Let us now praise undiplomatic women.
Two cases in point: Michele Rhee, Washington, D.C.’s blunt public schools Chancellor and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Yesterday, Rhee told a gathering of CEOs that the District suffers from a “complete and utter lack of accountability in this system.” That’s likely to intensify the flak she’s already taking from the teachers’ union, which is apoplectic about her decision to lay off 250 subpar teachers, and from the City Council, which sees her as insufficiently deferential on matters of school reform.
But Rhee was unapologetic. “Collaboration and consensus-building are quite frankly overrated in my mind,” she told the executives. “None of you CEOs run your companies by committee, so why should we run a school district by committee?”
It’s a good question, though such characteristic bluntness probably won’t lengthen her tenure as chancellor. Rhee is adamant about putting the needs of Washington’s public school children, who are overwhelmingly poor and minority, above the interests of adults in the District’s political-educational complex who resist fundamental changes in a system that’s manifestly failing.
On measures of student performance, the District ranks 51st among the states and near the bottom of nation’s biggest metropolitan regions. In weeding out teachers on the basis of job performance rather than seniority, Rhee has hit a very sensitive nerve. She’s saying, in effect, that public education in the District isn’t a jobs program for city residents. Let’s hope she goes on making waves.
Here’s Rhee at yesterday’s event:
Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton created a flap in Pakistan recently when she had the temerity to note that Osama bin Laden and his top al Qaeda henchmen have been living in that country since 2002.
The Pakistani press, ever alert for signs of U.S. encroachment on that nation’s sovereignty, went ballistic. Foreign policy mandarins sagely opined that the U.S. secretary of state had committed a clear breach of diplomatic protocol by embarrassing her hosts.
Well, they should be embarrassed. The presence of America’s terrorist enemies in Pakistan should be a besetting sore point in U.S.-Pakistani relations. It signifies either governmental incompetence or, worse, collusion. And with the Pakistani Army now clearing Taliban havens in South Waziristan, which it formerly regarded as no-go territory, the question of why the nation’s intelligence and security forces can’t locate our enemies only grows more insistent.
Pakistani officials reportedly are pushing back hard on U.S. suggestions that they go into North Waziristan next. It’s the home base for the notoriously thuggish Haqqani network, which is responsible for a wave of kidnapping and terrorist attacks in neighboring Afghanistan.
All this suggests that Pakistan, set to receive about $7 billion in U.S. aid, remains a strangely reluctant partner in the struggle against extremists who threaten Pakistan, Afghanistan and the U.S.
The White House reportedly is upset with Clinton for her occasional outbursts of candor. Let’s hope they don’t fit the muzzle too tightly.
