The New York Times, which seemed to have embraced Hillary Clinton, takes a hard look at the reality of her role in her husband's White House. As others have been saying, the experience she claims is more like "familiarity." Familiarity makes it easier for her to talk the talk. Walking the walk takes a little closer acquaintance with the difficulties of being a decision-maker.
An interview with Mrs. Clinton, conversations with 35 Clinton administration officials and a review of books about her White House years suggest that she was more of a sounding board than a policy maker, who learned through osmosis rather than decision-making, and who grew gradually more comfortable with the use of military power.
Her time in the White House was a period of transition in foreign policy and national security, with the cold war over and the threat of Islamic terrorism still emerging. As a result, while in the White House, she was never fully a part of either the old school that had been focused on the Soviet Union and the possibility of nuclear war or the more recent strain of national security thinking defined by issues like nonstate threats and the proliferation of nuclear technology.
... She did not wrestle directly with many of the other challenges the next president will face, including managing a large-scale deployment — or withdrawal — of troops abroad, an overhaul of the intelligence agencies or the effort to halt the spread of nuclear weapons technology. Most of her exposure to the military has come since she left the White House through her seat on the Senate Armed Services Committee.
She had none of the security clearances that would have put her in touch with every factor of every decision that had to be made. She played the role still demanded of many American women: she was an old-fashioned (and over-qualified) aide and support.
“Bill, you’re the president,” was a refrain that several administration officials said she used when Mr. Clinton was torn between his advisers.
