Lee Feinstein joins Clinton campaign

Lee Feinstein, who for the past five years has been at the Council on Foreign Relations and where he has done splendid work on such issues as the responsibility to protect and Darfur, has announced that he is leaving CFR to take up a position with the Hillary Clinton campaign as director for foreign policy and national security. (Lee had been with the Clinton administration in several senior foreign policy positions.)

My congratulations to Lee - who is a friend and someone I enormously respect and admire - and even more my congratulations to the Clinton campaign, for having the good judgment and sense to bring on someone as terrific as Lee.

Look - the fact is, I am, even now, a Bush administration supporter and, although nominally independent, will almost certainly support a Republican in the next election. But it is a very great comfort to me - and should be to Republicans overall - that the Clinton campaign would choose someone like Lee Feinstein for so crucial a position. And that, if Clinton wins, he will be likely to occupy a high post.

There are many policy issues on which we don't agree, and even some basic premises about foreign policy on which we differ. But Lee is someone of great personal integrity, sound and mature practical judgment, and he occupies that broad center, whether Republican or Democrat, that this country ultimately depends on over the long term, whether it swings center right or center left. It shows great maturity on the part of the Clinton campaign to bring on board a Lee Feinstein, and in a country in which alternation of power between parties is a long term good thing, Lee is a Democrat, yes, committed to his party and his candidate, yes, but also part of the Vital Center that the United States, like every mature democracy, depends upon in the long haul.

This is outstanding news.