Musicmystery
Posts: 30259
Joined: 3/14/2005 Status: offline
|
I know you aren't honestly asking, since your repeated game plan is to throw out loaded questions. But since you ask about the job on a public forum, the answer is no. Here's the job (from the "U.S. Government Guide"): "The secretary of state is the administrator of the Department of State and the principal spokesperson for the President on U.S. foreign policy. The secretary serves as a member of the President's “inner cabinet” of advisers and, by law, as a member of the National Security Council. The secretary has the primary responsibility for preparing the budget for foreign affairs programs, including diplomatic missions, foreign aid to developing nations, and contributions to multinational organizations such as the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the International Monetary Fund. The secretary defends foreign affairs programs before subcommittees of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees and is the principal spokesperson for the administration before the House Foreign Affairs Committee and Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The President may also assign the secretary to communicate foreign policy to foreign heads of state or to serve as the principal U.S. diplomat at international conferences. "As head of the first department of government established in 1789, the secretary is the first cabinet officer in line to succeed to the Presidency in the event there is no Vice President, Speaker of the House, or president pro tempore of the Senate to assume the office. A Presidential resignation is submitted to the secretary of state. "Though some secretaries are highly influential advisers and policymakers, others have merely administered the State Department. Thomas Jefferson, the first secretary of state, resigned from George Washington's cabinet because his pro-French policies were not adopted. For the first two decades of the 19th century, each secretary of state was an influential shaper of foreign policy, and each became the next President: James Madison, James Monroe, and John Quincy Adams. Daniel Webster ran U.S. foreign policy when President John Tyler and the Whig Congress remained stalemated in domestic matters. William Seward wrote a memorandum to Abraham Lincoln in which he offered to run foreign policy, but Lincoln wrote back that as President he would retain final responsibility; Seward's main accomplishment was buying Alaska from Russia. Franklin Roosevelt used Presidential assistants to implement his policies, bypassing his secretary of state, Cordell Hull. President Harry Truman, by contrast, relied heavily on George Marshall, who proposed the Marshall Plan for economic recovery in Western Europe after World War II, and Dean Acheson. Acheson was the architect of the U.S. policies of collective security—making alliances to confront aggressor nations—and containment of communist aggression."
|