Having worked for six secretaries of State over 20 years, I have a pretty clear sense of what makes a good one -- and with the economic and financial crisis overshadowing foreign policy these days, the selection of an effective secretary of State is now more imperative than ever.
I must confess to a certain bias. In the last 30 years, I believe we've had only two truly consequential secretaries of State. James A. Baker III (whom I worked for and admired) and Henry A. Kissinger (who predated me), with all their imperfections and detractors (and there are many), stand out well above the others. They had different personalities, confronted different circumstances and succeeded and failed in different ways. But they embodied four important qualities that helped them succeed:
The right persona. Freud may have been overly deterministic when he talked about anatomy as destiny, but when it comes to what it takes to be an effective secretary of State, he wasn't far off the mark. The nation's top diplomat needs to be an actor, a teacher, a tactician, an intimidator and a confidant. Most of these qualities are natural and instinctive, rather than learned -- as is the ability to project a strong physical and intellectual presence. When an American secretary of State walks into the room, either here or abroad, his or her interlocutors need to be on the edge of their seats, not comfortably situated in their chairs wondering how best to manipulate the secretary. If anything, they should be worried about being manipulated themselves.
Kissinger and Baker both impressed Arabs and Israelis with their endurance and stamina in negotiations. Both were actors who could yell and threaten to abandon the process (Baker at least twice with Syrian President Hafez Assad and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir; Kissinger at least once with Assad), yet they could also reassure, as Kissinger masterfully did innumerable times with the Israelis and as Baker did with the Palestinians. That mix of keeping their interlocutors off balance but reassured proved indispensable to successful diplomacy.
The president's confidence. The assumption that a new president will appoint a secretary of State who is close to him and has his confidence is not always accurate. Of the six secretaries I worked for, only one -- Baker -- had a truly close relationship with his president. And yet this relationship is crucial. You simply cannot expect to do serious diplomacy abroad, or in the sometimes even more perilous world of Washington, without knowing that the president has your back, will not allow domestic interest groups to undermine you or permit his other advisors to do so.
