This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

I guess I should have been a little more impressed.

Turns out that the fellow that Hillary Clinton sent out to Salt Lake City to open her Utah campaign office last week was not some campaign flunky or junior aide with nothing else to do.

He's the guy the then-secretary of state dispatched on a secret mission to open talks with the Islamic Republic of Iran on ending their nuclear program. Which perhaps was good experience for him being her envoy to Republican Caliphate of Utah.

Jake Sullivan was also, according to a profile two years ago in The New York Times, Clinton's planning director and constant traveling companion at the State Department. When Clinton left that office to start running for the top one, Sullivan moved over to be the top national security expert on the staff of Vice President Joe Biden.

After the brief sojourn at Yale, he's back in the Clinton universe.

Sullivan told us most of that himself when he met with The Salt Lake Tribune editorial board the other day.

He didn't tell us that the betting in Washington is that, should his boss move (back) into the White House come January, he'll likely grab a post as high as national security adviser.

So I probably should have taken both my question and his answer a little more seriously when I said, "I'd feel a lot better about your candidate if she didn't spend so much time yukking it up with Henry Kissinger," and he said, "I'd push back a little bit on your description of it as 'yukking it up'."

Like the cupcake I am, I caved when Sullivan pointed out that there aren't that many former secretaries of state for any current top diplomat to consult with, and that Kissinger's knowledge of the world's superpowers, particularly China, shouldn't be ignored no matter what one might think of any individual.

I grumbled something about how the stuff Kissinger was up to as national security adviser and secretary of state for Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, had they been attempted by an official in a lesser nation, would likely have seen him dragged before the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity.

For his role in the trashing of Southeast Asia, in the violent overthrow of the democratically elected government of Chile (on, patriots of that nation are quick to point out, their own Sept. 11), the genocidal coup in East Timor, mass violence in Bangladesh and the disastrous cozying up to the shah of Iran, for which Jimmy Carter, not Kissinger, paid the ultimate political price.

During their primary campaign and debates, Bernie Sanders wasn't interested in Clinton's "damn emails." But he did rightly point out that her association with Kissinger was troubling, to say the least.

This is a recurring problem in public affairs, from the world stage to the city council. The people who know how things really work, and are smart enough to keep them working, are so invested in the status quo, the power structure, however it was we came to such a sorry pass, that they rarely make the kinds of changes we want and need.

That leaves us with situations such as the Clinton Foundation, which has a documented list of successes fighting disease and raising standards of living around the world, and also a worrying donor list that includes some of the world's worst, and most socially backwards, dictators.

And that opens the door, not to experienced and wise people of a different mind-set, but to willful ignoramuses whose Platonic ideal is Donald Trump, who are exempt from the trap of the way we've always done it only because they have absolutely no clue and would be rendered inert if they ever caught one.

There are exceptions, of course. One of the most valuable may be here in Utah, where the leadership of the University of Utah Hospitals and others are really trying to get a handle on why health care costs so much and what we can do about it.

Sullivan was interested in that because, as he truthfully argued, bending down the cost of health care is the most important component of cutting spending, everywhere from the family to the federal government. I suggested that, if he returns to government, he might want to hire away U. health care boss Vivian Lee.

He looked interested. The publisher, though, shot me a reproving look.

Like I said. Maybe I should have taken this meeting more seriously.

George Pyle, a Tribune editorial writer, is at the far end of many interesting six degrees of separation.