Whether you’re a second lieutenant working with a captain and a lieutenant colonel, or a four-star general working with the Office Secretary of Defense and the White House, the decision makers have got to have ground truth. Otherwise, the decisions they make could be flawed – and that can be dangerous.
We can no longer stand for the Security Council passing resolutions and then in effect heaving alongside and taking a vacation. We cannot leave it to the secretary general to go cap in hand.
The VA secretary runs the second largest federal agency in the country, providing services to American patriots who risked everything in service to this nation.
Ben Carson was appointed to be the HUD secretary. He knows nothing about the mission of HUD. He doesn’t care about people in public housing. He believes that if you are poor, it is your own fault. And he doesn’t know the difference between an immigrant and a slave.
I saw the prospect of serving as labor secretary as a wonderful opportunity to further the policies that I have been fighting for my whole life, and I had to seize it.
When Hillary served as Secretary of State, I watched her partner with President Obama to restore our country’s reputation around the world.
If I went to a regular job, if I was a secretary or something, I’d want to look good. I’d dress up for that part.
I don’t have interns. I don’t have a manager. I don’t have assistants. I don’t have a secretary. I can’t figure out Outlook Express. I’m the worst person in the world answering e-mails, and my phone is probably the oldest, most battered phone you can find. So I just talk to people.
I want to make the point that, even though we had a troubled experience, we moved on from that. I moved on from that, to become the first Black congressman, a cabinet secretary. I returned to Mississippi, and I’m now running for the U.S. Senate.
When I was energy and climate change secretary I sat around a cabinet table with Gove, and he couldn’t help playing to the Tory climate-sceptic audience. As education secretary, he tried to ban climate change from the geography curriculum. After an angry exchange of letters with me, he eventually backed down.
I did get a letter from the speaker of the House urging – enjoining me not to brief Secretary Clinton, and lots of cards and letters from people about not briefing Mr. Trump.
I don’t have interns. I don’t have a manager. I don’t have assistants. I don’t have a secretary. I can’t figure out Outlook Express. I’m the worst person in the world answering e-mails, and my phone is probably the oldest, most battered phone you can find. So I just talk to people.
We may never really know if 2004 Democratic presidential nominee and Senator John Kerry was President Obama’s original choice to be Secretary of State or if he settled on Kerry after his first pick, Susan Rice, was forced out by her troublesome career and misleading statements on the Benghazi terrorist attack.
(A Foreign Secretary) is forever poised between the cliche and the indiscretion.
Secretary Clinton is perfectly capable of defending her own service in office.
With a crisis as complex as coronavirus, multiple government agencies and departments are involved in responding. There needs to be one qualified and experienced person who will make sure every relevant cabinet secretary, agency director and policy advisor are on the same page – day in and day out.
Later in that administration, I was asked to take a job which I had to turn down as Assistant Secretary of State for Economic Affairs because we were just then putting together the merger of two small law firms that became this law firm. I couldn’t leave them at that point.
Brainy folks were also present in Lyndon Johnson’s administration, especially in the Pentagon, where Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara’s brilliant ‘whiz kids’ tried to micro-manage the Vietnam war, with disastrous results.
Secretary Tillerson is not going anywhere. I can vouch for that. He is where he is, he continues to be strong in how he handles foreign policy, and I continue to work well with him.
When I first got friendly with Woody, he and Mia were finished with their romance and were just friends. I think Mia would have been just as angry if he had taken up with another actress or his secretary.
Hillary Clinton wants a new title, and I would, too, if I already was secretary of the status quo.
It is not for the State Department or even the Secretary of State to say when and how the resources of the American people will be spent.
In the early days of the republic, the secretary of state was the heir apparent to the president. Presidents could easily hand-pick their party’s next candidate. The party caucuses formally selected the candidates, but presidents guided the process.
I say this everywhere I go: I admire and respect Hillary. She has been a lawyer, a law professor, First Lady of Arkansas, First Lady of the United States, a U.S. Senator, Secretary of State.
Under President Obama and Secretary Clinton, they’re working hard to change the American dream into the European nightmare. They do celebrate more dependence on the government.
I never expected to be Defence Secretary. It’s a great privilege.
The central thesis of the American failure in Afghanistan – the one you’ll hear from politicians and pundits and even scholars – was succinctly propounded by Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage: ‘The war in Iraq drained resources from Afghanistan before things were under control’.
Dad worked his entire career as an aviation technician. Mom was a legal secretary who became a teacher. We lived a simple American life.
Clearly, the qualities Poles admire in a secretary of state – foreign languages, diplomatic experience, even sense of humor – are emphatically not those desired in a head of state: So be it.
