Empower and fund Agencies and Departments, not WH task forces. Cool.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

I liked Hillary's statement that existing agencies should be fixed and funded rather than recreating duplicate functions within the White House.

Yes, it is in her interest as SOS. But it is also an overdue recognition that the civil service isn't a potted plant and that the Bush/Cheney approach of creating ad hoc power centers in the white house as end-runs around the bureaucracy (and sometimes end-runs around confirmation) is paranoiac and ultimately dangerous.

You don't look for saints, you look for people whose ambitions are aligned with your own. Hillary likes power and she will do a fine job of wrestling back all the State Department prerogatives and programs that were stripped from Powell because he wasn't "with the program" (And Rice has been treading water with Cheney always sniping)

(Questioning why development funds are being dispensed by military not trained for the function rather than by native-speaking regional experts from State was also good.)