What About Hillary?

18 November 2008 |permalink | email article

The idea of Hillary Clinton as secretary of state is intriguing since she has few major leadership options as a junior U.S. senator from New York. So Obama met secretly with her in Chicago last week to discuss options, notably SOS.

Maureen Doud’s take: If Obama choose her …“it doesn’t signal the return of the Clinton era. It says the opposite: If you have a president who’s willing to open up his universe to other smart, strong people, if you wish to have a big dog who shares his food dish, the Bill Clinton era is truly over.”

Not so fast, say many diehard Obama supporters on the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, still smarting from their foreign policy differences, notably authorizing the Iraq war. So SOS is far from a done deal today.

Former ambassador Bill Richardson has been interviewed, John Kerry’s still in play, and Chuck Hagel, to mention one name, is a possible wild-card.

C42 has enthusiastically endorsed Hillary. But transparency and conflict issues because of his global financial interests and foreign government contacts - are central to a serious vetting process. 

The real story is why so many prominent Republicans are publicly pushing for Hillary’s appointment. They include Henry Kissinger, who served as secretary of state under Nixon and Ford, and Arizona Sen. John Kyl, a super hawk whose motives are murky.

Then there’s California Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who campaigned for McCain and mocked Obama. He told George Stephanopoulos on Sunday he thinks Clinton “could be a great move” for the cabinet of the president-elect.

The Terminator’s sudden conversion is more than a bid odd.

He skipped the Republican governor’s conference last week in Miami, ostensibly to deal with a multi-billion state budget deficit, or perhaps to avoid the Sarah Palin sideshow.

Is Arnold’s statement a conciliatory gesture to make nice with the new administration which he once expressed interest in serving, or is Maria Shriver, his wife and a staunch Obama backer, encouraging detente?

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