Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Her...

Confucius once said, “To know that we know what we know, and that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.”

Perhaps, then, when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton appeared on ABC’s This Week this past Sunday, she was just hoping to inject some redacted Confucian wisdom into the interview as she, again and again, said: “…we…do not…know.”

I have to give her credit for the many different permutations of “IDK” she managed to craft when discussion turned to Asia. There was the simple “I don’t – I don’t have an answer for you right now.” There was the more delicate “we’re not sure exactly,” but my personal favorite has to be “You know, George, it’s such a great question. And there’s no one easy answer.” (I can’t resist pointing out the irony here-that one was in reference to China.)

But no matter what HRC’s abundant campaign experience has taught her, an “uh…duh…” by any other name still stinks as bad. It’s sad when you see it on “Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader.” When you see it from America’s chief diplomat on national television, it’s scary. My count was at least five different utterances of some form of “we don’t know”. For context, that's more than a third of George Stephanopoulos' thirteen questions pertaining to East Asia, including follow-ups.

Secretary Clinton had a national stage on which to communicate both her qualification for her position and the administration’s qualification to handle the various foreign policy challenges before it. Instead, she communicated confusion about an entire region – one that contains our chief competitor in the global economy as well as the nation that is currently both nuclear security threat #1 and holding two of our citizens on trumped-up charges as geopolitical pawns.

Confucius’ definition of true knowledge works in many cases, but not, I’m afraid, in high-level international relations. True knowledge from Clinton in this case would have been, quite simply, answering the relatively basic questions that she couldn’t. If it’s a complicated issue, explain the complications. If it’s a multi-faceted answer, polish off the facets for us. To know that we know what we know, and that our elected and appointed officials can fill in the rest, that’s true knowledge in Washington. Let’s hope Hillary Clinton acquires it before too long.