If I were a Hillary Clinton supporter angered by Barack Obama's decision to select Joe Biden as his running mate, I'd be not only appeased but impressed. Can this not have been the plan all along? Win the election, with or without the support of the (largely mythic) "PUMA" faction, then give the old girl the better prize of the entire State Department. The Guardian has reported that Clinton has indeed accepted Obama's offer for the secretaryship, and may I be the first to point out that Sidney Blumenthal's editorial position at that newspaper no doubt had something to do with its breaking a major American news item?
Clinton, who still harbours hopes of a future presidential run, had to weigh up whether she would be better placed by staying in the Senate, which offers a platform for life, or making the more uncertain career move to the secretary of state job.
The obvious problem here is that she'd be allying herself with an administration whose success could very well facilitate her run for the White House in 2016, but whose failure would almost certainly doom it. Is it better to stay aloof but vaguely supportive, then cast yourself as the change agent who never trusted this president from the start? That option didn't quite work for John McCain. Moreover, Clinton will, as Secretary of State, finally attain a high-level foreign policy expertise that may well include dodging actual sniper fire in the next four years. But this will mean going along with executive decisions she won't agree with, and taking ownership of them when and if they prove blunders. At the very least, it'll be an interesting spectacle to behold, and the journalism profession (what remains of it, anyway) should be grateful.
Though a brief word about what this choice says about Obama. Judging by some of the orgasmic responses to this pick from the Yes We Can quarter, all's forgiven and forgotten, and the new man in charge has yet to be tagged with the label "cynic." (Andrew Sullivan, who not too long ago compared Clinton to "Glenn Close in the bathtub in Fatal Attraction -- whoosh! She's back at your throat" now calls her employment as the international face of the United States "inspired," "genius." Well, that was easy, wasn't it? If only Michael Douglas had hired the bunny-boiler as his nanny instead of letting Ann Archer blow her away.)
The nasty playbook of McCarthyite innuendo that originated with Clinton, who said Obama wasn't a Muslim "as far as I know," and then passed to the Republicans after the Democratic primary was resolved has evidently not fazed Obama overmuch, which is encouraging if you believe the current "Team of Rivals" he's amassing is as capable and honorable as the one Lincoln did. It's also somewhat disappointing and reminds me of Obama's unwillingness to keep a grudge on principle--by no means an unhealthy instinct in a politician.
I appreciate that there are only so many policy talents to choose from in Washington, but Rahm Emanuel, Robert Gibbs, John Podesta, H.R.C. and (in all probability) Larry Summers is more like Plus ca change you can believe in. And judging from the arctic smile afixed to John McCain's face today during his long-awaiting truce and reconciliation meeting with the president-elect, he seems to realize that the one barb his schizophrenic campaign failed to let fly was that a vote for Obama would be a vote for Bill Clinton's third term.
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