{"id":2235,"date":"2009-11-20T13:34:38","date_gmt":"2009-11-20T18:34:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=2235"},"modified":"2009-11-20T13:34:38","modified_gmt":"2009-11-20T18:34:38","slug":"europes-harriet-miers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/2235\/europes-harriet-miers\/","title":{"rendered":"Europe&#8217;s Harriet Miers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Although it is painful to criticize a fellow name-bearer (no relation), the selection of Britain\u2019s Lady Ashton for European High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy &#8211; the second most important position in the European Union &#8211; is yet another indictment of consensus-driven politics.  Who else but a collection of power-protecting politicians would select a person charged with being <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Catherine_Ashton,_Baroness_Ashton_of_Upholland\" target=\"_blank\">the international face of European diplomacy<\/a> of whom <a href=\"http:\/\/www.timesonline.co.uk\/tol\/news\/world\/europe\/article6924194.ece\" target=\"_blank\">this could be written<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Lady Ashton was so unprepared for her \u201cpromotion\u201d that she had no speech prepared when she held a press conference with Mr. Van Rompuy (the new European president). She was telephoned to see if she would accept the job once Mr. Brown switched his allegiance to the only other Briton with a chance of capturing one of the prized jobs.<\/p>\n<p>She has been a commissioner for 13 months, since Lord Mandelson was brought back to the Cabinet. She has been Leader of the House of Lords but has no experience as a foreign minister and has never been elected.  Mr. Brown said the appointment showed Britain was \u201cat the heart of the future of Europe\u201d and was leading the way in extending women\u2019s representation.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>In the span of a month, Britain went from defending the candidacies of former Prime Minister <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Tony_blair\" target=\"_blank\">Tony Blair<\/a> and current Foreign Secretary <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/David_Miliband\" target=\"_blank\">David Miliband<\/a> to promoting a Trade Commissioner who has never won a single vote.\u00a0 Hey, at least the nation is leading the way in extending women&#8217;s representation!\u00a0 Good grief.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Although it is painful to criticize a fellow name-bearer (no relation), the selection of Britain\u2019s Lady Ashton for European High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy &#8211; the second most important position in the European Union &#8211; is yet another indictment of consensus-driven politics. Who else but a collection of power-protecting politicians would select [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[530,527,528],"class_list":["post-2235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-european-high-representative","tag-harriet-miers","tag-lady-ashton"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2235"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2235\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2246,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2235\/revisions\/2246"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}