Anticipating a nasty confirmation process: HRC for state?
That is one of the rumors out there. If true, I don’t have a problem with the pick per se. I think Kerry would be better, but HRC is a tough, smart woman and I think she’d do a good job.
But think about the confirmation process for a second. The Clintons have been pretty secretive in the past when it comes to things like their financials. Oh, and the Republicans can’t stand her.
It could get messy.
PoliBlogger isn’t buying it for a different reason:
I, for one, am not buying it. All of the reason that existed not to name her as Veep, accrue to this office as well. Indeed, at least with naming her as veep there was a potential political (i.e., electoral) upside to taking on the risk of having a direct rival within the White House, not to mention Bill (and advantage that Obama ended up clearly not needing). I am not sure what the advantage would be now, especially since it isn’t like Senator Clinton is some sort of foreign policy savant.
This is a legitimate concern, particularly if they do see each others are rivals now. My sense, though, is that now that the election is behind both of them, they *might* be able to co-exist and work for common cause for the next 4 (hopefully 
years without too much incident. I think there is a tangible difference between *running* together and *governing* together. This is particularly true for HRC who presumably would benefit greatly from this appointment.
That said, the division just might be too difficult for Obama to overcome. I don’t think anyone would blame him for being weary of the Clintons after the last two years.
November 14th, 2008 10:11
This Republican would rather see her than Kerry, fwiw.
November 14th, 2008 10:13
I’m not sure you represent the majority on this issue, however.
November 14th, 2008 10:17
Perhaps not.
November 15th, 2008 09:19
I think it would be a good way to bury the hatchet with HRC after a messy Primary season. Throw Bill the Ambassador to the UN position and we’re set.
November 15th, 2008 10:24
I don’t think Obama needs to bury any hatchet. He’s President, every member of the Democratic party of consequence endorsed him during the primary. By offering Hillary this position, he is throwing her a major lifeline that he does not need to do at all. I can support her in this position, but Obama owes her nothing, and if he never appointed either Clinton to any position, the media would try to make a deal out of it, but those that matter in the Democratic party wouldn’t give a rats behind.
November 15th, 2008 10:38
Of course he doesn’t “need” to do anything, Yankees. But maybe this is something that separates the successful Democratic party from the unsuccessful Republican party. Democrats have a way of coming together and working for common cause as a united party in times of trouble. Like right now.
November 15th, 2008 11:53
hahahaha. You seem to forget the tremendous disarray the Democratic party has been in prior to two years ago. The way the two party system works is one gets into power gets a shot at making things happen, then the first sign of trouble, gets voted out. The Dems were anything but cohesive from 1994 – 2006. Now the Repubs are in trouble and I believe it will take at least four years before they can recover. But for you to think that Dems have a way of coming together is anything but unique to the past two years (in my voting lifetime at least) is outright wrong.
November 15th, 2008 11:54
Thought experiment: think back over your lifetime to the most successful times this country has had. Then think about who was in office and the state of the party. Get back to me.
November 15th, 2008 12:08
If you are thinking about Clinton – #1 we got attacked on his watch by Al Qaeda more times than ever and he did didly; #2 under his watch he saw Congress stripped from his control (so the state of his party wasn’t all that peachy). Not to mention, after this AMAZING president we saw his party COMPLETLEY thrown out of office between 2000 and 2004…His Vice President wasn’t able to win his or his own states in the 2000 presidential election. I’m not sure how you can say that the state of the democatic party was anything but in shambles up until two years ago.
November 15th, 2008 12:11
LOL we got attacked under Clinton except the big one came under Dubya. Remember the memo: “terrorists plan to fly airplanes into our buildings” that he conveniently didn’t bother acting on? Oh right.
Congressional overturn under Clinton had nothing to do with the party’s divisiveness, my friend. And the weenie American voters got scared by Dubya in 2004 into thinking Republicans were better at security. Once they realized this was a farce they changed course promptly in 2006.
But you made my point by recognizing that your best times were under a Democrat.
November 15th, 2008 12:17
Way to make excuses, scholar. Numbers don’t lie.
And my best times would never be under a president who ignored a terrorist organization to the point where it was strong enough to do what it did…Clinton is the only President who could have truly stopped 9/11 from ever happening…by the time Bush came into office, it was too late….thank goodness though he’s been strong enough since to recognize what needed to be done to avoid something like that from happening again.
November 15th, 2008 12:20
It was too late? I love how Republicans brush Bush’s culpability in all this under the rug. Was it too late when the memo about terrorists flying airplanes into buildings came across his desk? Do you think he could have made some phone calls? Maybe called up the FAA and did a little investigating about the possibility of this? Instead he did nothing. Just like on the morning of 9/11, when told about the attacks, he did nothing.
Bush is the worst president we’ve ever had. That goes for national security as well.
November 15th, 2008 12:26
You seem to think you have some sort of special authority in determining that…but you don’t. History will tell…50 years from now we can revisit this on the blog
November 15th, 2008 12:26
50 years from now this blog will have been bought by Google, so it might have a new address. Stay tuned.