By Paul Begala, political analyst for CNN and coun

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By Paul Begala, political analyst for CNN and counselor to President Bill Clinton.

Easy: Iran sanctions. Sec. Clinton accomplished the nearly impossible mission of getting China, Russia, the European Union and the civilized world on board with crippling sanctions against Iran. This is what brought Iran to the negotiating table.

Ms. Fiorina may not see that as an accomplishment, since while she was CEO of Hewlett-Packard the firm sold hundreds of millions of dollars of computer products the terrorist regime in Tehran, evading US sanctions.

◾Took a leading role in the investigation of health consequences of first responders and drafted the first bill to compensate and offer the health services our first responders deserve (Clinton’s successor in the Senate, Kirsten Gillibrand, passed the bill).

Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/0...z4H337tnKJ

Criticism in the WaPo, which qualifies as 'mainstream media':

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/was-h...af1d5889dd

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In her new memoir, Clinton highlights her attempt to reorient U.S. foreign policy around “smart power” — the integration of military, political and economic tools with grass-roots outreach and efforts to strengthen civil society — but this approach also yielded mixed results. The outreach to Burma led to political reforms and helped move one of China’s closest regional allies closer to Washington. This was an important success, but continuing problems in Burma, including brutal violence against the country’s Rohingya minority, demonstrated the difficulty of integrating human rights with classic geopolitical strategies.

If Burma was a success of the Clinton approach, Egypt and Libya were sobering failures. Except in Tunisia, U.S. efforts to promote democracy after the Arab Spring were largely unsuccessful, with Egypt a particularly dramatic case. But the greatest problem for Clinton’s legacy is likely to be the miserable aftermath of the U.S.-backed overthrow of Gaddafi. Here, advocates of the Libya mission failed to take seriously one of the most important lessons of Iraq: When you overthrow a dictator in the Arab world, expect chaos and violence to follow. The mess in Libya — besides leading to the Benghazi attack that has entangled Clinton in congressional investigations and conspiracy theories — strengthened the voices in the administration opposing the more activist Syria policy Clinton promoted. It also deepened public resistance to more use of American military power abroad. This is not the legacy Clinton hoped to leave behind.


Of course, some of the problems U.S. foreign policy encountered during Clinton’s tenure cannot be laid at her door. There was a constant tug of war within Obama between his desire to transform the world and his strong sense of the limits to American power and will in a post-Iraq age. That struggle often made U.S. policy look indecisive and at times, notably on Syria, created a damaging gap between tough American words (“Assad must go”) and flabby American deeds. That led to questions about U.S. resolve as friends and foes struggled to understand Washington’s intentions. Moreover, the economic and social problems of the Arab world are beyond the abilities of any American government to solve, and the jihadist movement is powered by rage and ideology that Washington can, in the short term, do very little about.

Yet, some of the policies Clinton advocated have exacerbated challenges we now face. Her embrace of transformational diplomatic goals probably undermined her realpolitik efforts to reset relations with Russia and work out a modus vivendi with China. And when American advocacy of an open Internet goes hand in hand with revelations of National Security Agency surveillance, U.S. high-tech policy looks less like a philanthropic venture in supporting human freedom and more like an effort by a powerful state to dominate the world’s communication networks.

The verdict? Clinton brought a clear vision of U.S. interests and power to the job, and future presidents and secretaries of state will find many of her ideas essential. Yet she struggled to bring together the different elements of her vision into a coherent set of policies. The tension between America’s role as a revolutionary power and its role as a status quo power predates Clinton; the struggle to reconcile those two opposed but equally indispensable aspects of American foreign policy has survived her tenure at the State Department.

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