Texan Rex Tillerson helped the country by not taking Rubio’s bait

Robert Pratt photo Copyright Pratt on Texas

Robert Pratt

Our old friend Mario Loyola wrote in National Review: There are “qualities a secretary of state needs to be successful. Excellence in each of them makes for a monumental secretary of state. In his confirmation hearing this week, Rex Tillerson, President-elect Trump’s nominee to the post, showed great promise in all of them.”

In his confirmation hearings the Texan said: “To achieve the stability that is foundational to peace and security in the 21st century, American leadership must not only be renewed, it must be asserted.”

Interestingly it was GOP Senator Marco Rubio and Democrat Senator Robert Menendez who went after Tillerson on issues related to Russia in a somewhat hostile fashion. Their lines of questioning were legitimate but Rubio attempted to extract something from Tillerson that would make him a bad Secretary of State and would harm the new administration.

Rubio attempted to box in the country’s foreign policy toward Russia in advance, unwise at best, and tried to get Tillerson to express his personal views in a way that might not align with his boss, the new President.

Fortunately Texan Rex Tillerson didn’t take the bait and remained a servant of the President-elect as opposed to himself.

Loyola began is National Review piece by saying that “John Kerry was an extremely successful secretary of state in one important sense: He served his president faithfully, and faithfully imposed his president’s policies on the State Department.”

Loyola then went on to explain how disastrous those policies have been but his point was that a Secretary of State is supposed to execute the will of the President, not be his own political machine as we’ve seen far too often.

Rubio’s questions were legitimate but impolitic because they sought to have Rex Tillerson represent himself instead of Trump. And had he done so, it would have reduced American policy options.

Fortunately Texan Rex Tillerson didn’t take the bait and remained a servant of the President-elect as opposed to himself.

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Comments

  1. Tillerson is a Globalist no matter how you cut it Pratt. The Sovereignty of our Constitutional Republic will be destroyed no different than Obama. He is Establishment back Globalist

    • Pratt on Texas says

      What do you mean by “globalist”? This term seems to be used to mean all sorts of things. As it applies to American companies doing business around the world and leading, I’m all for it. That is very different than advocating for global government – extremely different. Beware terms that mean all things to all people.

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