Unconventional ideas need champions and they have to start somewhere.  Today, Thomas Friedman pushes Arne Duncan, current Secretary of Education as the next Secretary of State.  It's a quirky idea, but interesting.

First, though, Friedman has to deal with the very obvious problem of why he'd prefer such a contrarian pick over the front runner, current Ambassador to the United Nations and longtime Obama confidante, Susan Rice.

"I don’t know Rice at all, so I have no opinion on her fitness for the job, but I think the contrived flap over her Libya comments certainly shouldn’t disqualify her."

Friedman has been writing columns and books, as well as lecturing, on foreign policy issues throughout Obama's first term and for more than a decade prior to that.  He has access to just about anybody he wants to talk to.  But he never met Susan Rice, one of the known architects of Obama's foreign policy?  Never even called her up?  Not once in four years?  Crack reporting, scoop.

But, hey, this is about Duncan.

"Well, anyone who has negotiated with the Chicago Teachers Union, as Duncan did when he was superintendent of the Chicago Public Schools before going to Washington, would find negotiating with the Russians and Chinese a day at the beach."

Then, a few lines later:

"Trust me, if you can cut such deals with Randi Weingarten, who is president of the American Federation of Teachers, you can do them with Vladimir Putin and Bibi Netanyahu."

Maybe if Friedman had bothered to call up Rice, she could have explained to gim that the American Federation of Teachers, for all of its vaunted power, does not actually have nuclear weapons.

It takes Friedman the first half of his column but he finally gets to the crux of his argument, which is that it might be good for the U.S. to have a globetrotting representative who can and will talk about education because education is a way forward for many struggling nations, including the emerging democracies of the Middle East.  Hopefully, this person would have more tact than Friedman, though.

"For instance, it would be very helpful to have a secretary of state who can start a negotiating session with Hamas leaders (if we ever talk with them) by asking: 'Do you know how far behind your kids are?' That might actually work better than: 'Why don’t you recognize Israel?'”

Yeah, Tom.  "Your kids are dumb," will go over well.

"At the same time, as our foreign budget shrinks, more and more of it will have to be converted from traditional grants to 'Races to the Top,' which Duncan’s Education Department pioneered in U.S. school reform. We will have to tell needy countries that whoever comes up with the best ideas for educating their young women and girls or incentivizing start-ups or strengthening their rule of law will get our scarce foreign aid dollars. That race is the future of foreign aid."

It's an interesting idea.  Though, traditionally, our foreign aid has been deployed (at least in theory) with the idea of American security.  That's problematic.  But what Friedman wants is for the U.S. to do what the IMF and World Bank have done routinely, with very mixed results.

"Secretary Hillary Clinton practically had to forge the Syrian opposition groups into a coherent collective, as a necessary precursor to persuading them to do the right things. Today, to make history as a secretary of state, you have to make the countries to deal with first."

I get the feeling that Friedman equates the Syrian opposition with teachers unions and the PTA.  Again, if Friedman thinks that the job of the next Secretary of State should be, in fact, nation building, then maybe he does have to back up and get to know our current Ambassador to the U.N.  The problem with the contrarian solution is that you have to have a good reason why the conventional wisdom is not a better idea.  Friedman doesn't.

"So while we’re not likely to shift our secretary of education to secretary of state, let’s at least understand why it is not such a preposterous idea."

You're not doing this idea any favors, Tom.  None at all.