Show Us Something, Hil

We tax all the others and pass the revenue on to you

We hoped the economy might give Hillary some cover while she made quiet progress in foreign relations. That's not been in evidence yet. Sure, the prez gave some DVDs to Britain's Gordon Brown but he's already on our side.

Hillary gave a nifty desk button to Russia's president Medvedev. It was supposed to say "re-set" in Russian, as in American-Russian relations (and how cutesy was that?) but it actually said "overcharge". Medvedev had to explain it all to her in English. You'd think we could hire translators at least as competent as the guy they're supposed to communicate with. SecStates, too.

That's the small stuff, of the kind we're not supposed to sweat. Hil just laughed and clapped her hands. No big deal.

But the big stuff isn't any more promising. "Re-set" Medvedev has stationed Russian troops at the Abkhazian and South Ossetian borders of Georgia, the sovereign country in which those disputed provinces are located.

Not only that, Russian troops are stationed in more traditional Georgian territory that Re-set agreed to pull back from as part of ending last August's war. What are we doing about it? Nothing. Russian hegemony is carrying the day and all meaningful opposition has left the field.

Win one for America, Hil. Any one will do as long as it signals substantive progress in American foreign relations. Stop blaming Bush and Condy, even though you mostly supported them while they were in office. Show them and us how you can do your job better than your predecessors ever did. Show us the power of your dialogue and reason. Show us why, of all 315 mil of us, you were chosen to be SecState. Show us something. Please.

I don't think that's coming any time soon from the senator who was shot at by a sniper in Bosnia. Oh, right, that never happened.

Re-set.

It would have been difficult to design a path out of communism worse than the one that has been followed.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn