve had a – our numbers of retirements are almost exactly what they were in 2016 at this point. We have the exact same number of Foreign Service officers today – we’re off by 10 – that we had at this time in 2016. There is a hiring freeze that I’ve kept in place, because as we redesign the organization we’re probably going to have people that need to be redeployed to other assignments. I don’t want to have a layoff; I don’t want to have to fire a bunch of people. So I said, “Let’s manage some of our staffing targets with just normal attrition.”

Having said that, I have signed over 2,300 hiring exceptions, because I’ve told every post if you have a critical position and you really need that filled, just send it in. And I think I have out of 2,300 requests I think I’ve denied eight positions that I decided we really didn’t need. So we’re keeping the organization fully staffed. We’ve had over – we’re still running our Foreign Service officer school; we’ve hired over 300 this year. So there is no hollowing out. These numbers that people are throwing around are just false; they’re wrong.

There was a story about a 60 percent reduction in career diplomats. The post career diplomat was created by the Congress in 1955 to recognize an elite few. The number of career diplomats in the State Department have ranged from as low as one at any given time to as many as seven. When I took over the State Department we had six. Four of those people have retired. These are your most senior – they were – they reached 65, they retired, they moved on. We have a review process – we’re very selective in replacing those, but we actually have a review process underway and we’re evaluating a handful of people who might be worthy of that designation. But we still have two. But we went from six to two; it was a 60 percent reduction. It sounded like the sky was falling.

The other comment I would make is while the confirmation process has been excruciatingly slow for many of our nominees, I have been so proud of the acting assistant secretaries and people who’ve stepped into acting under secretary roles. And when the – I read these articles that there’s this hollowing out, I take offense to that on their behalf because the people that are serving in those roles are doing extraordinary work, and they know they’re not going to get the job permanently. They already know we have a nominee, but they come in every day, they work hard, they travel with me around the world, and that’s – it’s that group of people that have helped me put in place and helped the President put in place the North Korean strategy with the international sanctions; a Syrian approach to the peace process that we think we’re about to get on the right track; an approach to negotiating with the Russians on Ukraine; an approach to the Defeat ISIS campaign; the Iran policy, the South Asia policy in Afghanistan, our new posture towards Pakistan; the open – free and open Indo – all of that’s been done with the people that are working there today, and I’m very proud. I’m very proud of what they’ve done. They’re working hard and I’m offended on their behalf. I’m offended on their behalf when people say somehow we don’t have a State Department that functions.

But I can tell you it’s functioning very well from my perspective. Have we got more we want to do? Yes, we got more we want to do. And my only objective in the organization redesign is to help these people who are – who have chosen this as a career – because I’ll come and go, and there will be other politicals that will come and go – what can I do to help them? Because they’ve decided they want to spend their life doing this and they should be allowed to do it as effectively and efficiently and without a lot of grief and obstacles. And if I can remove some of that for them, that’s what I want to do.

After delivering those remarks SecState Tillerson went home and packed his bags. If you put any credence in today's media feeding frenzy.

Russian FM Lavrov: "I don’t remember any case of a dictator being removed smoothly, without violence"

Is there any example of a dictator being removed without violence, and/or an example of regime change that didn't make things worse, at least in the near-term? There are none that I can think of, anyway.
  
“Death is the solution to all problems — no man, no problem." The quote is actually from Anatoly Rybakov, the dissident Russian writer, and not Josef Stalin. But I thought of that quote while trying to answer the question Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov tossed back to the press at his press availability with SecState Tillerson earlier this week.

Josh Lederman, Associated Press, asked the two how they plan to remove Bashar al-Assad from power. Lavrov was having none of it.

FOREIGN MINISTER LAVROV: (Via interpreter) As far as Syria is concerned and Bashar al-Assad, we talked today about the history, and Rex said that he was a new man and is not interested so much in history; he wants to deal with today’s problems. But the world is so constructed that unless we look at what’s happened in the past, we won’t be able to deal with the present. Particularly in a situation where a group of countries – Western countries, the NATO countries – were absolutely obsessed with eliminated – eliminating a particular dictator or totalitarian leader.

When it was a question of ousting Slobodan Milosevic, NATO unfurled a huge campaign. It was a very coarse, blatant violation of international law. They even bombed the place, which is certainly a war crime whichever way you interpret the Geneva Convention, and they bombed the headquarters. And there were also attacks on trains, the Chinese embassy, bridges, and so on and so forth. This lasted some two months, and after all this, which was very near to dual purpose – weapons of dual purpose, then they ousted him.

Then there was the question of Saddam Hussein. We know after the invasion – we know what it was based on, and then Tony Blair afterwards repented publicly that all this was a fake. And you all know about that, know worse than we do.

And then there was Qaddafi. It was declared that this dictator had no place in his own country and this was against democracy. We know what happened in Libya. The Libyan Government is now under a huge question mark. We spoke about this, or President Putin did speak about it yesterday with the Italian president, and we are both trying to stop the situation of the country slipping into full illegal immigration, gun running, and so on.

So, incidentally speaking, we have some quite recent – even more recent examples. Sudan – President Bashir was declared to be under prosecution by the International Court of Justice, and President Obama decided that in order to settle this problem, you had to divide the country up into two. And the southern part very actively asked for our assistance in dealing with President Bashir, that the Americans want to see – (inaudible) that he should be the head of the – both states. He kept his word. He divided the country into two parts according to the American project of the administration of President Obama, and with that – with the effect that sanctions were introduced against their own child, on Southern Sudan.

So this insistence on removing or ousting a dictator or totalitarian leader – we have already been through it. We very well know, only too well, what happens when you do that. I don’t remember any case of a dictator being removed smoothly, without violence. So in Syria – and I have stressed this on many times – we are not staking everything on a personality, on President Assad, as is being done in Libya at the moment. We are simply insisting that everybody sits around a table and talks about it and comes to agreement. As has been enshrined in the Security Council resolution, we want to install dialogue with all the players concerned, and we want the Syrians themselves, without any kind of exclusion, to be represented in this process.

That was a darn good press conference, I think. I'm not sure I like the new Loquacious Rex as much as I did the old Silent Rex Tillerson, but he still kept his remarks brief and to the point. So far, so good.

Rex Drops Another Mic, and Syrians Get On the Trump Train

Silent Rex spoke yesterday in his remarks with National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster on the Syrian airfield strike, and - unlike with most official yada-yada - he actually had something to say.

He and NSA McMaster obviously don't need any help dealing with the press, but if they should ever want to bring in a guest spokesman, I suggest they get that CNN interviewee in the clip above. He hit all their points about chemical weapons, the value of retaliatory strikes, settling the Syrian civil war, safe zones and refugees, and did it in only three minutes. Plus, he made CNN sad.

I thought "Mic Drop" Tillerson gave a really impressive performance. He spoke in complete sentences (a rarity for American politicians, and something I always admire with their British counterparts), said no more than needed, and then he got out. Most of all, he - got - out. So many of our officials don't stop talking when they should. The entire remarks and press Q and A are at the link above, but the key words were: normalizing the use of chemical weapons, proportional, coordinated very carefully with our international partners, deliberative process, and existential threat.

For a big bonus, "Mic Drop" gave this cogent statement of the administration's strategy for dealing with the mess in Syria. This is the first time I can recall hearing anything even close to a practical approach. None of that vaporous "international values" stuff, or "red line" hollow threats.

QUESTION: Mr. Secretary, if I could, obviously the diplomatic considerations here are of a magnitude that didn’t exist a number of years ago. When you went into this, unlike President Obama, who was dealing simply with Bashar al-Assad, you’re dealing with Russia, you’re dealing with the Kurds, you’re dealing with Turkey. Can you give us a little bit of the diplomatic calculation in undertaking this action?

SECRETARY TILLERSON: Well, my expectation is that all of those parties, with the exception of Bashar al-Assad and perhaps Russia, I think are going to applaud this particular action or effort. Overall, the situation in Syria is one where our approach today and our policy today is first to defeat ISIS. By defeating ISIS, we remove one of the disruptive elements in Syria that exists today. That begins to clarify, for us, opposition forces and regime forces, and working with the coalition – as you know, there is a large coalition of international players and allies who are involved in the future resolution in Syria. So it’s to defeat ISIS; it’s to begin to stabilize areas of Syria, stabilize areas in the south of Syria, stabilize areas around Raqqa, through ceasefire agreements between the Syrian regime forces and opposition forces; stabilize those areas, begin to restore some normalcy to them, restore them to local governments – and there are local leaders who are ready to return, some who’ve left as refugees that are ready to return, to govern these areas; use local forces that will be part of the liberation effort to develop the local security forces – law enforcement, police force; and then use other forces to create outer perimeters of security so that areas like Raqqa, areas in the south, can begin to provide a secure environment so refugees can begin to go home and begin the rebuilding process.

If all that ever gets done, he said, then we can move to the the Geneva Process and the future disposition of Assad.

Well done. Always leave them wanting more. And if the news media want to chew this subject over endlessly to fill their 24-hour news cycle, they can call that Syrian guy CNN interviewed. I think CNN is done with him.


P.S. I wonder what the Public Diplomacy people make out of the crazy gratitude some Arabs are showing President Trump?

The Gimlet Eye

Whatever you do, don't look him in the eye

Official Washington continued its jeremiad against Silent Rex Tillerson this week, and added a couple new complaints to the list of lamentations. Tillerson, of course, maintained his quietude.

Here are a few quotes from the WaPo story, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson spends his first weeks isolated from an anxious bureaucracy:

Many career diplomats say they still have not met him, and some have been instructed not to speak to him directly — or even make eye contact … It has sown mistrust among career employees at State, who swap paranoid stories about Tillerson that often turn out to be untrue.

Untrue like, for instance, the WaPo's preceding debunked gossipy tidbit about the “some” who have been instructed to keep silent and avert their gaze from the man.

Rep. Eliot L. Engel (N.Y.), the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said Tillerson called him after the proposed cuts were announced. Engel said Tillerson seemed to share Engel’s concern that the cuts are “draconian” and counterproductive. But Engel said Tillerson seemed to signal his acquiescence when he called them “a glide path to what was about to happen.”

Silent Rex was right. Budget cuts in foreign affairs ARE about to happen. That is a consequence of the election. The SecState is not there to obstruct the administration’s plans – that’s Rep. Engel’s job. The SecState is there to take the Department down a glide path to budget cuts rather than make a sudden drop.

Rep. Engel continued:

“When you put it all together, it certainly seems they’re trying to downsize the State Department and make it irrelevant. I’m at a loss for words. Why would Tillerson take the job if he was not going to defend his agency?”

That’s an easy one. I repeat, he’s not there to fight the administration’s plans; he’s there to implement them. The simple fact is that State is on the losing end of a change in national policy and objectives. It happens. The last administration made the policy choice to downsize and make irrelevant the U.S. Customs and Border Protection service by, for instance, declining to enforce various immigration laws against unlawful aliens who had arrived as children, decreasing funding for immigration enforcement, and failing to deport some 900,000 aliens who had already received deportation orders. Administrations prioritize what they want. Now, on this turn of the wheel, DHS/CBP is on top and it’s foreign aid and some other unpopular international programs that will be downsized and made irrelevant. To quote our previous President, elections have consequences.

Current and recently departed State Department officials — all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to offer candid assessments of what one called the “benching” of the oldest Cabinet department — said Tillerson is paying a price.

“Benching” is a good word for it. Some agencies are back in the game, and others will sit this administration out.  

And lastly, this heartfelt one:

“We’re rooting for our secretary of state to come around, and trying to figure out a way to convince him we [the State Department staff] do work for administrations of both parties,” the official said.

I understand the sentiment, but, frankly, it’s too late. The perception of partisan bias has been there for decades, and not without reason. I think back to the rapturous crowds that came out for Hillary’s arrival and Obama’s first visit to HST. Obviously, there is bias. That’s okay by me, you understand, but just don’t think the other party doesn’t notice. In any case, I expect Tillerson came to the job with a firm fixed opinion of State that he'd already acquired during his years of dealing with Exxon’s overseas interests. Those current and recently departed State Department officials aren’t likely to change that impression in any way other than by simply carrying out the new administration's agenda without foot-dragging.

And, that might already be happening, with a consequent improvement in the administration's negative attitude. See today's New York Times story in which President Trump's chief strategist fairly gushes with praise for the Under Secretary for Political Affairs, who implemented the administration's Executive Order on travel restrictions without delay.

Silent Rex Speaks and Explains His Lack of a Traveling Press Pool

Henry Kissinger looking very excited next to Jill St. John

Did the practice of holding mid-air press briefings during SecState official visits begin with Henry Kissinger? I can't recall any earlier SecState being the kind of media star that Kissinger became, to his obvious great enjoyment. Or later Secretaries, either. Powell and Rice, for instance. I don't recall them having press retinues. Certainly they both valued their private lives, and kept them separate from their public lives. Kissinger, of course, went the other way, and made his public life the basis of his celebrated private life, at least for quite a few years back in the 70s.

Silent Rex is a return to the all-business model. In his one and only press interview during his current trip to East Asia he explained why he feels no need to bring a gaggle of reporters along. His reasons boil down to a rejection of Washington DC's invented tradition of mid-air press briefings, the presence of overseas press bureaus in his destination countries, and a preference for working rather than schmoozing with reporters while he travels. 

Transcript: Independent Journal Review's Sit-Down Interview with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson:

EM: Are you concerned about the message that you might be sending China by not taking a traveling press pool with you into China, which restricts press access. There’s obviously been a lot of uproar over press access to you, especially on this trip. Will you ever do this again?

RT: This what? You mean this … where I don’t take —

EM: Yes.

RT: Look, it’s driven by a couple of things. Primarily it’s driven — believe it or not, you won’t believe it — we’re trying to save money. I mean, quite frankly, we’re saving a lot of money by using this aircraft, which also flies faster, allows me to be more efficient, and we’re going to destinations that, by and large, the media outlets have significant presence already, so we’re not hiding from any coverage of what we’re doing. The fact that the press corps is not traveling on the plane with me, I understand that there are two aspects of that. One, there’s a convenience aspect. I get it. The other is, I guess, what I’m told is that there’s this long tradition that the Secretary spends time on the plane with the press. I don’t know that I’ll do a lot of that. I’m just not … that’s not the way I tend to work. That’s not the way I tend to spend my time. I spend my time working on this airplane. The entire time we’re in the air, I’m working. Because there is a lot of work to do in the early stages. Maybe things will change and evolve in the future. But I hope people don’t misunderstand ... there’s nothing else behind it than those simple objectives.

EM: I have heard the cost savings issue, but there has been such an uproar. Does that bother you or do you take their message, especially, like I said, going into China and the restriction of the press there?

RT: Well, as I understand it, most major news outlets have presence in China. They have bureau offices. They have people there. So it’s not like they can’t cover what’s happening there. The only thing that’s missing is the chance to talk more in the air.

EM: Well, that’s —

T: There’s not going to be anything, in terms of access, visibility is what we’re doing, there isn’t any other, that I can see, there’s nothing else to it.

EM: Right so your answer is you don’t intend to change this model for your next trip.

I think we may safely assume he will not change this model of restrained enthusiasm for the press corps.

By the way, in fairness to the middle-aged Henry Kissinger of the '70s, he was not the only one to be impressed by Jill St. John, who, evidently, enjoyed the political-celebrity lifestyle back then. Kissinger was not made of stone.

P.S. - As I type this, Jill St. John is being interviewed on Turner Movie Classics. What a long career! Especially for an actress who was in only one or two movies, and no memorable ones. She might outlast Kissinger, who himself is still getting around in his 93rd year.

Silent Rex

SecState Tillerson is sure getting a lot of grief for his reserved demeanor and laissez-faire approach to the news media. I'm just going to go completely contrary and say that I admire his quiet style.

My favorite President is 'Silent Cal' Coolidge, and my favorite actor is Charles Bronson, in whose finest movie, The Mechanic (the original 1972 version, not the remake), he doesn't say a single word for the first 20 minutes. He didn't need a lot of jibber-jabber because he simply went about his job in a self-possessed and competent manner.

Why shouldn't Silent Rex avoid the media? In the age of social media, why do we still have press briefings, anyway? We all get the same information at the same time now, so it isn't like we have to wait until 6PM for Walter Cronkite to tell us "and that's the way it is, March 17, 2017."

More importantly, if you were a Republican appointee, what would you conclude about the press from, for instance, leaked email which show Hillary's campaign staff colluding with their friendlies in the press to control the narrative about a scandal?

The press isn't about to get that friendly with Tillerson. So why should he let them clutter up his airplane when he's trying to get some work done?

Secretary Tillerson Isn't Press-Friendly, and We Should Be Okay With That

Regarding our evidently press-shy SecState Rex Tillerson, am I the only one who sees him in the mold of former SecState George Shultz (1982 to 1989)?

Like Tillerson, Shultz (see his official bio here) was also a former CEO - in his case it was Bechtel and the international construction business - and became Secretary of State unexpectedly. Shultz had been an economic advisor and budget guy before President Reagan asked him to replace Al Haig when the later resigned after only seven months in office.

I watched Tillerson's "Hi, I'm the new guy" first day speech, and hearing him stress safety as a core value made me flash back to seeing Shultz at a townhall meeting back in his day (I am sooo old!) and hearing him equate security of diplomatic operations to industrial safety in the construction business. Both times I was a little surprised, but figured yeah, okay, I guess.

Shultz didn't do a lot of flying around Special Envoy-like, but mainly stayed in the office and ran the organization. Fundamentally undramatic. I don't remember him being a media star. He seemed to have the economist's mindset, in which you make an input and then wait six or eight months to see if it had an effect. There's not much immediate gratification there to excite the news media.

Tillerson gives every indication so far of being the same pragmatic CEO type of Secretary. We could do a lot worse, even he never gets friendly with the press corps.