There it was. With plenty of time to prepare, the State Department came up with a number of mostly bureaucratic reorganizations as the legacy of Secretary Clinton’s QDDR. Lee was not impressed. “Were there any of these that didn’t simply involve rearranging of the bureaucratic deck chairs or shuffling responsibilities between one bureau to another or creating a new level of bureaucracy?” he asked. “Were any of the accomplishments in – outside of that, those areas?”

“Absolutely, Matt,” answered Psaki. “I would say the whole process, if it works well, as it did in 2010, or leading up to 2010, is to better determine priorities and how to make things work better in a large functioning bureaucracy.”

After a bit of back-and-forth, Lee tried again: “I’m asking for actual demonstrable outcomes, not the creation of a new position or a new job.” Lee wondered whether beyond turning this office into that bureau, or signaling that this or that issue would now be a priority for the Secretary of State — whether beyond that sort of organizational business the QDDR had actually done things. After an exchange about the accomplishments, or lack of accomplishments, of a Clinton-created entity known as the Energy and Resources Bureau, Lee and Psaki appeared to call it a draw, and the briefing ended.