re: #141 Dark_Falcon

If they do at times, its because the State Department (DoS) acts like a bunch of weaklings. They need to show some greater nastiness when dealing with other countries. I’d like to see Hillary turn her nastier side loose during a trade dispute. The object wouldn’t be to win trade terms, but to rhetorically slap the the other country around in order to start presenting a more assertive image of DoS to America.

Only a ponce could care about a thing like that. State’s job isn’t to market itself to Americans, it’s to represent the United States to the rest of the world. There’s also no sense of discretion in what you proposed, what countries we should do this to and which ones it would be an absolute disaster on. You’re also, by omission, proposing a one size fits all approach to foreign trade relations, which I know can’t be your intent because if this were the tack taken with Israel you’d freak out. Anyway, I can’t imagine a more counter productive policy than for DoS to start adopting “nastier” rhetoric with regards to say, China, simply to placate domestic critics like yourself. That would be completely antithetical to State’s mission and damaging to the interests of the US.