This just in -- Hillary Accepts Job as Head of State

this makes sense......for all the talk about how she could try again in 8 years, in fact no she cant. She is a loser, she will never be elected President. She could stay in the Senate but she is not a New Yorker, nor is she a natural politician. This job will allow Hillary to do what she is good at, what she has always wanted to do. Bill could have submarined her by not following the Obama rules but he owes Hillary, Hillary gets whats she wants.

Just because HC is appointed, it doesn't preclude her from being replaced if she screws up or if Bill continues to compromise her or Obama with his shady transactions. As a result, it also keeps Bill on a short leash.

She has something to prove now, she has to prove she wasn't just blowing smoke about her foreign policy and diplomatic skills. It is a kind of put up or shut up move.

I am curious about Bill Clinton’s shady transactions?

I don't really know if Hillary will make a good Secretary of State or not, but like others have said, if she is in, maybe Obama won't have to worry about any criticism from that end of the Democratic Party.

So you believe that a president should keep his critics on a tight leash so as not to make him look bad. Is that not what Bush did for eight long years of cluster fuks. Made sure that the truth were his truths. I would rather see a government that had many different views to choose from, not a concenses government.

I seriously doubt Obama is going to punish Hillary if she has ideas other than his own. More than likely he will listen to her and everyone else's ideas in his cabinet and then come to some kind of decision on the issues they face. I just meant if she is not all bitter about the election then maybe some of the left over hard feelings from the Hillary supporters (and Hillary herself) will be more in a corporative spirit.

Point well made, chai.

Treat your friends like your friends and treat your enemies like your enemies.

After all, when Hillary first ran for Senator of New York she was no politician. But she succeeded and now she is being accused for being a politician. She was an executive in a law firm so she know about wheeling and dealing. There no doubt on her good will tours during Bill Clinton's Administrationthat she conducted some secret talks and negotiations. She would would be familiar with the world scenario. Maybe those tours were planned for her future run for office. Never know!.

Glad to see that you haven't allowed Obama's election to get you all warm and fuzzy about Hillary.

I would like to know how she has developed her purported foreign policy skills. By attending state dinners with her husband?

I'm surprised that her husband's shady deals didn't cause more of a stumbling block. Maybe they're not so shady after all.

I don't really buy this "keep your enemies even closer" line. Perhaps that's what Obama and his inner circle think they are doing, but if the Obama presidency comes up well short over the next three years, it is unlikely to be due to anything that can be tied to Hillary, and she will have plenty of time to jump ship and challenge him in 2012.

It is far more likely that this or a similarly high cabinet post was the price of her support after the primaries. Now that Obama's been elected, it's easy to forget how he limped to the finish line in the primaries and how much he was likely to have felt he needed Hillary's supporters in the general election.

I wonder what post was loosely promised to John Edwards. The logical position would be Attorney General. In any case he shot himself in the foot and out of the cabinet with the revelation of his sexual escapades.

It's hard for me to imagine Hillary playing the faithful servant to President Obama, and not using the position to advance her own, undiscarded, ambitions.

I suspect she will be as tough as she has to be, but there are, obviously, other skills required.

I hope she employs her maniacal bitch cackle to its full strength. One blast of it is bound to put Putin, Ahmadinejad, or Kim Jong Il back on their heels.

Limped to the finish line?

It was a marathon race where halfway through one runner came up from behind to a position a yard behind the front runner-but the front runner held that advantage all the way to the finish line.

Obama seemed to hold that slim 120 delegate lead forever. If he had limped, she'd have passed him.

Not nearly as likely as the adherents of the losing side concocting scenarios and promoting them under the idea that since they cannot be conclusively disproven, they're probably true.

In recent memory, only Condi Rice has acted as a "faithful servant" to the sitting president. It's really not part of the job description. If Hillary has ambitions beyond her current assignment, I see no harm in that. Didn't Dick Cheney get to be vice president by serving as George H.W. Bush's Sec'y of Defense?

I'm pretty sure Cheney got to his position by drinking the blood of virgin children, sacrificed at the exact moment of the setting of the sun on Walpurgis night and as a youth, drowning Brian Jones to advance the fame of Mick Jagger. Oh yeah, and he shot a guy in the face. Lord Satan rewarded him with the Vice Presidency and the ability to walk the earth without a heart.

damn

From how I remember it, Bush threw anyone who dared criticise his MO out at the first sign of independent thought. One after the other, people who spoke up against the way things were going in any way were not just cast out but actively slimed. He was surrounded by yes-men.

You mean the way Ronald Reagan was a loser at the Republican convention in 1976? He tried back then, lost, then came back and won four years later.

As for Hillary, in 2016 she'll just turn 69 before Election Day. The age issue would be a factor, although is she pledges to run for a single term she might avoid it. McCain's age hurt him because he would already be in his early-mid seventies when he took office. Hillary would just be leaving office at that age.

If Obama has a successful presidency and Hillary turns out to be a successful Secretary of State, that scenario could happen.

finn d'bitter

Yes, and don't forget "You won't have Nixon to kick around any more." After losing the Presidential election to JFK and then not even being able to win in a race for the Governor's seat in California, that's exactly what Tricky Dick said. Anybody remember what happened four years later?

Not at all blatham, and comparing my post to that of buttrfly net's, less so than someone who should be crying corn syrup tears of joy.

Is is really so outlandish to suggest that two master politicans came to a political arrangement to ensure the political support of one for the other?

They call them political appointments not meritorious appointments.

I have to laugh when folks who want to claim appointment of Clinton was political brilliance on the part of Obama (keeping his enemies even closer), but take umbrage with the suggestion that it was the price for Hillary's support.

I hope Obama is half the president y'all expect him to be, but you need to wipe the stardust from your eyes and see him for what he is: a politician.

He wasn't plucked from a monastery, or dragged kicking and screaming from a soup kitchen. He ran for president and won, which means he entered a political race and employed considerable political skills to defeat his opponents.

The alternative explanation is that he was the puppet of considerably skilled political handlers.

I prefer to believe the former because he, and not his handlers, was the choice of the American people.

If he's not a master politician, we are in deep doo doo.

Christopher Hitchens slams the idea of Hillary here
http://www.slate.com/id/2205323/