Abe, this isn’t much, is it? What is interesting is the posturing and spin, replete with limited and carefully pre-selected quotes, by the Hillary Clinton team to give the impression — if not the reality, as you ably point out — that there is some corrective action going on. Is this a unified effort by the administration to posture, albeit with no real substantive change? Or is this Clinton, walking the tight-rope between wanting to remain a “team player” and escape some of the pointed criticism building against the administration’s mealy-mouthed foreign policy?

I caught the Q & A after her speech on C-SPAN last night. What struck me was how immersed in State Department jargon she has become in six short months. She seemed to be someone who crammed for an exam, and now wants to show the elites and her boss all she has learned. But what is the bigger picture here? What, as you point out, do her internal reviews and acronym-ridden plans have to do with the facts on the ground? Not all that much.

One wonders how long she’ll keep at this — mastering the intricacies of Indian trade and roads in Pakistan — while larger administration policies seems dominated by the White House. At some point there has to be a Senate seat opening up for her, right? One can imagine she might be counting the days when she will again be relevant.