Clinton at the Hearing

Secretary of State nominee Hillary Clinton experienced the love-fest that you might expect during yesterday's appearance before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

There is an interesting account of the day's highlights here if you didn't catch it live or want to avoid the honey-drenched obsequiousness of partisans tripping over themselves to suck up to the future Madame Secretary.

There was a lot of talk about "smart power," which is really just a short translation for "we're going to do things differently than Bush did."

Diplomacy is all the rage with the new foreign policy leaders in Washington. But what has pure diplomacy gotten us with stopping North Korea and Iran from going nuclear? What has it done to forward peace between Israel and Palestine? What will it do as China seeks to more aggressively assert itself in Asia, Africa, and Latin America?

If we're going to handle all these challenges successfully, our power better be pretty darn smart indeed.