TULSI GABBARD: A YOUNG STAR HEADED FOR THE CABINET?
by Sanjena Sathian Ozy.com September 28, 2015 (excerpts)
...“I wouldn’t be surprised if she became the chair of a powerful committee — and then went for Senate,” says Stephanie Sanok Kostro, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). But the day I meet her, amid all her cameos and handshaking, she isn’t quite ready to let me in. Sitting in a coffee shop, she is thoughtful, understated, even a little awkward. We move painstakingly into the personal, touching on her athleticism (martial arts; she hates running), to her perfect hair (which she only gets done in Hawaii), to her second marriage to a “very private” 26-year-old cinematographer who proposed on a surfboard. Then, to a grander space.
“Senate?” “Maybe.”
“Secretary of Defense?” “Maybe.”
“State?” “I’m just going to keep saying the same thing,” she cuts in, with a real, wide, rare Cheshire cat smile.
“Let me just get through it,” I say, because now that I am here, I have to get the damn quotes.
“Homeland Security?” “Maybe.”
“VP?” “Maybe.”
Drum roll … “President?” “Maybe.”
...
Most recently, Gabbard has made her name in Washington in a series of television-waged battles with the Obama administration over its stance on Iraq, terrorism and the so-called Islamic State (IS) group. There’s some nuance to her objections, but the headline grabber: This spring, she told Obama he’d sure as hell better call the IS terrorists Islamic and stop pussyfooting around.
She’s been a vocal critic of what she called, on CNN in May, the “fantasy” of a unified Iraq — please, please, a three-state solution already, she begged.
She’s not “reflexively partisan,” says Republican Rep. Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, with whom she’s worked on privacy bills, among other topics; thanks to her service (necessary nod) and in part to those Obama disagreements, he says, his party has somewhat of a soft spot for her. “If ever a Republican won the White House,” he muses, well … “there’s a tradition of picking someone from the other side for one of your slots.” Gabbard, he figures, might be ideal....
read ... Tulsi Gabbard
Flashback: Tulsi Gabbard Running for Vice President