Earlier this week, it was her husband. Now her mom and the nation's next presidential team are pitching in to help the next secretary of State retire her 2008 campaign debt.

Today, President-elect Barack Obama and Vice President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. sent out an e-mail solicitation to supporters - signed by Biden - aimed at reducing, if not retiring, the $20.7 million debt Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton racked up during her presidential bid.

The Obama-Biden appeal followed shortly after another electronic appeal signed by Dorothy Rodham, Clinton's mother, who offered potential donors a children's book just in time for Christmas in return for a $50 contribution. The book, "Dreams Taking Flight" by Kathleen Krull, details Clinton's life and her historic bid for the presidency.

Clinton was tapped Dec. 1 as Obama's choice for secretary of State. As a senator, she can continue to raise money. But once she becomes a member of the Cabinet it would be a conflict of interest, and a violation of federal law, for her to directly participate in fundraising activities. Hence, the help from family and friends - and her new boss.

Former President Bill Clinton was the first this week to ask for contributions in his wife's behalf. He used her nomination by Obama as the basis for an e-mail appeal asking supporters of her presidential bid to pony up once again.

Clinton will also appear with his wife in New York Dec. 15 for an event called "Hillary Live: A Conversation with Sen. Hillary Clinton." General admission tickets run 50 bucks.

By Alex Knott, CQ Politics, December 5, 2008

President-elect Barack Obama and his presumptive secretary of state, Hillary Rodham Clinton, both pledged during the campaign to press for peace in the Middle East.

But the Middle East conflict is, perhaps unsurprisingly, already playing out on a small scale within Obama's own transition.

Top policy jobs haven't been filled - the org chart, insiders say, hasn't even been drawn - but Middle East politics watchers, and Obama backers concerned with Israel, are carefully eyeing the interplay between two of his most important advisers on the Middle East.

One is Dennis Ross, a stalwart of the Clinton administration's peace negotiations who is seen as favoring a tough approach to Iran. The other is Daniel Kurtzer, a former ambassador to Israel who in his 2008 book quoted Arab and U.S. officials saying Ross was perceived as "tilted" toward the Israeli side, and that he "listened to what Israel wanted and then tried to sell it toward the Arabs."

The choice of who shapes his policy toward Israel and the Palestinians, said a top Obama backer, will be a "bellwether" for the administration's Middle East policy - for how much to require of Palestinian leaders before they can strike a permanent deal, and for how hard to push Israel for concessions in the interest of peace.

The interest is particularly intense because despite his general pro-Israel views, the details of Obama's approach remain unclear: During the campaign, he riled the right by suggesting that to be pro-Israel isn't to be pro-Likud, but he has also offered tough talk on Israeli security, disappointing Palestinian activists who saw him as an ally during his state Senate days in Illinois.

The difference is a matter of degrees - and not very many degrees - within a firmly pro-Israel policy team, and there are no obvious differences of policy between the two men. Ross, the supposed man of the right, was central to the Oslo peace accords despised by some conservatives in Israel and the United States; Kurtzer, the supposed man of the left, is a Hebrew-speaking Orthodox Jew who was President George W. Bush's ambassador to Israel.

But some close watchers of the negotiations in the region think that choosing Ross would indicate that Obama plans to make tough negotiations with Iran, with a focus on weakening its regional grip, a priority, and to work closely with Israel in negotiations with the Palestinians. They think the choice of Kurtzer might mean a slightly tougher stance toward the Israeli government, and a more rapid push for a historic South Lawn handshake between Israeli and Palestinian leaders.

And a small, perceived distinction in the swirl of politics and perception that is Mideast politics can produce a lot of heat. Insiders say there is no love lost between the two.

Kurtzer emerged in the Democratic primary as an ambassador to the pro-Israel and Jewish communities for Obama. Ross, a trusted figure among relatively hawkish American Jewish leaders, advised both Obama and Clinton in the primary, and was a behind the scenes force in the general election, assuring figures such as New York Daily News publisher Mort Zuckerman that Obama was committed to Israel's safety.

Obama has worked to keep both men inside the tent. They serve together on his Middle East transition team, along with Biden adviser Tony Blinken and two campaign aides, Dan Shapiro and Eric Lynn. But camps have begun to develop: The liberal Israeli newspaper Haaretz floated Kurtzer as "special Mideast envoy" (puzzling Obama insiders who say that Obama - and Clinton - have not yet even decided whether to appoint a Mideast envoy whose portfolio includes the linked issue of Iran, or to divide that portfolio).

A Kurtzer admirer in Obama's camp said choosing him would send the message that "we want to draw on the past, but we want to move forward on our own and not be bound by that."

Meanwhile, Kurtzer's critics say he lacks Ross's stature, and that his relationship as ambassador with the icon of the Israeli center-right, then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, left something to be desired. They see Ross in a more senior policy making role than envoy, if there even is an envoy.

"I'm not sure Dennis wants to be the new Bill Murray of 'Groundhog Day' and just be special envoy again," said a Ross fan.

Ross did not return a call from Politico seeking comment, and Kurtzer e-mailed that he isn't speaking to the press. And they aren't the only ones in the running for top posts shaping U.S. Mideast policy. Clinton Israel Ambassador Martin Indyk remains a force in the field, and Obama's national security adviser, Gen. Jim Jones, has his own background in Middle East peacemaking and could bring in a member of his military team there.

The distance between Kurtzer and Ross, moreover, isn't the only possible rift. The New Republic suggested recently that conflict could come between Jones, who has pushed for Israeli compromises, and Clinton, who has become firmly identified with a hard pro-Israel line. Even Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a fiercely pro-Israel Florida Republican, advised Obama in a telephone conversation "to rely on Hillary's advice on Israel, because she is very pro-Israel," her spokesman, Alex Cruz, told Politico.

The form of the peace process also remains unclear. Top American diplomats, inlcuding Indyk, Ross, and Richard Haass of the Council on Foreign Relations, have suggested that the U.S. press for a treaty between Israel and Syria before attempting to settle the Palestinian conflict. The Israeli elections on Feb. 10 could bring to power Benjamin Netanyahu, who is thought to favor that Syria-first approach, and who is skeptical of talks with Palestinian leaders; or Tzipi Livni, who appears more likely to aim for a grand bargain with the Palestinians.

And ultimately, the key factor may be the commitment of the key American players, Clinton and Obama, whose attention will be drawn by an economic crisis at home, and Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, and Pakistan abroad.

"What counts is whether the president of the United States is going to make this a top priority, and whether the secretary of state is going to provide the kind of adult supervision and oversight that is required," said Aaron David Miller, a former State Department official and veteran of Mideast negotiations. "Who they come up with [as envoy] is significant but not determinative."

By Ben Smith, Politico, December 5, 2008

Caroline Kennedy, a daughter of America's most storied political family who for many years fiercely guarded her privacy, is considering whether to pursue the Senate seat expected to be vacated by Hillary Rodham Clinton early next year, a family member said Friday.

"I believe that she is considering it," said her cousin Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has spoken to Ms. Kennedy about the matter during the past week. "A lot of people the last couple of weeks have urged her to do it."

Ms. Kennedy called Gov. David A. Paterson on Wednesday to discuss the position, Mr. Paterson confirmed Friday. The governor will choose a replacement for Mrs. Clinton upon her expected confirmation as secretary of state next month.

"The conversation was informational," Mr. Paterson said. "She did not express an interest in the Senate, but we talked about the Senate, so I got that she was just trying to get some information to determine whether or not she would like to have an interest in it. And that was it."

He added, "I haven't offered the job to anyone."

Ms. Kennedy, 51, a lawyer who lives in Manhattan, could not be reached on Friday.

The anticipated vacancy in the Senate seat, which was once occupied by her uncle Robert F. Kennedy, has set off intense speculation in the political world. Any interest from Ms. Kennedy could instantly overshadow others whose names have been mentioned as possible successors to Mrs. Clinton, including the state attorney general, Andrew M. Cuomo, and several members of the New York congressional delegation.

And Ms. Kennedy could satisfy those Democrats who have been urging the governor to find a replacement for Mrs. Clinton with star power who can continue to bring attention to New York and its issues in the Senate.

Ms. Kennedy took on an unusually public role in the presidential election this year, first announcing in an Op-Ed article in The New York Times that she would back Senator Barack Obama for president, then appearing for him at campaign stops around the country.

It is unclear, however, how badly Ms. Kennedy wants to be senator, or how much appetite she has for the unglamorous aspects of campaigning across New York's 62 counties. Ms. Kennedy would have to run back-to-back races - in 2010, to serve out the remainder of Mrs. Clinton's term, and again in 2012, for a full term of her own

"Hillary Clinton was a superstar, but she worked like an animal," said one prominent Democratic elected official who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid antagonizing the governor.

Still, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an environmental advocate who has taken himself out of the running for the seat, noted Ms. Kennedy's tremendous work ethic and her success raising money for New York City's public schools.

"I don't think anybody who knows Caroline doubts that she has fire in her belly," Mr. Kennedy said. "She's a workaholic."

Ms. Kennedy, the daughter of President John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, is especially close to her uncle, Senator Edward M. Kennedy, who has been treated for brain cancer in recent months.

The emergence of Ms. Kennedy comes as a wide network of feminist organizations and prominent female Democratic activists have been mobilizing to lobby Mr. Paterson to choose a female successor to Mrs. Clinton.

On Thursday, the group Feminist Majority, joined by the National Organization for Women, endorsed Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, who represents parts of Manhattan and Queens, citing her many years in elected office and proven experience in advancing women's issues.

But reached on Friday night, Eleanor Smeal, the president of Feminist Majority, said that if Ms. Kennedy decided to seek the job, she would have to go back to her board to discuss whom they would support going forward.

"I feel that her record is extremely strong. We know she gets things done," Ms. Smeal said of Ms. Maloney. "But there's no question we'll go back to the board. You're talking to someone who thinks Ted Kennedy is the most effective senator there."

Other leading women have been urging Mr. Paterson to appoint Representative Kirsten E. Gillibrand, who represents an upstate district.

Many veteran supporters of Mrs. Clinton's view the choice of her successor as a significant test not only for women's progress in politics, but of Mrs. Clinton's political legacy. The wrong choice, they say, could reopen wounds barely healed from the presidential campaign. Some even said that they would demand that a woman be selected for the post even if Mrs. Clinton - who has not yet expressed a preference to the governor - backed a man.

"Those women are elated with her appointment to the Department of State, but they still feel quite bruised by the political process over the last year," said Judith Hope, a former state Democratic Party chairwoman who is close to Mr. Paterson. "The women I am talking to feel very, very strongly that the next United States senator from New York should be a woman."

The effort to push for a woman spans a variety of national and state groups, such as NOW, Naral Pro-Choice America, and the Eleanor Roosevelt Legacy Committee, a group that raises money for Democratic women running for office in New York. And it includes prominent Democratic women such as Ellen R. Malcolm, the head of Emily's List, and Susan Patricof, a major Democratic fund-raiser whose husband, Alan Patricof, was a national finance chairman for Mrs. Clinton's presidential campaign.

They suggested that the choice for Mrs. Clinton's successor is especially important not only because of her prominence but because of the central role she played on issues like abortion rights and expanded access to birth control. They said they believed that no man, no matter how well-intentioned, would give those issues the same attention as Mrs. Clinton.

"Once your eyes have been opened on what can be done in terms of when you have someone who is a real leader, it's a bitter pill to think of going back," said Kelli Conlin president of Naral Pro-Choice New York, an abortion rights group.

Some other Democrats, however, are skeptical that Governor Paterson should give so much weight to the gender of his pick. They said he should be primarily concerned with experience, but also give thought to regional diversity, especially since none of the state's top officials now hail from north of, say, Chappaqua.

"Our party is rightly concerned with diversity in gender and race," said Assemblyman Joseph D. Morelle, who is also chairman of the Monroe County Democratic Party. "I am afraid sometimes that we begin to categorize so much that very talented people get overlooked because they don't meet the proper demographic characteristics."

The women's groups and people involved have encouraged thousands of their volunteers across the country to send e-mail messages to the governor. Some who know him well have already made personal pleas, while others will buy tickets to his first major fund-raiser next week, and try to buttonhole Mr. Paterson in person.

"If anyone has connections, they will call," said Lorna Brett Howard, a philanthropist who is the former president of NOW's Chicago chapter. "I have friends in Chicago and L.A. who are talking. They say, 'Who is he going to pick?' Especially the die-hard people Hillary people."

Aides to Mr. Paterson have stressed that he has weeks before he must make his selection.

By Nicholas Confessore and David M. Halbfinger, The New York Times, December 5, 2008

NEW YORK - With just weeks before President-elect Barack Obama is sworn in, his choice for secretary of state, Hillary Rodham Clinton, is scrambling to reduce massive campaign debt before federal ethics rules prohibit her from doing so.

Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, will headline a major debt retirement event in New York Dec. 15 with "Ugly Betty" star America Ferrera as master of ceremonies. Tickets range from $50 to $1,000, with top donors earning a premium seat and a backstage photo with the former first lady.

Clinton also plans to sell a children's book, titled "Dreams Taking Flight" by author Kathleen Krull, about her pioneering candidacy. Clinton's mother, Dorothy Rodham, planned to send an e-mail to supporters later this week asking them to purchase the book to help raise funds to pay down Clinton's debt.

On Tuesday, a day after Obama announced she would serve as his top diplomat, Bill Clinton signed an e-mail to supporters asking them to send a note of congratulations to his wife and including a link for contributing to her debt retirement.

The urgency is rooted in the size of the New York senator's unpaid bills and the fundraising restrictions she will face once she joins Obama's cabinet.

At the beginning of November, Clinton owed $7.5 million to vendors from her failed presidential bid, according to campaign finance records. The largest share of the debt - about $5.3 million - is owed to the polling firm of Mark Penn, the Clintons' longtime political strategist. She owes hundreds of thousands of dollars for printing, equipment rental, phone banks and other services.

Clinton has slowly been trimming the debt since suspending her campaign last June, partly with Obama's help. But her fundraising efforts will be curtailed if she is confirmed as secretary of state and becomes covered by the Hatch Act, which regulates political involvement by federal employees.

A 2001 advisory opinion by the federal Office of Special Counsel said a federal employee with a campaign debt would be prohibited from "personally soliciting, accepting or receiving political contributions." That means Clinton's political committee could keep raising money to pay off her creditors, but without her direct involvement.

The lack of access to Clinton could pose a disincentive for donors, said Sheila Krumholz, director of the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks political donations.

"People write a check to get into the room with a candidate or government official. If she's legally barred from fundraising, the No. 1 reason for giving has been removed," Krumholz said. "It's like attending a wedding and the bride isn't there."

The advisory opinion does allow the former candidate to appear briefly at fundraising events and thank donors. That restriction could suit Clinton well, according to some of her top bundlers who say neither she nor her husband has ever been good at asking for donations.

But none of the Hatch Act rules apply until Clinton is confirmed, so there's an opportunity for people eager to get some face time with the incoming secretary of state. Aides said she will try to avoid doing anything that suggests she is leveraging her new post for fundraising advantage.

Brad Smith, a former Federal Election Commission chairman, said Clinton would be wise to avoid any appearance of conflict of interest.

"If nothing else, there's the embarrassment element," Smith said. "A secretary of state trying to raise campaign money is kind of ugly."

Clinton's new job will help her avoid some pitfalls that loom when political access linked to campaign donations. For example, foreign citizens, who might be interested in forging a relationship with an incoming secretary of state, are legally barred from contributing to U.S. political campaigns.

Still, Krumholz said, there are plenty of U.S. citizens with strong ties to other countries who would welcome the chance to write Clinton a check.

"Wealthy people who have family overseas and are tied to issues in the country - human rights issues, for example - have more incentive to give," Krumholz said.

Analysts said that fundraising to retire a politician's debt - never easy - is more difficult during the recession. Also, Clinton is trying to pay off debts from the Democratic primaries, where many of her supporters already gave the maximum $2,300 per person. They cannot be solicited again.

The large share of her debt owed to Penn, a controversial figure and harsh Obama critic, also complicates matters for Clinton. Many Democrats blamed him for her strategic failings.

Clinton also has about $6 million in her Senate re-election account; some of that could be used under strict restrictions to help pay these debts. Under FEC rules, she would need to ask each contributor's permission to move the donation to her debt retirement account - and none could come from people who already contributed the maximum to her presidential bid.

By BETH FOUHY, Associated Press, December 5, 2008

NEW YORK - President-elect Barack Obama wants to keep an outstanding commitment before Hillary Rodham Clinton becomes his secretary of state by calling on his donors to help her reduce her massive campaign debt before federal ethics rules prohibit her from doing so.

The urgency is rooted in the size of the New York senator's unpaid bills and the fundraising restrictions she will face once she joins Obama's cabinet.

At the beginning of November, Clinton owed $7.5 million to vendors from her failed presidential bid, according to campaign finance records. The largest share of the debt - about $5.3 million - is owed to the polling firm of Mark Penn, the Clintons' longtime political strategist. She owes hundreds of thousands of dollars for printing, equipment rental, phone banks and other services.

Clinton has slowly been trimming the debt since suspending her campaign last June, partly with Obama's help. But her fundraising efforts will be curtailed if she is confirmed as secretary of state and becomes covered by the Hatch Act, which regulates political involvement by federal employees.

A 2001 advisory opinion by the federal Office of Special Counsel said a federal employee with a campaign debt would be prohibited from "personally soliciting, accepting or receiving political contributions." That means Clinton's political committee could keep raising money to pay off her creditors, but without her direct involvement.

The lack of access to Clinton could pose a disincentive for donors, said Sheila Krumholz, director of the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks political donations.

"People write a check to get into the room with a candidate or government official. If she's legally barred from fundraising, the No. 1 reason for giving has been removed," Krumholz said. "It's like attending a wedding and the bride isn't there."

The advisory opinion does allow the former candidate to appear briefly at fundraising events and thank donors. That restriction could suit Clinton well, according to some of her top bundlers who say neither she nor her husband has ever been good at asking for donations.

But none of the Hatch Act rules apply until Clinton is confirmed, so there's an opportunity for people eager to get some face time with the incoming secretary of state. Aides said she will try to avoid doing anything that suggests she is leveraging her new post for fundraising advantage.

Obama's team was sending an e-mail early Friday, signed by Vice President-elect Joe Biden, asking them for help retiring Clinton's debt as she prepares for her new duties.

The letter asks for help honoring "an outstanding commitment we made during the election."

Our campaign pledged to help Senator Hillary Clinton - one of the vital members of our team and our future Secretary of State - retire her campaign debt. That's the money her campaign owes to the small vendors across the country that make our political process possible.

"We welcome Hillary as a partner in our administration, and I hope you will show your support by helping Barack fulfill our campaign promise," the letter said.

Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, will headline a major debt retirement event in New York Dec. 15 with "Ugly Betty" star America Ferrera as master of ceremonies. Tickets range from $50 to $1,000, with top donors earning a premium seat and a backstage photo with the former first lady.

Clinton also plans to sell a children's book, titled "Dreams Taking Flight" by author Kathleen Krull, about her pioneering candidacy. Clinton's mother, Dorothy Rodham, planned to send an e-mail to supporters later this week asking them to purchase the book to help raise funds to pay down Clinton's debt.

On Tuesday, a day after Obama announced she would serve as his top diplomat, Bill Clinton signed an e-mail to supporters asking them to send a note of congratulations to his wife and including a link for contributing to her debt retirement.

Analysts said that fundraising to retire a politician's debt - never easy - is more difficult during the recession. Also, Clinton is trying to pay off debts from the Democratic primaries, where many of her supporters already gave the maximum $2,300 per person. They cannot be solicited again.

The large share of her debt owed to Penn, a controversial figure and harsh Obama critic, also complicates matters for Clinton. Many Democrats blamed him for her strategic failings.

Clinton also has about $6 million in her Senate re-election account; some of that could be used under strict restrictions to help pay these debts. Under FEC rules, she would need to ask each contributor's permission to move the donation to her debt retirement account - and none could come from people who already contributed the maximum to her presidential bid.

By BETH FOUHY, Associated Press, December 5, 2008

IT WAS a moment bound to give anyone second thoughts about Hillary Clinton's nomination as secretary of state: Rush Limbaugh called it a "brilliant stroke." If Rush, who had famously said America wasn't ready to see Clinton age in the Oval Office, was ready to see her age at Foggy Bottom, what was I missing?

Of course, it turned out that Rush was being his old cynical self. He wasn't praising Hillary's talent, but Obama's cunning at keeping his enemy close.

So it went with much of the analysis before and after Clinton was chosen for the premier Cabinet post. The political story line asked if she would be a "teammate" or a "rival" in the "Team of Rivals" metaphor du jour. And was she close enough to the president to be his international right hand?

The psychological story line asked, however, whether we were getting yet another new Hillary. A National Review blogger described her as an "enigma who is best seen in stages; as a series of parts, not a whole."

A series of parts? Not a whole? Hillary, lawyer, wife, mother, first lady, senator, presidential candidate, secretary of state.

I was reminded of Mary Catherine Bateson's classic book, "Composing a Life," which describes life as the art of improvisation.

Life is not a straight and narrow march of achievement, but a quilt made of many parts. Reading the trajectory of many women's lives with their interruptions and conflicts, twists and turns, Bateson saw creativity, not confusion. "These are not lives without commitment, but rather lives in which commitments are continually refocused and redefined."

One of the lifelong commitments Clinton will bring to her new role is to improve the rights and everyday lives of the world's women. These issues will not be the "women's page" in her portfolio, but integral to the way she views the world and, perhaps, to the way America can exercise its power.

Says Melanne Verveer, who traveled with first lady Hillary Clinton through more than 80 countries as her chief of staff, "she didn't just drop by the palace." She was always engaged in the struggles of women.

In 1995, Clinton led the US delegation to a UN conference on women's rights in Beijing. There, she electrified the delegates and challenged the hosts, saying, "If there is one message that echoes forth from this conference, let it be that human rights are women's rights and women's rights are human rights, once and for all."

Thirteen years later, those words are still radical in parts of the world. We have learned from the Taliban and others that the enemies of American values take their first shots at the freedom of women. But the Beijing conference jump-started change. The world understands that rape is not a byproduct of war but a war crime. The United Nations now defines violations of women's rights as an international security issue, and nearly 90 countries have passed laws against domestic violence.

Still, the new secretary of state will be operating in a world in which three-fifths of the world's poorest people are women and girls. Seventy percent of the children not in school are girls. Half a million women die every year in childbirth. One in three women will suffer from the pandemic of violence - rape, honor killings, genital mutilation. But only 16 percent of legislators are women, and less than 3 percent of the people at the table when peace treaties are signed are female.

"What we are learning around the world is that if women are healthy and educated, their families will flourish," Clinton said in Beijing. "If women are free from violence, their families will flourish. If women have a chance to work and earn as full and equal partners in society, their families will flourish. And when families flourish, communities and nations do as well."

Part of a life? Or a whole life composed and recomposed? Well, Hillary regarded Eleanor Roosevelt as a role model. Mrs. Roosevelt's second or third or perhaps fourth act was to get the world to agree to the first Universal Declaration of Human Rights. That was adopted exactly 60 years ago this month. Now it's Hillary Clinton's improvisational turn.

By Ellen Goodman, The Boston Globe, December 5, 2008

A constitutional provision that has prompted questions from an outside group about Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's eligibility to become Secretary of State has Senate Democratic leaders scrambling to craft a legislative fix. But the matter is unlikely to slow the New York Democrat's confirmation.

Precedent exists for Congress to pass a joint resolution sidestepping provisions of the so-called "Emoluments Clause," which is intended to bar legislators from transferring to Cabinet posts and benefitting from salary increases that they helped secure as members of Congress.

Jim Manley, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Wednesday that it was still unclear whether the Senate would take up a legislative fix next week, when the chamber is expected to be in session to consider a bailout of the nation's faltering automobile industry. A more likely scenario, especially because Clinton, D-N.Y. intends to keep her Senate seat until she is confirmed, would be for the Senate to act on the matter next year.

That approach would give lawmakers more time to study precedent. Democrats also would return to Capitol Hill with larger majorities in both chambers, although such a legislative fix most recently passed by unanimous consent.

"This is simply a technical fix we must make so that Senator Clinton can serve as our next Secretary of State," Manley said, adding that Reid "believes a resolution can be reached."

But Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, a conservative-leaning watchdog group, said Wednesday that the legislative fixes used in the past do not address to the root of the problem: that the Constitution expressly forbids Clinton's move to State.

"There are no caveats in the Constitution," Fitton said.

The group, which touched off a flurry of debate within the blogosphere earlier this week when it issued a press release insisting that Clinton was constitutionally ineligible to serve as Secretary of State, is considering a legal challenge -- perhaps by working with a State Department employee to file a lawsuit if Clinton is confirmed -- and is working to fan grassroots opposition to Clinton's appointment.

"Certainly a lawsuit would be something that we would consider," Fitton said, "But in the meantime, it's the obligation of senators to make sure that the Constitution is followed."

Manley pointed out that Congress had addressed similar scenarios in the past "based on the ample precedent that has been set."

At issue is Article I, Section 6 of the Constitution, which states, "No senator or representative shall, during the Time for which he was elected, be appointed to any civil Office under the Authority of the United States, which shall have been created, or the Emoluments whereof shall have been increased during such time."

In the past -- most recently when President Bill Clinton appointed Texas Democratic Sen. Lloyd Bentsen as Treasury Secretary in 1993 -- Congress has rolled back the salary of a legislator-turned Cabinet member to the level it was at the beginning of the lawmaker's most recent term. That approach is known as the "Saxbe fix," for Ohio Republican Sen. William B. Saxbe, nominated by President Richard M. Nixon in 1973 to serve as attorney general.

On Jan. 5, 1993, the Senate passed a resolution cutting the salary that Bentsen would receive as Treasury Secretary from $148,400 to $99,500 to reflect the level of pay that Cabinet members received in 1989, the start of Bentsen's most recent Senate term.

In Clinton's case, her salary as Secretary of State most likely would be reduced to $186,600 -- the pay that Cabinet members received in January 2007 when she began her second term. That is $4,700 less than the $191,300 Cabinet members are currently paid.

"This is a Harvard Law grad nominating a Yale Law grad here, so all parties involved have been cognizant of this issue from the outset," said Clinton spokesman Philippe Reines. "But putting frivolous lawsuits by fringe groups aside, this issue has been resolved many times over the past century involving both Democratic and Republican appointments, and we're confident it will be here too."

By Kathleen Hunter, CQ Politics, December 3, 2008

Bill Clinton has a great idea for how to properly congratulate his wife on her nomination to be the next secretary of State: help her retire her presidential campaign debt, and fast.

In an email sent far and wide to supporters today, the former president wrote, "I am sure you have heard the exciting news: Hillary Clinton is nominated to be our next Secretary of State! This is great news for our country."

"Take a moment to celebrate this wonderful news by sending Hillary a message of congratulations," he said, providing a link to the New York senator's presidential campaign site, where you can congratulate her by taking out your credit card and making a donation to help retire her $7.5 million debt to vendors who worked on her failed presidential bid.

Clinton is racing against the clock to retire her campaign debt while she can still legally do so. Once she is confirmed by the Senate and officially becomes secretary of State, by federal law, she will no longer be allowed to solicit political contributions. Her campaign can continue to do so, but she personally would be barred. She has decided to hang on to her Senate seat until she is confirmed.

In the meantime, she and her husband will try to raise as much money as possible.

In his email solicitation, the former president - and wild-card potential future senator; though Clinton says he's not interested in his wife's seat - told supporters: "This nomination would not have been possible without the hard work of everyone like you who has supported Hillary throughout the years. I know I speak for her when I say thank you for everything you have done for her."

By Mary Ann Akers, The Washington Post, December 2, 2008

Now that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is officially the nominee to be secretary of state, attention is shifting to who would be her choice as second in command.

The name most widely discussed as a possible deputy secretary of state is James B. Steinberg, the co-director of President-elect Obama's transition team. But other names are circulating as well, including that of former Hillary campaign adviser Richard Holbrooke.

The deputy secretary of state is much more than just a shadow of the boss. Currently, while Secretary Condoleezza Rice acts as the public face of American diplomacy, her deputy, John Negroponte, puts his own stamp on the machinery of foreign policy.

The Current Deputy

Negroponte came to the job after serving as a diplomatic point man for some of the toughest policies of President George W. Bush, and he has been accused by Democrats of being part of an alleged Bush administration effort to politicize career employees at the State Department.

Bush's appointment of Negroponte as ambassador to the United Nations in 2001 was contentious, opposed by Senate Democrats who accused Negroponte of keeping silent about human rights abuses in Honduras when he was ambassador there during the Reagan administration.

Negroponte was seen as a hardball player at the U.N., and he had a key role in getting the Security Council to pass a resolution demanding that Saddam Hussein disarm.

In 2004, Negroponte was named the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, taking over from Paul Bremer as the top-ranking American civilian in the U.S. occupation. He went from there to become the first director of national intelligence before returning to the State Department as deputy secretary.

Up Next?

The front-runner to succeed Negroponte, James Steinberg, is not a career foreign service officer, but he has long experience with foreign policy and national security issues. He's often described as intense and a workaholic with a short temper.

Steinberg is currently the dean of the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas. He was deputy national security adviser during the Clinton administration, and he was an informal adviser to Obama during the presidential campaign. Steinberg accompanied Obama on his trip last summer to Afghanistan, Iraq and other countries.

Philip Zelikow, a Republican who was formerly a top advisor to Secretary Rice, says he thinks Steinberg would be a good choice, in part because Steinberg's current job in Texas has given him experience and contacts beyond the usually East Coast-centered foreign policy establishment.

There's some question as to whether any of the contenders for top foreign policy jobs can shake that East Coast establishment label. Steinberg graduated from Harvard and went on to Yale Law - not so different from Negroponte, who graduated from Yale and went on to Harvard Law.

Steinberg clerked for a federal judge after law school, worked as an aide to Sen. Edward Kennedy on the Senate Armed Services Committee, and was an analyst at Rand Corp. before coming back to government in the Clinton administration.

Zelikow points out that Steinberg knows the State Department well, from having served as its director of policy planning from 1994 to 1996. The Office of Policy Planning is known as the State Department's internal think tank, and a successful director has to work closely and well with the secretary of state, something that Steinberg did with then-Secretary Warren Christopher.

Robert White, the president of the Center for International Policy in Washington, says he thinks Steinberg has the broad policy base that would make for a good deputy secretary. White, a former ambassador to Paraguay and El Salvador, says the deputy doesn't necessarily need to be a professional foreign service officer - in fact he says, "probably not. [The job] really calls for someone who's a generalist, rather a regional specialist."

Holbrooke's Status

But White also thinks former U.N. ambassador Richard Holbrooke could be a strong candidate for the job.

"He has decided views," says White, "but he knows who's in charge, and he can reach out to people outside the foreign service community."

Holbrooke doesn't exactly break the East Coast establishment mold, either. He went to Brown and Princeton before starting his foreign service career in Vietnam, working alongside other rising young diplomats, including Negroponte and Anthony Lake, now a key adviser to the president-elect.

Holbrooke is best known as the main broker of the 1995 Dayton Peace Accords, which ended the war in Bosnia. He was a foreign policy adviser to Hillary Clinton during her presidential campaign but had enough support among Democrats of all stripes to be considered among the leading contenders for the secretary of state job before Obama announced Clinton as his choice.

Some think that Holbrooke is a personality better suited to being in charge than to working as a deputy. Zelikow calls him "a powerful artillery shell that should be aimed at a specific target," that is, a tough, high-profile job such as reviving the Middle East peace process.

The timing might be good for Holbrooke to return to government in some capacity. During the periods when he was out of government, he held high-ranking positions at various Wall Street firms, including Lehman Brothers and Credit Suisse First Boston. Holbrooke resigned last July as a board member of AIG, the insurance giant that received a $152 billion bailout from the Federal Reserve after it announced a liquidity crisis in September.

By Corey Flintoff, NPR, December 4, 2008

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton is peddling a chance for people to see her on stage later this month with her husband, President Bill Clinton, and a special celebrity host, America Ferrera, of "Ugly Betty" fame, as part of an effort to retire her still sizable pile of campaign debt.

The unusual event on Dec. 15 in the grand ballroom at Manhattan Center Studios in New York underscores the sudden urgency for her and her creditors now that she has been chosen as President-elect Barack Obama's pick for Secretary of State. Ticket prices range from $50 for general admission to $1,000 for a VIP seat and backstage photo with Mrs. Clinton.

Update: Mrs. Clinton is also planning to send an e-mail appeal to supporters from her mother, Dorothy Rodham, on Friday urging them to contribute. As a bonus, anyone who gives $50 will get a copy of a children's book published earlier this year entitled, "Hillary Rodham Clinton: Dreams Taking Flight," by Kathleen Krull, according to a spokesman.

Mrs. Clinton has managed to whittle her debt down to $7.5 million as of the end of October, according to her most recent campaign finance report with the Federal Election Commission.

But if she should be successfully nominated to the post at the State Department, her unpaid vendors could be out of luck for years while she is in office because of special constraints on her ability to fund-raise while in office.

Anthony Guglielmi, a spokesman for the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, which enforces the Hatch Act, cited a 2001 advisory opinion issued by the agency that stipulated a federal employee seeking to retire campaign debt incurred prior to his federal employment would be barred from personally soliciting the donations but the "campaign organization of a candidate who later becomes a federal employee may continue to organize and promote fundraising events to retire campaign debt."

In other words, Mrs. Clinton's presidential campaign committee could technically continue to raise money towards retiring her debt but with little involvement on her part.

The advisory opinion said that the former candidate cannot "assist in promoting the event and may not otherwise actively participate in such events."

On the other hand, it said that the former candidate can attend the fund-raising events, "be recognized and briefly state his appreciation to all whose efforts contributed to the retirement of his campaign debt" but any participation beyond "this passive role" would violate the law.
There is the obvious concern about conflicts of interest and appearances, however, which would complicate any efforts by Mrs. Clinton to continue to raise money.

At this point, most of the outstanding debts owed by Mrs. Clinton are to political consultants, as opposed to small businesses from primary and caucus states, whom campaign officials said they worked to pay back first.

The largest outstanding bill, according to the most recent campaign finance records, was $5.4 million to her pollster Mark Penn.

The next biggest remaining debt was $831,414 to MSHC Partners, a direct mail firm.

Electrum Productions, an events production company in Washington, was owed $145,128 as of the end of October. Dave Louis Plevan, the company's owner, said in an interview several weeks ago when word began to leak out about the possibility of Mrs. Clinton ascending to the State Department that her campaign had managed to cut that down from more than $300,000 a month earlier.

Nevertheless, he admitted to a bit of panic after getting an inquiry from a reporter about potential fund-raising constraints Mrs. Clinton would be under if she became secretary of State.

"I won't lie," Mr. Plevan said. "If I took three or four years to pay off, it would be an issue. Especially in the current economic crisis, cash flow is a big issue."

Mr. Plevan said he had recently gotten a letter from American Express closing down a line of credit for his business.

"If we weren't in this economic crisis, I probably wouldn't be as concerned," he said.
Mr. Plevan, who said his firm produced some 580 events for Mrs. Clinton's campaign, said he had worked out a payment schedule with campaign officials that they had been managing to keep so far.

"It certainly behooves them to get me paid off," Mr. Plevan said.

By Michael Luo, The New York Times, December 4, 2008

Prospective Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is moving to surround herself with a cast of die-hard loyalists and veterans of her husband's administration to help her cope with world crises and backstage Washington power plays.

For her team of foreign policy experts, the woman who would be the third female U.S. secretary of state is expected to draw heavily from the staff of the first, Madeleine Albright, who was an early supporter of the former first lady's unsuccessful bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. Albright was state secretary during President Bill Clinton's second term.

To deal with internal Obama administration affairs, State Department bureaucratic politics and media pressures, the Clinton appears set to tap current U.S. Senate aides and former White House "Hillaryland" stalwarts, whose reputation for insularity and staunch protectiveness already has set off anxiety among career foreign service officers.

State Department officials say they have been told to expect visits as early as next week from Clinton advisers who are working with President-elect Barack Obama's incoming transition team. Members of the next administration's team have been at State since mid-November, getting briefings and visiting officials there. Neither the transition team nor Clinton's office would comment.

Those officials and people familiar with the transition say most, if not all of Clinton's growing team of advisers will be tapped for senior State Department positions.

James Steinberg, President Bill Clinton's former deputy national security adviser who was once thought a prospect to become Obama's national security adviser, is now "a lock" to become deputy secretary of state under Clinton, according to people close to the transition who spoke on condition of anonymity because no announcements have been made.

On the policy side, there is strong speculation that Clinton's Senate foreign policy guru, Andrew Shapiro, will play a leading role as will Lee Feinstein, who was her national security adviser during the campaign. Feinstein is a member of the State Department transition team and served as deputy policy planning director under Albright.

For Clinton's personal staff, names already floated include longtime confidante and 2008 Clinton presidential campaign manager Maggie Williams, attorney Cheryl Mills, personal assistant Huma Abedin, current senior adviser and spokesman Philippe Reines, and Clinton's chief of staff when she was first lady, Melanne Verveer.

All are known to be fiercely loyal. The prospect of their imminent arrival in Foggy Bottom has been a hot topic of nervous corridor conversation among many in the professional diplomatic corps who fear they will be frozen out of positions of influence.

Doug Hattaway, the former spokesman for Al Gore's 2000 presidential campaign who also worked for Clinton during the primaries, has been mentioned as a favorite to become the next State Department spokesman.

Albright's high-profile former spokesman, James Rubin, along with top Albright assistant Suzy George, already have been seen at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations. They are working with a group that will smooth the way for the next U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Albright protege Susan Rice, whose defection to the Obama camp during the 2008 campaign caused a stir among Clinton loyalists. Rubin, based in New York, is advising the transition team.

A look at the Obama camp's Agency Review Team for the State Department and its National Security Policy Working Group provides hints as to other potential appointments.

Among those who served in the Albright State Department are former counselor Wendy Sherman, counterterror coordinator Michael Sheehan, law enforcement chief Rand Beers, arms control expert Robert Einhorn, former ambassador to Indonesia Robert Gelbard and Middle East hands Daniel Kurtzer, Dennis Ross and Toni Verstandig. All are potential candidates for top slots.

One notable name on the list is Michael Guest, one of only two openly gay ambassadors ever to represent the United States overseas. Guest resigned from the U.S. Foreign Service in midcareer last December to protest the State Department's treatment of same-sex partners of diplomats.

The Associated Press, December 4, 2008

"There are some who speak of a team of rivals. But I've never seen it that way. Past competitors, yes. But rivals implies something harder edged and less forgiving."

When New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson uttered the above lines at today's announcement that he was President-elect Barack Obama's pick to be Commerce Secretary, it was easy to think he was talking about his relationship with his new boss.

After all, they were rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination earlier this year and Richardson -- particularly during the debates -- often sided with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in disagreements with Obama. (Of course, so did Delaware Sen. Joe Biden -- who wound up as Obama's veep pick.)

But, to our mind, Richardson's comments about forgiveness are better understood in relation to the Clintons with whom his relationship soured during the campaign.

After Richardson dropped out of the presidential contest in early January, there was an expectation among political observers that he would back Clinton. Former President Bill Clinton had appointed Richardson as the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and Secretary of Energy and it was no secret that the two men were close. That expectation only increased when Richardson and Clinton were spotted watching Super Bowl together in the New Mexico governor's mansion.

When Richardson decided to endorse Obama then, it made for a major coup in the political world and, according to published reports, stoked real anger in the Clinton world. There was Clinton confidante James Carville calling Richardson "Judas", and a story that Bill Clinton had lost his (famous) temper when asked in a private meeting about Richardson's endorsement of Obama. Richardson, too, pushed back aggressively -- derideing the "gutter" politics of those around Clinton.

The Clintons -- particularly Bill Clinton -- are well known for their long political memories, and Richardson knows that fact better than most.

His "water under the bridge" pronouncement today is rightly seen as an olive branch offered to the Clintons as he prepares to serve alongside Hillary Clinton in Obama's Cabinet.

By Chris Cillizza, The Washington Post, December 3, 2008

NEW YORK (AP) - Depending on your political tastes, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Sarah Palin or even Tina Fey could be considered Woman of the Year. But here's the harder question: Was this the Year of the Woman?

Some touted it as such, and in many ways it was a watershed election season: The first viable female presidential candidate - and she almost won. A female vice-presidential nominee - and she was a Republican. And a president-elect who's appointing women to high-profile Cabinet posts and supports family friendly policies.

Yet talk to women's advocates, and you'll get differing views as to just how well things turned out. Some are cheered by the general sense that women are becoming more prominent in the highest echelons of politics. Others are discouraged by what they see as disappointingly slow progress getting women into leadership positions up and down the political food chain.

Such mixed emotions are apparent in the voice of Lois Mickelson, a Florida voter who proudly chose Clinton as her candidate in the primaries, only to see her lose a bruising nomination fight to Barack Obama, then get passed over as his VP pick.

This week, she found satisfaction in seeing Clinton chosen by her erstwhile rival for the plum job of secretary of state. "I was pleased," says Mickelson, 61, a small business owner from Wellington, Fla. But she takes a more measured view of the overall task of getting women into leadership in this country.

"We seem to still be lacking," she says. "It's a very tough road. You need the strength of a samurai warrior. But I hope we are headed in a new direction."

Interviews with several women's advocates yield a consensus on a few points of clear progress. The historic run of Clinton has probably inspired a generation of young women to get involved in politics, says Marie Wilson, president of the White House Project, which trains women to run for office.

Wilson notes that Clinton's perseverance, especially toward the end as she faced defeat, was a source of pride for many. "The fact that she got up every day and worked and kept going was so inspiring to women," she says.

Ellen Malcolm, president of Emily's List, which backs female candidates who support abortion rights, was in New Hampshire the night of Clinton's first primary win.

"I met her on the rope line," Malcolm says. "She said, 'Ellen, do you realize I'm the first woman that's ever won a presidential primary?' We had a big hug. It was a terrific moment."

Even though Clinton ultimately lost, "she was tough, smart and did a phenomenal job," says Malcolm, who feels the election cycle was wonderful for women. "She really did put 18 million cracks in that ceiling."

And Palin? "She may have slipped on some of those pieces of glass," says Malcolm. Some of the Alaska governor's most vocal opponents have gone farther, suggesting she metaphorically plastered over some of those cracks. But however you feel about John McCain's love-her-or-hate-her vice-presidential nominee, many say her presence on the scene signaled progress for women.

"Whatever her qualifications" - and they were hotly debated after those shaky exchanges with Katie Couric, promptly immortalized by Fey - "every time we get a woman in that position, it has the effect of normalizing women in that position," says Wilson.

And we can't forget, she adds, that it was the Republicans who nominated Palin, a party traditionally less supportive of women in the workplace, particularly those with small children. Suddenly the party was defending this mother's ability to balance the job with her family.

"Republicans put up a woman for vice president, and that's inspiring," Wilson says.

Still, overall, she finds the election year was a disappointment for women. Why? Because there was little trickle-down from symbolic gains made on top. In Congress, there was a net gain of one female senator, from 16 to 17. That's a record number, but still a small percentage to those who'd like to see gender parity in the 100-member body. If Clinton is replaced by a man, that gain is gone.

In the House, there was a net gain of three women. The number of female governors - nine - remains the same (and one of them, Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, has been tapped to be homeland security chief.) "We're really not moving the dial," says Wilson. At this rate, her group calculates it'll be 2063 before parity is achieved in Congress.

Women's groups do see bright spots: In North Carolina, Beverly Perdue was elected the state's first female governor - and the state retained a female senator when Democrat Kay Hagan unseated Elizabeth Dole. In New Hampshire, former Gov. Jeanne Shaheen defeated Republican Sen. John Sununu.

But overall growth has been very slow, says Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. Which is why she calls it both an extraordinary year and an ordinary one, too.

The problem, Walsh says, is that when it comes to female candidates, "the bench is very small." And that's significant because Clinton and Palin didn't come from nowhere: one's a senator, one's a governor. "We need more women in the pipeline," Walsh says - especially governors, since so many presidents come from those ranks.

Who are the most promising faces in that pipeline? Among Democrats, Napolitano and Gov. Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas, who chaired the Democratic convention, have dramatically increased their profiles, and there's the just-elected Perdue, as well as Shaheen. Among Republicans, for now, Palin seems to be the new face of the party.

One troubling aspect to this year's race: the perception among so many women that sexism, particularly in the media, is alive and well. They point to caricatures of Clinton as a nutcracker and references to her voice as chalk on a blackboard. They are still galled by the memory of MSNBC host Tucker Carlson saying that when he sees Clinton he reflexively crosses his legs.

As for Palin, she was denigrated, many feel, by references to her looks and descriptions of her as "hot" - though her opponents argue she helped feed such characterizations by winking at audiences, as during her debate with Sen. Joe Biden.

On the other hand, this may turn out to be the year that launched a real psychological shift, with young people, especially, seeing that a woman can run a hugely competitive campaign for president.

Such an effect is, as yet, incalculable, as is the effect on young blacks of seeing the nation elect its first black president. But there are hints of how this election year may have changed perceptions: In June, two-thirds (67 percent) of adults felt America was ready for a woman president, according to a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation Poll.

That's up from a CBS News Poll in January 2007, a year before Clinton's New Hampshire win, when 54 percent of adults felt that America was ready to elect a woman president.

Also energizing women is the sight of important national security posts going to females - Clinton as the top diplomat, Susan Rice as U.N. ambassador, Napolitano as homeland security chief. What global changes, women wonder, might be in store under their influence?

That's partly why Eleanor Smeal, one of the nation's most prominent feminists, is so optimistic.

"It's a lot more than those 18 million cracks," says Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority Foundation. "It's the perception that women can be anything."

By JOCELYN NOVECK, The Associated Press, December 5, 2008

WASHINGTON (AP) - Former President Bill Clinton says it was hard for his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, to decide to give up her Senate seat to become secretary of state in the Obama administration.

The former president told CNN in an interview aired Wednesday from Hong Kong his wife was "shocked" when she learned by reading newspaper articles that she was President-elect Barack Obama's likely choice for the nation's top diplomatic post. She's been a New York senator since 2001.

Deciding to give up her Senate seat "was hard," Bill Clinton said. "She adored being in the Senate."

Clinton says he'll probably be "a helpful sounding board" to his wife, but wasn't expecting any more involvement unless Obama "asks me to do something specific, which I'm neither looking for nor opposed to."

The Associated Press, December 3, 2008

Hillary Rodham Clinton has a favorite expression for turning setback into opportunity: "Bloom where you're planted."

Her three-decade career on the public stage has produced countless examples of Clinton sprouting a flower in a pile of manure.

Few of them are more vivid than this week's official announcement that she is the nominee to serve as secretary of state to Barack Obama - the man whom she initially refused to talk to on the Senate floor two years ago when he first made clear he would challenge her for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Clinton's planned ascension to Foggy Bottom is the culmination of a strenuous effort over the past several months to fashion a next act in a career that long has been defined by two distinct halves: flamboyant celebrity on one side and dogged, often lonely, distance runner on the other.

After losing the nomination to Obama last spring, months after the trajectory of the race seemed clear, her associates made it known she was eager to be considered for vice presidential nominee. When Obama made it plain early on that he wasn't interested in that, Clinton maneuvered for a central role in health care reform, but found that path blocked by more senior Democrats.

Through it all - while Bill Clinton and many of her political hands nursed their resentments toward unfair fate in general or Obama in particular - Hillary Clinton put on a mask and campaigned for him vigorously, while also attending to more mundane particulars such as extracting herself from the onerous long-term lease of her Arlington, Va., campaign headquarters.

"She has a remarkable ability to move on from adversity, focus on the next task at hand and adapt," said former Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson.

Both Clintons long have labored with a strong sense of grievance against political foes. Over the years both have spoken in unusually public terms about their struggles to overcome resentments and find the right balance between, as Bill Clinton once put it, "the light forces ... and the dark forces in our psyche and our makeup and the way we look at the world."

Her ability to accept a subordinate position to a man she once believed, according to campaign aides, was too callow and inexperienced to be president is a sign of her determination, at age 61, to not let time slip away preoccupied with old battles.

In this sense, the campaign of 2008 - both the failed effort to be president and the successful effort to claim a sterling consolation prize - is the latest extensions of a much longer campaign.

Through a kaleidoscopic array of different public roles and public images - would-be co-president, humiliated spouse, self-effacing junior senator - there has been a constant: extraordinary self-discipline.

It is the animating theme of her life, and what has allowed her to sustain multiple misfortunes, reversals, and self-inflicted wounds and yet still keep rising. She does not have Bill Clinton's instinctual feel for the political stage, but nor does he have her instinctual talent for candid self-appraisal, or her ability to tune out what she calls "the background noise" of her life and focus on the next mission.

For all the seeming zig-zags, there is actually a line of continuity in Clinton's life over the past 16 years that leaves her well-positioned as the likely secretary of state, an appointment that even many Republicans are applauding as a shrewd choice.

It was after the defeat of the proposed Clinton health care overhaul in 1994, and the massive Republican victory in congressional elections that soon followed, that Hillary Clinton first turned her attentions abroad in a sustained way. A lightening rod for criticism at home, she found that she was a powerful magnet and drew admiring crowds on the road, especially in the developing world.

She liked the independence and substantive dimension - talking about micro-credit initiatives for Third World women entrepreneurs, for instance - that foreign travel gave her. By contrast, aides noticed that when she traveled with Bill Clinton she would often be in a crabby mood; she disliked being relegated to the role of spousal appendage and the traditional teas and other ceremonies that came with that.

The same pattern - self-discipline amid embarrassment - repeated itself a few years later. During the Monica Lewinksy scandal, even close friends said they were struck, even worried, by her iron-willed discretion. She plotted political strategy for dealing with the scandal like a lawyer working on a case. Never mind that she and her wayward husband were themselves the clients and were living in a tabloid frenzy. She never discussed her personal feelings, even with people who considered themselves intimates.

The public support that flowed to her amid scandal in 1998 produced ecstatic crowds when she toured upstate New York that summer on a tour to promote historic preservation. That, in turn, led directly to the most improbable event in her public career: election to the Senate as a sitting first lady from a state where she had never lived.

Clinton's Senate performance, meanwhile, suggested skills that could be important as secretary of state. Defying predictions that she would be a Senate show horse, she proved instead to be a work horse. She worked well with Republicans, even some who had tried to evict her husband from office during impeachment proceedings. She showed the trait that may be the most important to success in both legislative and diplomatic battles: iron pants, the willingness to sit and concentrate for hours at a time on tedious discussions.

As it happens, her presidential campaign suggested she may not have been well-suited for the chief executive role. She let factional wars between top aides like campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle and pollster Mark Penn continue unabated for months, and she switched slogans and strategies like they were flavors of the month at an ice cream parlor.

"When she was running the entire show for herself, she convened a team that was totally incompetent and when it came time to fire people who weren't getting the job done, she couldn't pull the rip cord," said one longtime Clinton confidant. "You could say that running a campaign is like running a little nation, and she failed. Maybe State will be a better fit."

The State Department, by contrast, relies on a huge, highly organized army of career foreign service officers, so the executive skills of the person at the top are less of an issue.

Clinton's post-campaign team is leaner and meaner, by necessity and design. She now relies on handful of tough, tight-lipped and loyal survivors led by longtime aide Maggie Williams and former Clinton impeachment lawyer Cheryl Mills, whose under-the-radar style belies a powerful influence in Hillaryland.

It was Mills, those close to Clinton say, who directly negotiated the most sensitive details of the Clintons' nine-point agreement with Obama over the appointment, and Mills who urged Clinton surrogates to push back against press reports accusing the former president of withholding key documents from Obama's transition team.

Known for her combative style and suspicion of the media, the 43-year-old Mills has for years been a key player for the Clintons on sensitive issues where legal and political interests intersect. "She's the kind of person who makes sure your ass is covered," said one Clintonite who is cool to Mills personally but respects her professionally. "That's why Bill and Hillary both love her."

Mills is rumored to be in line for a State Department appointment, although she has reportedly told friends she isn't interested. Andrew Shapiro, Clinton's top foreign policy aide in the Senate, is expected to join her at State, as is Huma Abedin, Clinton's omnipresent traveling assistant and confidante. Others rumored to be considered for posts: Clinton adviser and press aide Philippe Reines; her former White House chief of staff, Melanne Verveer; and Lee Feinstein, a former State Department official serving on the transition team.

By Glenn Thrush and John F. Harris, Politico, December 3, 2008

As a candidate, she warned that Iran might be obliterated if it carried out a nuclear attack on Israel and said Jerusalem should remain Israel's undivided capital. As a senator, she voted to label Iran's Revolutionary Guards a "terrorist organization" and to approve President George W. Bush's plan to go to war against Iraq.

So while Hillary Rodham Clinton's nomination to be the U.S. secretary of state is being scrutinized - and generally welcomed - across the globe, the view in the Middle East is more complicated. The region expects prompt attention from the incoming administration, a notion that was reinforced when President-elect Barack Obama, in his nomination statement Monday, spoke of the need to restore American diplomacy and influence and specified three crises on Clinton's agenda: the spread of nuclear weapons to Iran and North Korea, and the Israeli-Palestinian dispute.

In many other parts of the world, her selection was greeted with optimism, part of an anything-is-better-than-Bush argument. As Sergei Markov, a Kremlin-connected political analyst and a member of the Russian Parliament, put it, "The most important thing is not who is coming in, but who is leaving."

Andreas Etges, a professor in Berlin, made a similar point, albeit less sharply: "There may not be agreement on all policy matters, but with Obama and Hillary Clinton you can at least guarantee a better atmosphere."

Many people interviewed in more than a dozen countries had high regard for Clinton, including Prime Minister Yehude Simon of Peru, who called her an "extraordinary woman."

But others, like Jorge Castaneda, Mexico's former foreign minister, and Julio Burdman, an Argentine political analyst, said her knowledge of and interest in their region remained too vague to judge.

"There won't be a big change in relations with Latin America, at least not at first," Burdman said.

In the Middle East her record is extensive, and the question being debated was whether the once-hawkish-sounding Clinton would now set a different tone. Would she, as the Obama administration's chief diplomat, focus on negotiating with Iran and coaxing Israel to withdraw from the Golan Heights to make peace with Syria, and from most of the West Bank and East Jerusalem to foster the creation of a Palestinian state? Many suspect that she will.

Raghida Dergham, a columnist for Al Hayat, the London-based pan-Arab newspaper, wrote not about if but when "negotiations begin between Barack Obama's administration and the government in Tehran," and urged Washington to view the region's problems as interconnected - "not to think of Iran regardless of Iraq, or of Syria regardless of Lebanon, or of Israel regardless of Palestine."

For pro-Western Arabs and liberal and leftist Israelis, this is a widely held view - that the moment may be ripe for a grand bargain aimed at stopping Iran's nuclear ambition and spreading influence. Diplomatic steps would include Israeli territorial withdrawal in exchange for regional recognition. Given Clinton's strong pro-Israel credentials, the advocates of this view argue, she could carry it out.

Cengiz Candar, a political analyst and columnist in Istanbul, made the same point, saying that Clinton's nomination "raised hopes in the Middle East that former President Bill Clinton's Mideast peace efforts, which ultimately failed close to the end of his presidency, would be revived," with new opportunities for accords between Israel and its neighbors.

"There's much more hope that with Hillary Clinton we'll see more active American engagement," he said.

In Israel, some share that hope. Others, who say the Arab world is not ready for a deal or who want Israel to keep the territory for reasons of security or history, worry precisely about such ambitions. Even some who favor compromise are suspicious of potential pressure.

Eitan Haber, a close associate of former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in the 1990s, when he negotiated a regional peace deal with President Clinton's help, wrote a dismissive opinion article about Hillary Clinton in the Yediot Aharonot newspaper Tuesday. He wrote that her sole ambition was to be president and to succeed, and that the next prime minister of Israel had better "get in the trenches and maybe put on a helmet."

Many Israeli analysts say that much depends on who is elected prime minister here in February. If the leader of the conservative Likud party, Benjamin Netanyahu, won, as now appears likely, a comprehensive plan would probably be harder to implement than if Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, the head of the centrist Kadima party, won the vote. But Netanyahu's supporters argue that in the long run, Israel will be safer with a slower approach.

Reactions from Palestinian leaders have been notably muted. Saeb Erekat, chief negotiator for the Palestinian Authority, said that "Hillary is a good lady" and that he hoped she would "stay on course with the two-state solution."

Mahmoud Zahhar, leader of the militant Hamas party, which runs Gaza, seemed to want to leave the door open for a possible softening of Washington's approach by praising her experience and adding, "For sure it will reflect on international policies."

A major theme among reactions to Obama's foreign policy nominations was that a period of greater international cooperation would probably follow. At the United Nations, for example, diplomats were upbeat over the choice of Susan Rice as the American ambassador to the body and the restoration of her post to cabinet level.

Italy's foreign minister, Franco Frattini, said he looked forward to an Obama administration's taking a more multilateral approach and asking for "greater political commitment" and more "cooperation and co-responsibility" from Europe, including to send more soldiers and financial aid to Afghanistan.

In Germany, Clinton's stock has remained high since she tried - and failed - in the early 1990s to institute a national health insurance program similar to many in Europe.

That kind of reaction - viewing Clinton through the lens of her years as first lady - has produced both positive and negative reactions. In Saudi Arabia, Muhammad al-Zulfa, a historian and member of the Shura Council, an advisory body to King Abdullah, said that "the presence of her husband as the closest man to her can contribute to her perspective on the Middle East."

But in London, Robin Niblett, a foreign policy scholar, said that Europeans, while noting Clinton's intelligence and skills, worried about her ties to the past and her potentially polarizing political style.

And in Russia, memories of her husband's approach to Moscow as a weak state brought concern. In addition, there was suspicion over keeping Robert Gates, the defense secretary of President George W. Bush, in his position.

"These appointments do not provide for special optimism, because they mean successiveness and not reformation of the foreign political concept of the White House," said Konstantin Kosachyov, chairman of the international affairs committee in the Russian Duma, according to the Interfax news agency.

By Ethan Bronner, International Herald Tribune, December 2, 2008

JERUSALEM - As a candidate, Hillary Rodham Clinton warned that Iran might be obliterated if it launched a nuclear attack on Israel and that Jerusalem should remain Israel's undivided capital. As a senator, she voted to label Iran's Revolutionary Guards a terrorist organization and to approve President Bush's plan to go to war against Iraq.

So while Mrs. Clinton's selection to be secretary of state is being scrutinized across the globe - and generally welcomed - the view in the Middle East is more complicated. The region expects prompt attention from the incoming administration, a notion that was reinforced when President-elect Barack Obama, in his statement selecting Mrs. Clinton on Monday, specified several crises on her agenda, including the Israeli-Palestinian dispute and the tensions over Iran's nuclear program.

In many parts of the world, her selection was greeted with optimism partly borne of an "anything is better than Bush" mentality. As Sergei A. Markov, a Kremlin-connected political analyst and a member of Russia's Parliament, put it: "The most important thing is not who is coming in, but who is leaving."

Andreas Etges, a professor in Berlin, made a similar point less sharply, saying, "There may not be agreement on all policy matters, but with Obama and Hillary Clinton you can at least guarantee a better atmosphere."

Many interviewed in more than a dozen countries had high regard for Mrs. Clinton. "She is an extraordinary woman," Yehude Simon, Peru's prime minister, said simply.

In Europe, the reaction to Mrs. Clinton was mostly positive. Italy's foreign minister, Franco Frattini, said he looked forward to Mrs. Clinton and the Obama administration's taking a more multilateral approach to global problems. He says he hopes that the administration asks for a "greater political commitment" and more "cooperation and co-responsibility" from Europe and that Europe will send more soldiers and money to Afghanistan.

In the Middle East, the question being debated is whether the once hawkish-sounding Mrs. Clinton will now set a different tone. Would she, as the Obama administration's chief diplomat, focus on negotiating with Iran and coaxing Israel to withdraw from the Golan Heights, to make peace with Syria, and from most of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, to foster the creation of a Palestinian state? Many suspect that she will.

Raghida Dergham, who writes a column in Al Hayat, the London-based pan-Arab daily, wrote that it was a matter of when, not if, "negotiations begin between Barack Obama's administration and the government in Tehran," and she urged Washington to view the region's problems as interconnected - "not to think of Iran regardless of Iraq, or of Syria regardless of Lebanon, or of Israel regardless of Palestine."

For pro-Western Arabs and liberal Israelis, this is a widely held view: that the moment may be ripe for a grand bargain aimed at stopping Iran's nuclear ambitions and spreading influence. Diplomatic steps would include Israeli territorial withdrawals in exchange for regional recognition. Given Mrs. Clinton's strong pro-Israel credentials, the advocates of this view argue, she could carry it out.

Cengiz Candar, a political analyst and columnist in Istanbul, made that very point, saying that Mrs. Clinton's selection "raised hopes in the Middle East that former President Bill Clinton's Mideast peace efforts, which ultimately failed close to the end of his presidency, would be revived" with new opportunities for peace accords.

"There's much more hope that with Hillary Clinton we'll see more active American engagement," he said.

In Israel, some share that hope. Others, who say the Arab world is not ripe for a deal or who want Israel to keep the territory for reasons of security or history, worry precisely about such ambitions. Even some who favor compromise are suspicious of potential pressure.

Reactions from Palestinian leaders have been muted. Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, said that "Hillary is a good lady" and that he hoped she would "stay on course with the two-state solution."

Mahmoud Zahhar, leader of Hamas, the militant party that runs Gaza, seemed to want to leave the door open for a possible softening of Washington's approach by praising her experience and adding, "For sure it will reflect on international policies."

Another kind of reaction - viewing Mrs. Clinton through the lens of her years as first lady - produced both positive and negative comments. In Saudi Arabia, Muhammad al-Zulfa, a historian and a member of the Shura Council, which advises the king, said, "The presence of her husband as the closest man to her can contribute to her perspective on the Middle East."

In London, Robin Niblett, a foreign policy scholar, said Europeans, while noting Mrs. Clinton's intelligence and skills, worried about her potentially polarizing political style.

The official reaction to Senator Clinton's selection was muted in China on Tuesday, with a government spokesman declining to offer an opinion about whether she might alter the course of relations between their countries.

After mentioning that a congratulatory telegram had been dispatched to Washington, Liu Jianchao, a government spokesman, said that Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi "was positive in his evaluation of the important progress made in recent years in Sino-U.S. relations and looked forward to working together with them to further push forward Sino-U.S. constructive and cooperative relations."

Reminded that as a presidential candidate Mrs. Clinton had been critical of China's human rights record and that she had urged President Bush to skip the opening ceremony of the Olympics, Mr. Liu demurred. "The Beijing Olympics was held successfully and President Bush attended," he said flatly.

Finally, some commentators were adopting a wait-and-see approach. Mexico's former foreign minister, Jorge Castaneda, and Julio Burdman, an Argentine political analyst, said Mrs. Clinton's knowledge of their region and her interest in it remained too vague to judge.

"There won't be a big change in relations with Latin America, at least not at first," Mr. Burdman said.

By Ethan Bronner, The New York Times, December 2, 2008

WASHINGTON - Hillary Rodham Clinton speaks no foreign languages, but has visited 90 countries. She has never negotiated an agreement between two warring sides, but a speech she delivered in Beijing in 1995 is still quoted by women's rights advocates around the world.

As President-elect Barack Obama's choice for secretary of state, Mrs. Clinton carries a resume that is in many ways thinner than her predecessors. She does not bring the decades of academic and policy expertise that Condoleezza Rice brought to the job, nor does she have Colin L. Powell's military know-how, or even Warren Christopher's past experience as a deputy secretary of state.

Nor does she have James A. Baker III's chummy relationship with her boss. Or the street credibility of a Madeleine K. Albright or Henry A. Kissinger, whose very birthplaces - Prague and Bavaria - gave them an aura of worldliness that added sheen to their diplomatic credentials.

And yet, Mrs. Clinton's selection has electrified a diplomatic world where officials can now anticipate the prospect of sitting across a conference table from a former American first lady and presidential candidate, with all of the drama that is attached to the Clinton story.

"When she arrives in a capital city, that city will be riveted," said George Friedman, chief executive of Stratfor, a geopolitical risk analysis company. "The one thing she will have is the undivided attention of any foreign leader she is in a room with."

Beyond mere star power, Mrs. Clinton's backers say that her unorthodox background masks diplomatic skills that many of her predecessors in the job did not have. And they dismiss the notion that her inability to order a meal in French means she cannot cajole the European Union to send more troops into Afghanistan.

"Look, there are lots of fabulously successful career foreign service officers out there, but first and foremost a secretary of state has to be a person who understands the complexity of the world," said Liz Schrayer, director of the Center for U.S. Global Engagement. "In today's world, the old school of criteria for the job of secretary of state doesn't make the same sense to me as it might have a decade ago."

Mrs. Clinton does not, at the moment, have the kind of close working relationship with Mr. Obama that two of the most highly regarded American secretaries of state, Dean Acheson and George Marshall, had with President Harry S. Truman. But neither Acheson nor Marshall began his tenure as Truman's close friend. "They developed close professional relationships with Truman," said Richard C. Holbrooke, the former United States ambassador to the United Nations, "but they were not his drinking buddies, or part of that poker-playing crowd that sat around at the Sequoia."

Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Holbrooke said, "understands global issues, women's rights and public diplomacy, and has watched her husband make war-peace decisions."

That last bit - the idea that Mrs. Clinton received firsthand foreign policy experience via osmosis in her eight years as first lady, was a bone of contention in the Democratic primaries, when Mr. Obama's own foreign policy advisers pooh-poohed Mrs. Clinton's experience. In his news conference on Monday, Mr. Obama shrugged off his own words as bygone.

With the campaign behind them, advisers to Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton now say the Obama camp exaggerated Mrs. Clinton's lack of foreign policy experience. Mrs. Clinton traveled to 82 countries as first lady, and before heading overseas would often buttonhole White House national security employees. She did not sit in on National Security Council meetings, but she did speak regularly with foreign diplomats and experts, her aides said.

She pushed to attend a United Nations conference on women in Beijing in 1995, when many Washington critics, within and outside the Clinton administration, argued that her attendance would send the wrong signal, offering China a reward of sorts for improper behavior in the detention of human rights activists. (President Bill Clinton did not visit China until 1998.)

At the conference, Mrs. Clinton said: "If there is one message that echoes forth from this conference, let it be that human rights are women's rights and women's rights are human rights, once and for all." More than a decade later, women's rights advocates still refer to those words.

Mrs. Clinton has an extensive network of foreign contacts from her time on the Senate Armed Services Committee, through which she traveled to Iraq and Afghanistan three times, and through her husband. In the Senate, she sometimes used the foreign contacts she developed while at the White House, including picking up the phone to ask Tony Blair, then the British prime minister, to put in a plug at the White House for a defense contract that would benefit New York.

The biggest question mark on Mrs. Clinton's resume may be whether she can actually negotiate a peace deal - a requirement for any good secretary of state. Mrs. Clinton has not had to lock warring foreign leaders in a room and bully them into submission, or shuttle between world capitals to prod officials to sign a piece of paper.

Mrs. Clinton has praised Gen. Wesley K. Clark, the former NATO commander, and Mr. Holbrooke, an envoy to the Balkans in the Clinton administration, for their conduct of diplomacy, in which both men socialized and drank with Serbia's wartime leader, Slobodan Milosevic, to gauge his strengths. "You don't learn something from him by pointing at him across the ocean," she told The New York Times in an interview this year.

Philippe Reines, Mrs. Clinton's spokesman, said she had worked as a senator to persuade Manhattan entrepreneurs to invest in economic development in upstate New York, and even worked to get Manhattan restaurateurs to use farm products from upstate.




By Helene Cooper, The New York Times, December 2, 2008

Clinton's campaign had nearly $7.5 million in debts to consultants and vendors at the end of October, according to its latest Federal Election Commission report. Election laws require campaign committees to exist until their debts are settled, which can take years, FEC spokesman Bob Biersack said.

The federal Hatch Act prohibits Cabinet members from soliciting campaign contributions, including donations to retire debts from previous political campaigns, according to a 2001 advisory opinion from the Office of Special Counsel. Clinton could raise money until she is confirmed by the Senate and takes office as secretary of State. After that, her committee can continue raising money without Clinton's involvement.

In Tuesday's e-mail, former president Bill Clinton congratulated his wife on being selected by President-elect Barack Obama to serve in his Cabinet and thanked her supporters. "This nomination would not have been possible without the hard work of everyone like you who have supported Hillary throughout the years," the e-mail said.

Supporters were also encouraged to send "Hillary a message of congratulations." There was also a link for online contributions.

Clinton, who forgave $13.2 million in personal loans to her presidential campaign, has said she wants to repay her campaign debts. Her Senate spokesman, Philippe Reines, said in an e-mail that questions about what will happen to her political committees if she becomes secretary of State are "issues we'll be addressing in the coming weeks." He declined to further comment.

Clinton also has a political action committee, HillPAC, and a Senate campaign account.

If she's confirmed, Clinton would be in a similar situation to former Arizona governor Bruce Babbitt, who had $128,500 in debts left over from his 1988 presidential campaign when he became Interior secretary in 1993. The FEC allowed his committee to expire in 1998 without repaying that debt, Biersack said.

Clinton's Senate fund had nearly $6 million on hand at the end of September, and HillPAC had $922,000 on hand as of Oct. 15, FEC reports show.

Campaign laws give candidates options for leftover money: return it to donors, contribute to charities or fund other campaign committees. Clinton could transfer money from her Senate campaign to her presidential campaign - something she did during the primaries - but she would need approval from her Senate campaign donors.

She cannot transfer any more than $5,000 per election cycle from HillPAC to her presidential campaign, so that money isn't much help in retiring her debt.

By Matt Kelley, USA TODAY, December 2, 2008

They've had differences, but Obama is expected to name her as secretary of State.

Hillary Rodham Clinton is likely to be watched by foreign leaders and domestic observers alike for signs of adhering to - or straying from - the daylight rule.

No, not the time-honored rule of school dances, where chaperones want to see daylight between dancing partners. Rather, it's the diplomatic rule that says there should be no daylight between the president and his secretary of State.

President-elect Obama was expected to announce Monday that Senator Clinton - his top rival in the Democratic primaries - was his choice for secretary of State. It presages a period of intense scrutiny for the two strong leaders' relationship.

"People, and it goes for both friends and foes, are always questioning, 'Is there any light between the two?' " says George Shultz, who was secretary of State to President Reagan. "People used to ask me, 'What's your foreign policy?' and I'd say, 'I don't have one: The president has one. My job is to formulate that foreign policy and help him carry it out.' "

Few foreign-policy experts and policy­makers question Clinton's fitness for the job. They point to the stamina and intellectual capacity she demonstrated over a grueling presidential campaign, plus her years of experience dealing with foreign leaders and addressing international issues as first lady.

But where question marks do arise is over how Mr. Obama and Clinton will overcome the foreign-policy differences that arose over the course of a long, heated primary campaign. Those differences - sometimes sharp - ranged from the decision to go to war in Iraq to the wisdom of speaking to America's enemies without preconditions.

Clinton's doubts about Obama's preparedness to take on the job of commander in chief were captured in the so-called 3 a.m. ad, in which a grave male voice asked who Americans wanted to answer the White House telephone while their children and the nation slept.

Differences magnified by rhetoric?

Yet as stark as those differences may have been portrayed by both camps during the primaries, they were never really that pronounced, many foreign-policy experts say.
"I do think the differences between them on some of these foreign-policy issues were magnified by the heat of campaign rhetoric," says George Herring, a historian and professor emeritus at the University of Kentucky. "I don't buy into the whole idea that Obama is, more than anything else, viewing Clinton as a rival."

Perhaps more important for Obama was how Clinton emerged in the general campaign as one of Obama's more tireless advocates.

She proved particularly effective at articulating her former competitor's foreign-policy goals and his vision of America's role in the world, and her work caught the candidate's eye, Obama advisers say. That led to Obama's growing sense of wanting that strength on his team.

Some students of US foreign policy add that Clinton is intelligent enough to know that as secretary of State, she will be implementing the president's foreign policy.

"Some people are saying this is unprecedented, that no personality as strong or opinionated as Hillary Clinton has taken this job. But what about Henry Kissinger or James Baker?" says Joseph Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund in Washington and a foreign-policy specialist. "Those are two recent examples of very strong secretaries, but each was in sync with and implemented the policies of the president, and surely Hillary understands that."

A successful president-secretary relationship is not necessarily one where no differences exist, but where any differences are aired in frequent meetings - and behind closed doors, says Mr. Shultz, now at the Hoover Institution in Palo Alto, Calif. "You talk them through," Shultz says of any differences. "I had private meetings twice a week with President Reagan, so that in time I had a very good idea of how he approached issues."

A sign that Clinton understands this dynamic came from leaked information that she demanded - and was assured she would have - direct access to the president.

That's important because the president and secretary of State's ability to work together can determine a successful foreign policy, says Professor Herring, who recently published "From Colony to Superpower," an expansive study of US foreign relations since the Revolution.

"Nixon and Kissinger had a close but very weird relationship, suspicious of each other and each demeaning the other when he wasn't around. But they respected each other's views and capabilities, and they worked together," he says.

Rice, the current secretary of State

The case of Condoleezza Rice exemplifies both how a secretary of State may subjugate her own views to those of the president and how she may end up coaxing the president down a new direction.

Secretary Rice was known as a foreign-policy realist before entering the George W. Bush White House (as national security adviser). But she adopted many of the president's more idealistic and neoconservative positions, particularly after 9/11. On the other hand, Rice is credited with bringing Mr. Bush back to a more pragmatic and traditional foreign policy - for example, repairing ties to America's allies after the Iraq invasion. "The term is ending with a foreign policy that looks a lot more like Condoleezza Rice's original vision," Mr. Cirincione says.

Indeed, some foreign-policy experts wonder if Clinton - and, more broadly, the national-security team Obama is assembling - won't influence the new president in a direction that is not the one he suggested during the campaign.

"In the tension between careful and quick, between incremental and transformational in foreign policy, the careful and incremental seems to have won out," says Cirincione.

After a long campaign and a shared Senate experience with Clinton, Obama knows he's getting a strong personality with defined foreign-policy views in Hillary Clinton, observers say.

"Clinton could be very effective, but it does have to be clear that she and the president are on the same wavelength," Shultz says. "It can't be that she's thinking one thing and he another - that won't work."

By Howard LaFranchi, The Christian Science Monitor, November 30, 2008

On Monday, President-elect Barack Obama is expected to tap the Republican-appointed Defense Secretary Robert Gates for a new term in his administration and Democratic New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton for secretary of state.

The announcements would seem to suggest that Obama will be surrounded by powerful, competing voices in the next term as he mulls his plans to withdraw U.S. combat troops from Iraq.

But an exchange between Clinton and Gates at the defense secretary's December 2006 confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee hints that Gates and Clinton may be like-minded in how deferential the president ought to be to his military leaders when it comes to moving the troops.

Clinton: "Let me ask you, Dr. Gates, that in an oral history of the '92 Gulf War produced by the PBS program 'Frontline,' you made some very definite points about how the military often overstates or even in your words, "'exaggerate the level of forces required to accomplish a specific objective.' I'm concerned that's precisely the attitude that we've heard from Secretary [Donald] Rumsfeld, former Deputy Secretary [Paul] Wolfowitz and others with regard to former Army Chief of Staff] Gen. [Eric] Shinseki's recommendation and many in the uniformed military and civilian experts, who have consistently beat the drum that we don't have enough troops, we never had enough troops.

"So therefore, how will you take that set of recommendations from your uniformed military on board and figure out how you're going to assess it, given your previously stated position that it's often exaggerated when we look at missions to accomplish?"

Gates: "Senator, that statement was made in the context of the bureaucratic wars in Washington then and the decision making process or the process of considering contingency planning in the Situation Room. I would tell you that CIA also in those same meetings often would describe very pessimistically the prospects for covert actions that were being considered by an administration.

"And frankly, it's my experience that both the military and CIA take that kind of approach because sometimes they hear ... some awfully strange ideas in the Situation Room sometimes from members of the National Security Council staff. It was always my experience that, contrary to the conventional wisdom, it was the State Department that most often wanted to use force; and the Department of Defense that most often wanted to use diplomacy; and CIA never wanted to use covert action. Everyone wanted everybody else to do - to take the actions.

"I think that when the actual decisions came, though, the military - the recommendations of the military were taken very seriously. And I remember when President Bush, the first President Bush was asking about the offensive strategy once we had 200,000 troops in Saudi Arabia, and we were at a meeting in the Situation Room in the fall of 1990. And the military came in and briefed on what they felt they needed to eject Saddam and the Republican Guard from Iraq - from Kuwait. And they went through a long list of things - moving the 7th Corps to the Middle East, six carrier battle groups, activating the Guard and Reserve. And I'll never forget, the president stood up and said "You've got it. Let me know if you need more."

"And I think that that kind of deference, when you get past the debate about what the policy should be, the great deference should be extended to the professionals who are going to have to carry out the action. And I think President Bush did that, first President Bush did that in the Gulf War, and that certainly would be my instinct if I'm confirmed as secretary of defense."




By Jen DiMascio, Politico, November 30, 2008

WASHINGTON (AP) - Barack Obama had his eye on Hillary Rodham Clinton as secretary of state for some time, but it took some serious courtship before the two took their relationship to the next level Monday.

Clinton's nomination as secretary of state came after concessions from both sides after Clinton got assurances that she could name her own staff at the State Department, and former President Bill Clinton offered to take steps to prevent any conflict of interest in his international dealings while his wife would be the country's top diplomat.

The nomination is the latest chapter in a complicated relationship between Clinton and Obama. The two struggled bitterly over the Democratic nomination, with Clinton persisting in her fight against Obama even when her prospects for victory were virtually dead. The hard feelings softened during the general election when Clinton campaigned in support of Obama and finally they have settled on a boss-employer relationship that would have been almost unimaginable when the presidential race began.

One person close to Clinton said she began to hear rumors in the days after Obama's election Nov. 4 that he was considering her for the post, but she didn't get confirmation that he was really interested until he reached out on Nov. 12 and asked her to meet him the next day to discuss it. Clinton flew to Chicago secretly, but the meeting became public knowledge after she was introduced to staffers around the office and her departing motorcade was spied by reporters outside Obama's office.

In the coming weeks, Obama and Clinton had several conversations about her taking the job after one Clinton associate described it as the five or six "dates" required before they could form a union. Meanwhile, lawyers representing both sides met to work out details including financial disclosure issues involving former President Bill Clinton's finances.

There was a concern that the former president's international dealings could create a conflict of interest if his wife was representing the U.S. government around the world. The former first couple had refused to disclose the donors to his library and the Clinton Global Initiative during the presidential campaign, saying some contributors had been promised anonymity.

Transition head John Podesta led the talks, along with Obama adviser Todd Stern and Tom Perrelli, a classmate of the president-elect from Harvard Law School. The Clintons were represented by longtime advisers Cheryl Mills, Doug Band and Bruce Lindsey.

After two days of negotiations at the law office where incoming White House counsel Greg Craig works, both sides had made their concessions. Bill Clinton offered to release the names of all his donors, as well as other steps that include submitting his speeches for State Department review.

Clinton's request to choose her own staff means that she will have even more influence over State Department policy. She has a group of fiercely loyal allies who have long been working to protect her, and career diplomats are already grumbling about her bringing in her people.

Dan Bartlett, who was President George W. Bush's communications director, said high-level Cabinet positions often involve some give-and-take, although the extent of negotiations with the Clintons was clearly more intense because of the complexities surrounding the former president. He said Hillary Clinton was smart to negotiate the right to name her own staff.

"It's always a request, but that one is rarely given," Bartlett said. But he said almost any request can be worked out. "Most of the time, if a president really wants somebody you'll always find a way to get a yes."

Obama said it wasn't a "light bulb moment" that led to the very unconventional idea of putting his one-time foe as his top diplomat. He said he always admired her and wanted to find a way to collaborate with her, with the secretary of state idea emerging after the election. But one senior adviser said Obama had been thinking about it long before that time, believing she would bring instant stature and credibility to U.S. diplomatic relations.

Clinton confidants said she struggled with the thought of giving up the Senate seat that is the only office she ever won in her own right to serve at Obama's pleasure. Clinton herself looked pained as she spoke Monday about the difficulty of stepping down from the office, but she ultimately decided that being secretary of state is the best way to serve her country during a defining moment where Americans are demanding change.

By NEDRA PICKLER, Associated Press, December 2 2008

* Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton fought hard against each other this year during the Democratic primaries. But yesterday, President-elect Obama named his former rival to serve in an important role in his administration.

Obama picked Clinton to serve as secretary of state, the person who leads the country's efforts in foreign affairs. Obama praised Clinton, saying she has "extraordinary intelligence and toughness."

Obama also said that Robert M. Gates, President Bush's secretary of defense, would stay on in that role in the new president's Cabinet. The Cabinet is a group of advisers to the president on special issues.

Obama's approach in selecting his team of advisers is similar to that used by President Abraham Lincoln in the 1860s.

Lincoln was said to have collected "a team of rivals," meaning that he hired some advisers who did not agree with him on many issues. He did that so he could hear conflicting views. He even hired one who had once called him an ape!

Obama has said he wants to be surrounded by people with their own strong opinions so he can hear many different views on an issue before making a decision.

He also picked several other members of his team.

They include Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano to serve as secretary of homeland security. That department works to prevent terrorism on American soil. Eric Holder was selected as attorney general, the person who heads the Justice Department and is the top law enforcement officer in the country.

Clinton, Napolitano and Holder must be confirmed by the Senate.

The Washington Post, December 2, 2008

Bureaucratic Infighting Must Be Minimized For Clinton To Succeed As Secretary Of State

Now that the political surprises are over and the winking and nodding have ceased we can start to get down to the business at hand. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's next office will be on the seventh floor of the Department of State, not at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. With her appointment many see great promise; some see the potential for conflict.

Much has been made of President Abraham Lincoln's cabinet as a team of rivals but let's put aside that concept for a few minutes. Every chief executive has a team, some get along better than others but they all work for the president and as President-elect Obama has made clear the buck stops with him. Nevertheless, they all have bureaucratic turf to protect and well defined, strong personalities which have to be managed.

Naturally, Clinton will argue on behalf of her views and those of the State Department but she will have to yield if she cannot persuade Mr. Obama hers is the right path to follow. Given the gravity of the problems in her in-basket the bureaucratic infighting will have to be kept to an absolute minimum if any success is to be achieved.

Aaron David Miller, who worked for six secretaries of state, says if she is to be successful, Hillary Clinton "needs to be the White House's woman at the State Department, not the State Department's woman at the White House." In other words, she has to "reflect his interests."

Of course Clinton is smart enough and has plenty of experience to be secretary of state. The bigger issue is that she is going to be accountable to someone else. It is one thing to say you work for the people who elected you and follow what you think is the best course. It requires a different psychological mindset to admit you work for someone else, that you are not the boss. One assumes the newly named secretary of state has crossed that bridge in her mind or she wouldn't have taken the job. Now she has to make it work on a day to day basis.

There is no accurate way to take the pulse of the foreign and civil service workers who will soon be reporting to Secretary of State Clinton but not everyone is thrilled at the prospect of her arrival, as can be imagined. One senior foreign service officer reflecting that view expressed concerns about the mixture of advancing foreign policy goals and Hillary Clinton's political ambition: "It is all about her," he said. "Every decision will be based on whether she thinks someone is treating her right." But even this critic sees the potential for a strong foreign policy team. "On the bright side, this will be the highest octane White House-State Department in a long time.....and she'll be able to bring positive energy."

On the positive side, Mr. Obama and his secretary of state will take office with most of the world eager to work with them. Still, given the recent terrorist attacks in Mumbai, Clinton's workload has increased with even more emphasis now going to the India-Pakistan portfolio than before. Iran and North Korea's nuclear ambitions remain a top priority as does the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Relations with Russia, China and a dozen other countries are ignored at one's peril and working with several dozen other nations on the global economic crisis is a given.

Can Hillary Clinton be what Aaron Miller calls a "consequential" secretary of state? Being tough, disciplined and intellectually up to the job are a given, Miller says. The unknown factors, he argues, are what kind of a relationship she will have with Mr. Obama and "whether she has a negotiator's mindset. Can she fit the pieces of the puzzle together?" Miller's view is that Henry Kissinger and James A. Baker, III had such a mindset but our last four secretaries of state did not.

When Hillary Clinton becomes America's top diplomat she'll have an air force jet to whisk her anywhere in the world she wants to go and a fine suite of offices with an outstanding view of the mall and the Lincoln Memorial. Perhaps it will be that under Mr. Lincoln's watchful gaze this team of former rivals will be just that.




By Charles Wolfson, CBS News, December 1, 2008

Leaving the news conference in Chicago yesterday where he introduced his national security team, President-elect Barack Obama strolled out of the room arm in arm with his choice for secretary of state and onetime rival, Hillary Rodham Clinto. The gesture may have been a subtle indication that Obama is aware that one of the biggest questions about his choice of Clinton is the kind of relationship they will be able to forge in the months ahead.

Many of the most successful secretaries of state, though not all, enjoyed great influence with the presidents they served, giving them crucial leverage with foreign leaders and inside the national security establishment. But Obama and Clinton are only starting to develop the kind of rapport that could lead to that trust, and the ultimate success of the senator from New York in her new role may depend as much on Obama's willingness to admit her to his inner circle as her ability to master the intricacies of the Middle East peace process or North Korea's nuclear weapons program, according to senior foreign policy officials from past administrations.

Democrats familiar with the transition said the two have spent time over the past several weeks discussing the parameters of the job and how they would work together: Clinton received assurances that she would have the kind of access to Obama she needs, as well as the authority to pick her own team. They said the Obama team would like her to select James Steinberg as her deputy, but that hardly seems a problem, since Steinberg worked closely with her husband in the Clinton White House as deputy national security adviser.

Ironically, Steinberg recently co-authored a book raising questions about the wisdom of appointing "all-stars" -- foreign policy experts and prominent members of Congress with little connection to the new president -- in key national security jobs. While such appointments can help foster a sense that a new president has made the transition from campaigning to governing, Steinberg and co-author Kurt M. Campbell pointed to numerous examples of the appointments leading to discord and disappointment, especially in the Clinton administration.

Some close to Clinton and Obama say the two are well aware of these potential pitfalls. In their private discussions in recent weeks, Obama "really made an effort to say that she would be an important member of his team," said one Democrat familiar with the transition effort.

Melanne Verveer, Clinton's chief of staff when she was first lady, said Clinton was heavily influenced by watching her husband conduct foreign policy. "She learned the importance of there not being sunlight, if you will, between the secretary and the president in terms of foreign policy," Verveer said. "She really understands the importance of speaking with one voice, and that is the president's voice. Her record is very clear on that -- and that is exactly what she will do."

Former secretary of state Madeleine K. Albright said that the body language of Obama and Clinton, as well as the public statements they have made since the primary season concluded, suggest that the partnership will work. "I think they are both highly professional and highly respectful of each other," she said. "I am sure that in fact that they have worked out a way that she will have the kind of access she needs. She will give him her opinion unvarnished, but she will also be a very good team member."

Clinton, if confirmed, may be the most prominent figure to hold the top job at State in modern times -- a presidential candidate and former first lady who knows other world leaders on a first-name basis and has been a fixture on the world stage since the 1990s. Her nomination is the first time that a president has appointed a major political rival to head the State Department since 1881, when James Garfield chose James Blaine.

"I think this is a sensational appointment," said Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger, who served as Bill Clinton's national security adviser. "She brings intellectual firepower. She brings a high energy and a credibility in the world, which will be very valuable. Obama has shown great leadership in putting this team together."

But the risks to the appointment are substantial, and success is far from guaranteed. Clinton has enormous star power, but some of her predecessors who were initially greeted as rock stars, such as Colin L. Powell, proved to be less effective than anticipated. Clinton has no real experience managing a large government bureaucracy, and in fact her two most significant management missions -- running the health-care task force in her husband's first term and her own presidential campaign -- were riven by infighting. And Bill Clinton has been a magnet for controversy.

During the primary campaign, the two leading Democrats also fought bitterly at times over foreign policy, with Clinton questioning Obama's willingness to talk with Iran's president and Obama questioning her judgment in supporting the resolution giving President Bush the authority to go to war in Iraq. But associates of both Clinton and Obama say the differences were magnified during the heat of the campaign; Clinton, they say, shares Obama's desire to restore American influence in the world through diplomatic efforts such as a new initiative aimed at getting Iran to halt uranium enrichment that could lead to the development of a nuclear weapon.

"She is very keen on having America's leadership restored in a way where we are respected, where we are capable of talking to countries we don't like," Albright said. "That would be her modus operandi, and it fits with what Obama has said."

James M. Lindsay, director of the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law at the University of Texas's LBJ School of Public Affairs, said there are several key ingredients for a secretary of state's success. First, he said, a secretary needs "a mixture of political savvy and a vision for the world." Second, the secretary needs the trust and support of the president -- "someone who takes your calls and doesn't hang you out to dry." And third, "having a strong will to work and an ego wrapped in leather."

Many of those qualities describe James A. Baker III, who worked for President George H.W. Bush and is generally regarded as the most successful of modern secretaries of state. Baker came to the office with few defined foreign policy views -- but worked for a president who did. He was also the president's closest friend, which made him a formidable force when combined with his political skills as a former Treasury secretary, White House chief of staff and presidential campaign manager.

In much the same way, Condoleezza Rice's close relationship with George W. Bush helped pave the way for influence overseas. Kings and prime ministers believed that she had a direct line to the president, and that when she spoke, she was speaking for him -- in contrast to Powell, her predecessor.

"Clinton's challenge will be to make sure her stewardship of the State Department is compatible with the views of the new president," said Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security adviser under President Jimmy Carter.

By Michael Abramowitz and Glenn Kessler, The Washington Post, December 2, 2008

It was a startling speech coming from a first lady - indeed, Hillary Rodham Clinton's 1995 speech at the United Nations Conference for Women in Beijing is credited as a watershed moment.

"It is a violation of human rights when babies are denied food, or drowned, or suffocated, or their spines broken, simply because they are born girls," the first lady told the international gathering. "... It is a violation of human rights when women are doused with gasoline, set on fire and burned to death because their marriage dowries are deemed too small."

Clinton's support for the Iraq war resolution probably cost her the presidency and left some Democrats grumbling that Barack Obama has abandoned his principles in naming her secretary of state. But Clinton's "women's rights are human rights" speech, and her work on international women's rights and rural development causes, may make her the cabinet member who has the most in common with Obama's own mother, Ann Dunham, an early champion of the same kinds of projects advancing women's economic development and microcredit for the poor.

Obama has argued that national security is embedded in human security, and that promoting social and economic development may often be as important a guarantor of peace as a strong military.

"They completely understand each other," said Ellen Chesler, director of the Eleanor Roosevelt Initiative at Hunter College and a longtime Clinton friend. "He [Obama] understands the issue of advancing women's status in the world because he grew up with that."

The Clintons' star power and old friendships will certainly give Hillary clout in her meetings with foreign heads of state.

But human rights advocates say it is her relentless plugging away on behalf of the unglamorous and invisible that has made her the world's most admired woman in a dozen Gallup polls, a person whose portrait may be spied in remote south Indian hovels and the steppes of Asia.

"I was in Nicaragua last week on vacation with my kids, and people were talking about [Clinton's appointment] everywhere we went," said Rep. James McGovern, a Massachusetts Democrat and early Clinton supporter who co-chairs the House human rights commission.

Her appointment, he said, signals that Obama intends to restore the U.S. role as a compassionate voice for human rights. "This is a big deal around the world, and it just changes everything, instantly."

One of Clinton's most lasting efforts as first lady was to lead a State Department initiative called Vital Voices, aimed at boosting the economic and political role of women in new post-Soviet democracies and elsewhere.

Since 2000, it has continued as a bipartisan nonprofit headed by her former chief of staff, Melanne Verveer.

Verveer recalled visiting Nicaragua back then and being met at the airport by a group of women who were eager to tell the first lady about their success with a microcredit program launched a year earlier.

"They unfurled a banner that read 'Welcome to the Ambassador of the Poor,'" Verveer said.

By ELIZABETH MOORE, Newsday, December 2, 2008

President-elect Barack Obama's decision to name Hillary Rodham Clinton as his secretary of State likely will be viewed as one of the defining moments in the shaping of his administration.

At the heart of the new union between one-time rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination is a simple question: Why?

That is, why would Obama, a man who ran a campaign based on a new kind of politics that was an implicit rejection of the Clinton years, choose a potent symbol of those years as his chief diplomat?

And, why would Clinton, a woman who is used to being the boss, walk away from the Senate to serve as a cog in the vast Obama machine?

It's impossible to know the definitive answer to either of these two questions but here's our take, based on close observation of both politicians over the last two years.

For Obama, picking Clinton accomplishes practical and symbolic goals.

On the practical level, it's hard to argue with her credentials or her readiness to represent the United States in the world during an extremely challenging time, as evidenced by the Mumbai terrorist attacks over the long Thanksgiving weekend.

Clinton was among a trio of high profile elected officials considered for the job that included New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson and Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry.

While both Richardson and Kerry were dedicated Obama supporters, neither carried the star power of Clinton -- a known (and respected) commodity throughout the world.

Symbolically, picking Clinton sends a series of fascinating messages.

It reinforces the "Team of Rivals" meme that seems to have transformed into conventional wisdom in the month (or so) since Obama was elected the 44th president of the United States.

Put simply, picking Clinton shows Obama's bigness -- that his pledge to bring in the best and brightest regardless of their past political entanglements is more than just lip service.

And, despite the hunky-dory report of relations between the two one-time opponents, bringing Clinton into the Obama cabinet also serves as an example of the old adage that you keep your friends close and your enemies closer.

The Clintons -- since Bill and Hillary are a package deal -- were certain to be a base of power within the Democratic party no matter whether they were part of of the Obama Administration or not. By inviting them in through the front door, Obama is ensuring that he will have some control -- how much remains to be seen -- over the country's preeminent political power couple.

Could that move backfire? Sure. Giving Hillary Clinton such a prominent place on the world stage entails risk. But, Obama and his advisers clearly believe that they are better served with Hillary and Bill Clinton under the tent rather than throwing stones from the outside.

As for Clinton, the "why" of her decision to vacate the Senate to become secretary of State is equally fascinating.

In conversations with a number of people close to Clinton, it's clear to us that she saw this decision as a real crossroads in her political life.

Remember that she only emerged as an elected official in her own right eight years ago and that the entire focus of her time in public life over the past two (four? six?) years had been on running for president.

With that dream deferred -- certainly for a while, probably forever -- Clinton had to resolve for herself how she wanted to spend the next five to ten years of her life.

On the one hand was the job as top diplomat where she would be a high-profile and influential force in the world community at a time when America is seeking to redefine its role and reposition itself.

On the other was her seat in the Senate where her symbolic power as a national spokeswoman for the Democratic party occasionally conflicted with her decidedly junior status in the chamber.

Clinton was not likely to play a major role in any of Obama's domestic policy initiatives -- healthcare, energy, etc. -- and, despite an alleged promise to give her a seat on the powerful Appropriations Committee, it was relatively clear that Clinton would be taking a back-seat role on the issues nearest and dearest to her.

The Clintons -- more so than the average political family -- are abundantly aware of their own legacies and faced with the choice of playing a subordinate but influential and high profile role in the Obama Administration or toiling in (relative) obscurity in the Senate, it's clear that Hillary Clinton believed she could have more impact in the former role.

That Obama and Clinton could stand together on a stage -- one as president, the other as his secretary of State -- speaks to the unpredictability and soap-operatic nature of politics.

Make no mistake: this is the beginning not the end of a fascinating storyline in American politics. And we will be there every step of the way.

By Chris Cillizza, The Washington Post, December 1, 2008

WASHINGTON - The selection of experienced centrists - Hillary Rodham Clinton, Robert Gates and James L. Jones - to head President-elect Barack Obama's national security team points to the possibility that on Iraq, the incoming commander-in-chief may take a more measured path to ending American military involvement than he described during the presidential campaign.

Obama's choices signal a more pragmatic, less ideological approach to asserting American leadership in the world. In announcing on Monday that Clinton is his choice for secretary of state and that Gates has agreed to remain as defense secretary - with Jones as national security adviser in the White House - Obama said he has intentionally surrounded himself with "strong personalities and strong opinions." And he made clear that when push comes to shove, he will be the one to make the tough calls.

Gates in particular has opposed setting a hard deadline for removing U.S. forces from Iraq, but he also has emphasized the need to transition the U.S. military mission from combat to support for Iraqi forces. And Gates shares Obama's view that some resources now in Iraq should be shifted to Afghanistan.

Obama will likely rely on Jones, who spent 40 years in the Marine Corps but has never served in the executive branch of government, to lay the groundwork by melding the views of Clinton and Gates.

In an Associated Press interview shortly after Obama's announcement in Chicago, Jones feels well prepared for his expected role in building consensus among the key players on national security.

"I've always felt that the more senior I got, even in the military, the more important is the art of making people feel like they own part of the problem and also part of the solution. Raising consensus is important," he said.

"At the end of the day, when you need a decision you need to be able to go to the boss and say, `Okay, here is how things line up and here are the options and here's my recommendation and what do you want to do?'"

Loren Thompson, chief operating officer of the Lexington Institute, a Washington research group, said the combination of Clinton, Gates and Jones appears to fit well with Obama's pledge to be pragmatic when it comes to decisions about the use of military force and in building overseas alliances.

"The tone is centrist and non-ideological, which is quite a change from the Bush administration," he said.

In his younger days in the Marine Corps, Jones, 64, was known to some as "the Hawk" - not as a reflection of his defense views but as a comment on the prominence of his nose. Today he is widely seen as nonpartisan; during the campaign he informally advised both Obama and John McCain.

Gates, while closely associated with a Republican administration, also has served in the White House during Democratic presidencies. At his news conference Monday, Obama said he didn't ask Gates to remain at the Pentagon because of his party affiliation, although he has promised to have a Republican in his Cabinet.

"The point here is that I didn't go around checking people's political registration," Obama said. "What I was most concerned with was whether or not they can serve the interests of the American people."

The president-elect said he was parting ways with recent practice by assembling a diverse group of national security leaders.

"One of the dangers in a White House, based on my reading of history, is that you get wrapped up in group-think and everybody agrees with everything and there's no discussion and there are no dissenting views," he said. "So I am going to be welcoming a vigorous debate inside the White House.

"But understand, I will be setting policy as president. I will be responsible for the vision that this team carries out, and I will expect them to implement that vision once decisions are made."

Obama said he intends to stick to his campaign pledge to get U.S. combat forces out of Iraq within 16 months of taking office. But he also appeared to leave himself some wiggle room on the timetable.

"I believe that 16 months is the right timeframe," he said. "But as I have said consistently, I will listen to the recommendations of my commanders. And my number one priority is making sure that our troops remain safe in this transition phase and that the Iraqi people are well served by a government that is taking on increased responsibility for its own security."

In the AP interview, Jones said that the role of energy - including U.S. dependence on foreign sources of oil - deserves to play a bigger part in the U.S. government's national security deliberations and decision making. That meshes with one of the main messages Obama trumpeted during his campaign.

"National security is a broader portfolio in the 21st century than just the National Security Council, the State Department and the Defense Department," Jones said. "It's got to include energy."

Jones stressed that even though gasoline prices have fallen dramatically in recent weeks, the Obama administration can be expected to keep a sharp focus on seeking a long-term energy security policy.

"We're in an energy crisis. It would be foolish to take our eye off the ball and say we don't have an energy crisis anymore. We do," he said. "It's part of the national security portfolio and it will be treated as such. The breadth of national security issues is going to widen and we'll try to put together a National Security Council team that reflects that new reality."

Gates' press secretary, Geoff Morrell, said Obama and Gates apparently set no end date for him at the Pentagon.

"My understanding is the secretary and the president-elect agreed that the period of his continued service will be open-ended," Morrell said.

By ROBERT BURNS, Associated Press, December 1, 2008

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton gave New Yorkers a nice shout-out on Monday after President-elect Barack Obama formally introduced her as his choice for secretary of state. We in this city, coming from about 200 countries, have apparently prepared her well for the multilingual querulousness that she can expect on the new job.

"After all," Mrs. Clinton said, "New Yorkers aren't afraid to speak their minds, and do so in every language."

One language, however, speaks louder in New York than all others. It sure ain't English. It's called politics.

With Mrs. Clinton's nomination for the Obama cabinet made official, count on hearing considerable noise over who will take her place in the Senate. Gov. David A. Paterson gets to make the choice. Until now, he and his lieutenants were able to duck the issue in public by asserting that the senator had yet to be offered a cabinet position. As of Monday, that argument was caduc - a French word for null and void that Mrs. Clinton might very well come across in her dealings with foreign diplomats.

Mr. Paterson may still stall, since Mrs. Clinton continues to be a senator and plans to remain one until the Senate confirms her as secretary of state. But the speculation about possible successors already runs high, and is sure to grow more intense. Much of the talk has focused on how the governor may try to satisfy one constituency or another by picking a Latino or a woman or someone from upstate. Or all of the above.

Some readers sent us their own recommendations. Many had nothing to do with ethnicity, gender or geography.

Several suggested former President Bill Clinton as a replacement for his wife; that way New Yorkers could refer to "Senator Clinton" without skipping a beat. A couple people, motivated more by whimsy than reality, proposed the man whom Mr. Paterson replaced as governor, Eliot Spitzer. That idea has its merits: Mr. Spitzer does know Washington, at least some of its hotel rooms.

If a phenomenon that might be called the Michelle Factor kicks in, the tide could turn in favor of Mayor Byron W. Brown of Buffalo, whose name appears on some lists.

A political consultant who prefers anonymity to credit mentioned to me an intriguing coincidence. Several prominent black politicians of more than passing interest to New Yorkers have wives named Michelle. Mr. Obama is married to a Michelle. So is Mr. Paterson. Michele, with one L, is the wife of State Senator Malcolm A. Smith, who may soon be the Senate majority leader. Other than to say that it has two L's, need we spell out the name of Mayor Brown's wife?

One name that keeps surfacing is Andrew M. Cuomo, the state's attorney general (who at last sighting was not a Latino, a woman or an upstater, nor is he married to a Michelle). For Mr. Paterson, that appointment would have the advantage of removing a possible rival should he seek election as governor in his own right in 2010. And in terms of possibly getting things done right away to benefit New York, Mr. Cuomo has a name recognition that eludes all of the other politicians who have been mentioned as potentials for Mrs. Clinton's Senate seat.

All this is speculative, of course. But it is perhaps not too early to note that democracy as we know it would take it on the chin. (Then again, it already got bruised when New York City's mayor and its City Council subverted voters' expressed will in regard to term limits by giving themselves the possibility of an extra four years in office.)

If Mr. Cuomo goes to the Senate, just about all of the statewide officials in New York will hold their positions without having been popularly elected to them.

As lieutenant governor, Mr. Paterson inherited the governorship because Mr. Spitzer strayed. Now we have no lieutenant governor. Thomas P. DiNapoli was designated state comptroller by the Legislature after Alan G. Hevesi went pfft in his own fashion.

Whoever replaces Mrs. Clinton will be an appointee until an election is held in 2010. Should that choice be Mr. Cuomo, the Legislature would replace him as attorney general, same as it named Mr. DiNapoli. That would leave New York with only one statewide official who was actually elected: Senator Charles E. Schumer.

As secretary of state, Mrs. Clinton may have to speak softly for a while when talking to the Putins, Chavezes and Ahmadinejads of the world about the virtues of elective democracy. As a New Yorker - she spoke on Monday about the "state that I cherish" - she may not be in a position to offer lectures on the subject.




By Clyde Haberman, The New York Times, December 1, 2008

Obama sidesteps his earlier criticism of presidential rival

WASHINGTON -- Barack Obama wanted to brush it off, the question about how he came to eat all the harsh words he said against Hillary Rodham Clinton during the heated Democratic primary.

It was not too long ago that Obama was highly critical of Clinton, so naturally he was queried about this turnaround at his press conference in Chicago where he announced Cabinet picks.

Peter Baker of the New York Times was polite when he asked about Obama's reversal on Clinton.

"You belittled her travels around the world, equating it to having teas with foreign leaders, and your new White House counsel [Greg Craig] said her resume was grossly exaggerated when it came to foreign policy. I'm wondering if you could talk about the evolution of your views of her credentials since the spring."

Obama in reply, belittled a serious question.

"I think this is fun for the press, to try to stir up whatever quotes were generated during the course of the campaign," Obama said.

"Your quotes, sir," Baker parried.

Obama said he understood. "You're having fun."

Fun?

"I'm asking a question," said Baker.

"I'm not faulting" the question, Obama hedged in his comments. "If you look at the statements that Hillary Clinton and I have made outside of the -- the heat of a campaign, we share a view that America has to be safe and secure and in order to do that we have to combine military power with strengthened diplomacy. . . . I think she is going to be an outstanding secretary of state. And if I didn't believe that, I wouldn't have offered her the job. And if she didn't believe that I was equipped to lead this nation at such a difficult time, she would not have accepted. OK?"

OK? Not really. It was a demonstration of what Obama called during the campaign "the textbook Washington game." Obama, who ran against an army of straw cynics, was now saying what he said during the campaign didn't count. Just words, I suppose. Obama's answer made me wonder, did he believe his criticisms of Clinton when he said them?

I asked Al Felzenberg, who studies presidential leadership, what he made of Obama's answer. Clinton's appointment was "stellar," said Felzenberg, the author of The Leaders We Deserved (and a Few We Didn't): Rethinking the Presidential Rating Game.

"He showed, I hate to say the word, a bit of naivete there and cynicism. Should we take what you say now with some credence if, a year from now, you say and do something else without providing an explanation in greater depth?"

By Lynn Sweet, Chicago Sun-Times, December 2, 2008

Presentations of presidential appointees can be important, but they are rarely interesting. Usually, the men and women chosen for top cabinet roles are not well known to the public; if there is drama behind the scenes, most in the audience are blind to it.

That was hardly the case on Monday when President-elect Barack Obama introduced his national security team. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's speech was no ordinary public-service pledge; for plenty of viewers, it was the moment when Mrs. Clinton finally conceded the election for real.

The occasion was solemn, but like a wedding where the parents are divorced, the ceremony was carefully choreographed to avert awkward moments and camouflage past unpleasantness.

When Mr. Obama unveiled his economic team last week, he alone made a speech. In this more delicate selection, it was decided that Mrs. Clinton, his pick for secretary of state, should also speak. But that might look suspect - or too political - unless the five other appointees also said a word, and that, in turn, required a few words from Vice President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr., who had yet to make public statements of any consequence since the election. (He spoke last, spiritedly, and at some length.)

Not all the staging was designed to address Mrs. Clinton's sensibilities. She and the five other appointees walked out on stage and stood in line, almost as if at attention, waiting for the president-elect to walk in. He did so briskly, with Mr. Biden at his heels.

Mr. Obama introduced his former rival as "my dear friend," and promised that his new team would forge "a new dawn of American leadership."

Mrs. Clinton, who has mostly stayed out of public view since the election, opened on a valedictory note, telling the audience that leaving the Senate would be "very difficult for me." She attributed her sense of loss, or surrender, to ending her service to her New York constituents, but those who watched her struggle for the Democratic nomination with such ferocity for the past two years were reminded that she was also forswearing her independent campaign identity.

And there was a fleeting flashback to her primary season gamesmanship when she listed representing New York as a foreign policy credential. "You've also helped prepare me well for this new role," she told her Senate constituents. "After all, New Yorkers aren't afraid to speak their minds and do so in every language."

Her husband certainly was not letting anyone forget the campaign: as the ceremony was taking place, former President Bill Clinton issued a long statement extolling his wife's qualifications ("as her husband, I am deeply proud") and briefly praised Mr. Obama, not for his vision, but for his good sense in choosing Mrs. Clinton.

The topic at hand was national security, and five other appointments were announced, but reporters were mostly interested in exploring how secure Mr. Obama felt about his new secretary of state's loyalty. A reporter asked Mr. Obama whether there was any lingering internal disagreement given that "some people up there on the stage" had previously attacked his argument that the United States has a right to attack terrorist targets in Pakistan without Pakistani government permission.

"I did not ask for assurances from these individuals that they would agree with me at all times," Mr. Obama said calmly. "I think they understand and would not be joining this team unless they understood and were prepared to carry out the decisions that have been made by me after full discussion."

When another reporter asked Mr. Obama about the "evolution" of his views since those times in the campaign when he dismissed Mrs. Clinton's foreign policy experience as a series of "teas" with foreign leaders, Mr. Obama took it lightly. "Well, I mean, I think - this is fun for the press to try to stir up whatever quotes were generated during the course of the campaign." he said with a grin. "No, I understand. And you're having fun, and there's nothing wrong with that. I'm not - I'm not faulting it."

Mrs. Clinton had greeted the question somewhat grimly, but as Mr. Obama answered, she slowly unfurled a smile. By the end, she managed to look almost as amused by the question as her new boss was.

By Alessandra Stanley, The New York Times, December 1, 2008

CINCINNATI (Reuters) - In what was billed as the Year of the Women in U.S. politics, the choice of Hillary Clinton as President-elect Barack Obama's secretary of state somehow seems both more and less than her supporters had hoped for.

"I wouldn't say I'm mollified, I'm just happy she's got something she'll be good at," said Barbara Hynd, 69, a retired research scientist and Clinton fan in Cincinnati. "I think she would have made a good president."

Clinton's rise to one of the most powerful positions in her former rival's cabinet caps a year of dreams and disappointments for her often fervent supporters: Would the New York senator and former first lady be president? No. Would she be vice-president? Nope. Surely she'll be in his cabinet? Yes.

Is that good enough? Perhaps.

"I think it's great for Hillary, and we can all heave a sigh of relief that she's found a powerful perch," said Carol Jenkins, president of the Women's Media Center in New York.

"I'd love to see her ... bring on Mideast peace. If anyone can do it, it's Hillary," Jenkins added.

While 2008 will go down in U.S. history as the year the country's first black president was elected, it will also be remembered for the election in which a woman nearly became the Democratic nominee for president and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin became the Republican party's first woman nominee for vice president.

The campaign was also marked by stereotypes of Clinton as the humorless harridan of the Democratic nominating contests and Palin as the know-nothing pretty face chosen to be Republican John McCain's running mate.

"There is no question this campaign exposed extreme gender bias from the media, from party leaders and from the voters," said Stacy Mason, executive director of WomenCount, a progressive women's organization.

SMALL GAINS

"What was heralded to be the year of the women really hasn't been the year of the women at all," said Mason.

The record number of women in Congress in the new session that opens in January still reflects small net gains in the November elections -- one in the U.S. Senate and three in the House of Representatives. As of now, women will number 17 in the 100-member Senate and 74 in the 435-member House. One Ohio race was so close it has not yet been decided.

"It's a really really dismal number ... the U.S. still ranks 83rd in terms of the number of women in elected office," said Mason.

That Clinton is the third woman to be the top U.S. diplomat -- after Madeleine Albright and Condoleezza Rice -- only adds to a sense that though women made great strides in 2008, they fell short of a breakthrough.

"Secretary of State has become the women's spot -- a safe expected place for women to be. In the ideal world, we'd see woman as Treasury secretary and throughout these ranks (of government)," Jenkins said.

Obama's decision to name Clinton to the high profile post is a nod to the need to mend fences with his formidable former rival, and an acknowledgment of the need for diversity in his administration.

"First and foremost I think he weighs how well he would work with a particular cabinet member and what this person has to offer substantively," said Ruth Mandel, a senior scholar at the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. But, she added, "political considerations" were no doubt part of his decision-making as well.

"It would not do well for a president in the 21st century to have a team that is 100 percent male," she noted. The first woman served in a presidential cabinet in 1933.

Mason is more direct.

"We'll be watching the Obama administration's appointments very carefully," she said. "It's all important, not just elected leaders, but also appointments below the secretary level where there is an opportunity for women to be represented in all kinds of numbers."

But Jenkins sensed some progress has already been made.

"In the end for Hillary, a lot of the wild sexist comments that she endured and triumphed over, even though she didn't win the presidential nomination, I think she did conquer many elements of sexism and came out ahead for herself and for women."

By Andrea Hopkins, Reuters, December 1, 2008

NEW YORK – Former President Bill Clinton says he's thankful that Barack Obama has chosen his wife, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, to be his secretary of state.

In a statement Monday, the former president said his wife is "the right person for the job." He says she'll work to restore America's image abroad, end the war in Iraq, advance peace and increase the nation's security.

Bill Clinton says his wife has already earned the respect of foreign leaders and diplomats. And he says she's shown through her work in the Senate that she'll put the nation's security, its values and the interests of its people first.

To clear the way for his wife's nomination, Clinton had to agree to limits on the funding and management of his foundation, and to submit his own speaking schedule for approval.

The Associated Press, December 1, 2008

CHICAGO (AFP) - Hillary Clinton may have fallen short in her quest to become the first woman US president, but as secretary of state she will have a unique opportunity to help shape global history.

The feisty former first lady will face monumental challenges overseas, including the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the threat of terrorism, once again brought into sharp focus by the Mumbai attacks.

But perhaps the biggest task facing the 61-year-old, New York senator will be restoring the country's tarnished reputation and ushering in a new era of US diplomacy promised by president-elect Barack Obama.

After several sharp policy disagreements with her former rival during the bitter Democratic party primaries, all eyes will be watching how the two work as a team as Clinton takes up the most prominent job in the cabinet.

She can already count on massive support overseas thanks to the image she built as first lady and the goodwill still felt around the world for her husband, former president Bill Clinton.

And following her defeat in the primaries, Clinton worked hard for Obama, urging her millions of loyal supporters to back his bid and elect the country's first African-American president.

EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana has said her nomination as America's top diplomat "would be very well taken" abroad.

"She is a strong personality. She is an appropriate person, capable, with experience, well known. I think it would be very well taken by the majority of people," Solana said during a recent visit to Washington.

Obama's formal nomination of Clinton at a Monday press conference in Chicago nearly a month after his historic election triumph cements a remarkable alliance after their acrimonious Democratic primary duel.

Clinton was said to have been initially reluctant to accept the post. But reports indicate that she won a guarantee of direct access to the president.

Fears that her nomination could falter because of her husband's charitable foundation and lucrative speechmaking also appear to have been resolved after the former president reportedly agreed to hand over a list of donors and submit future engagements, speeches and sources of income to the State Department and White House.

As secretary of state, Hillary Clinton will have to live up to high expectations from a world which has enthusiastically embraced Obama's promise of change weary of the eight-year administration of President George W. Bush.

It also caps a remarkable political career, catapulting her out of a relatively junior position in the Senate to become the face of US diplomacy.

The challenges ahead are staggering, as Clinton herself has acknowledged.

"The next president will be the first to inherit two wars, a long-term campaign against global terrorist networks, and growing tension with Iran as it seeks to acquire nuclear weapons," Clinton wrote during her White House bid.

She also stressed in the specialist Foreign Affairs magazine the need for Arab-Israeli peace, and warned of the need to address "the looming long-term threats of climate change and a new wave of global health epidemics.

"To meet these challenges, we will have to replenish American power by getting out of Iraq, rebuilding our military, and developing a much broader arsenal of tools in the fight against terrorism," she argued.

AFP, December 1, 2008

CHICAGO, Dec. 1 -- President-elect Barack Obama Monday formally announced a national security team that is led by his onetime chief Democratic rival and includes a top member of President Bush's Cabinet -- a bipartisan group that he said shares his pragmatism and his commitment to strengthen America's standing in the world.

In a news conference in Chicago, Obama introduced Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) as secretary of state, bringing on board the candidate who battled him for the Democratic presidential nomination during a long primary season. As America's top diplomat, Clinton will be the face of Obama's efforts to remake the country's foreign policy.

Obama and Clinton had each claimed to be the best candidate to restore the nation's reputation abroad, end the Iraq war and engage the new global economy as president. Now, they will try to do that together, though under Obama's direction.

Aiding in the effort will be Bush Cabinet member Robert M. Gates, who will continue as defense secretary despite having overseen a war policy that was the subject of withering criticism from both Obama and Clinton during the campaign.

To be successful, Gates and Clinton will have to forge a working relationship that often eludes the secretaries of state and defense even when they are members of the same party. Gates and Clinton will have their own power bases, and each has sought assurances of access to Obama. But Obama clearly believes the pair can work together, especially on the difficult task of withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq.

To help in coordinating the competing views, Obama turned to retired Marine Gen. James L. Jones, whom he introduced Monday as his national security adviser.

Jones, operating inside the White House, will be charged with melding military and diplomatic policy and with helping Obama navigate the two bureaucracies.

The trio that Obama introduced Monday represents a centrist team that has already angered some of the president-elect's most ardent liberal supporters, who had expected a foreign policy team with clear, left-leaning credentials.

But as he did in choosing his economic team, Obama has favored experience over ideology in forming his national security cabinet. At a news conference last week, the president-elect defended his choices, saying that his nominees do not undercut the direction that voters chose on Election Day.

"Understand where the vision for change comes from, first and foremost," he told reporters. "It comes from me. That's my job, to provide a vision in terms of where we are going and to make sure, then, that my team is implementing."

Obama also announced Monday that he has chosen Eric H. Holder Jr. as attorney general and Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano as secretary of homeland security. The pair will lead the effort to protect the country against terrorist attacks while stepping back from Bush administration torture and interrogation policies that riled many in the country and became the subject of fierce attacks during the campaign.

A border-state governor, Napolitano will be in charge of efforts to revamp immigration policy. A former state attorney general, she has been a moderate and pragmatic governor with little interest in satisfying the left wing of the party.

Holder, a former judge, U.S. attorney and deputy attorney general, will become the nation's first African American attorney general. He is close to Obama, having co-led the search for a vice presidential candidate during the campaign.

Obama announced that Susan Rice, a close friend and adviser, will become the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, assuming a role that will once again become a Cabinet-rank position.

The decision to name Clinton as secretary of state was made after working out an agreement with former president Bill Clinton regarding his global charity efforts. That agreement calls for Clinton to release the names of 208,000 donors to his foundation, and a willingness to refer questions about conflicts of interest to the State Department ethics office and to the White House counsel's office.

By Michael D. Shear, The Washington Post, December 1, 2008

President-elect Barack Obama has chosen his former chief rival for the Democratic nomination to be his secretary of state.

At a news conference Monday in Chicago, Obama announced that he's chosen Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton to lead the State Department.

He described her as a friend and colleague, as well as a source of counsel and a tough opponent. He added that she's someone of tremendous stature who can advance America's interest around the world.

In order to make it possible for his wife to take the job, party officials say former President Bill Clinton agreed to disclose the names of contributors to his foundation and step away from day-to-day management of it. He'll also submit his speaking schedule to review by the State Department and the White House.

Obama also said that President George W. Bush's defense secretary, Robert Gates, is staying on.

Obama named Washington lawyer Eric Holder as attorney general and Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano as homeland security secretary. He also announced two senior foreign policy positions outside the Cabinet: campaign foreign policy adviser Susan Rice as U.N. ambassador and retired Marine Gen. James L. Jones as national security adviser.

Obama also has settled on former Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle to be his secretary of Health and Human Services and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson to be Commerce secretary, but those announcements are not yet official. Last week, he named key members of his economic team, including Timothy Geithner, president of Federal Reserve Bank of New York, as Treasury secretary.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, asked about Clinton at a news conference in London, said Monday: "I think that she will bring enormous energy and intellect and skill to the position."

"Most important, I know her to be somebody who has what you need most in this job, which is a deep love for the United States of America," Rice said. She added, "As to advice, I'll give her that advice privately, and then she won't -- and you won't -- hear from me again."

The decisions mean Obama has half of the 15-member Cabinet assembled less than a month after the election, including the most prominent positions at State, Justice, Treasury and Defense. With the world grappling with war, recession and terrorist threats that erupted this week during coordinated attacks in India, Obama was moving swiftly to try to bring reassurance and continuity in the federal government when he takes over in less than two months.

Clinton's nomination is the latest chapter in what began as a bitter rivalry for the Democratic presidential nomination. To make it possible for his wife to become secretary of state, party officials said, former President Bill Clinton agreed to: --Disclose the names of every contributor to his foundation since its inception in 1997 and all contributors going forward.

--Refuse donations from foreign governments to the Clinton Global Initiative, his annual charitable conference.

--Cease holding CGI meetings overseas.

--Volunteer to step away from day-to-day management of the foundation while his wife is secretary of state.

--Submit his speaking schedule to review by the State Department and White House counsel.

--Submit any new sources of income to a similar ethical review.

Sen. Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Sunday on ABC's "This Week" that he plans to vote to confirm Clinton.

Lugar said there would still be "legitimate questions" raised about the former president's extensive international involvement.

"I don't know how, given all of our ethics standards now, anyone quite measures up to this who has such cosmic ties, but ... hopefully, this team of rivals will work," Lugar said.




The Associated Press, December 1, 2008

President-elect Obama has waited until today officially announce New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's selection as Secretary of State until after Thanksgiving, but the wrangling to determine her successor in the Senate has already been underway for weeks.

The question for Hillary Rodham Clinton, slated to be named secretary of State on Monday by President-elect Barack Obama, is whether she can forge the sort of close relationship with a former rival that is crucial to giving the nation's top diplomat the credibility to get things done.

"What matters most are two things," says James Lindsay, director of the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law at the University of Texas-Austin. "One, the secretary of State has to have the president's ear. Two, the president has to have the secretary of State's back."

Obama is choosing for his most prestigious Cabinet post an independent-minded policymaker whose world view has been shaped by eight years as a globe-trotting first lady and eight years as a senator with time on the Armed Services Committee. She combines a focus on "soft" issues such as maternal health with rhetoric more hawkish than Obama's on containing Iran's nuclear program and protecting Israel.

She will be taking the lead on a crushing set of global challenges, including repercussions from last week's terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India, which threaten a conflagration on the nuclear-armed subcontinent.

In collaboration with other administration officials, the incoming secretary of State will deal with the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, efforts to turn around the war in Afghanistan, nuclear programs in such rogue nations as North Korea and Iran, the challenge from a resurgent Russia and growing concerns about global climate change.

Obama's pick is non-traditional on several fronts. Not since James Garfield appointed James Blaine to head the State Department in 1881 has a president chosen a major political rival for the job. What's more, Clinton's grounding in women's rights contrasts with her predecessors, most of whom had pursued careers in academia, the military or law steeped in U.S. relations with major world powers.

The Obama transition office said Sunday that he would unveil his national security team today. Two Democratic sources with firsthand knowledge of the decision confirmed Clinton would be among those named. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to speak on the record.

Clinton is "a tough pragmatist who understands it's a dangerous world out there, who understands it can be necessary at times to use force and at other times to be able to back your diplomacy with the threat of force," says Martin Indyk, a former assistant secretary of State and ambassador to Israel who is close to Clinton.

"On the other hand, she has shown a very deep commitment to the causes of human rights, women's rights in particular, and the pursuit of peace and resolution of conflict."

When Clinton decided to run for the Senate in 2000, she launched her campaign with a "listening tour" to hear from New York voters. When she began her presidential campaign in 2007, she announced a similar "listening tour" through states with early primaries and caucuses.

It would be no surprise, then, if she chose to begin her tenure as secretary of State with a "listening tour" around the globe, especially to hear from allies in Europe and elsewhere who have complained about what they see as a penchant for unilateral action by the Bush administration.

She also has other ideas in her pocket.

During a trip last year to Pakistan and Afghanistan, Clinton met separately with then-Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf and Afghan President Hamid Karzai, each of whom expressed suspicions of the other. She asked each if it would be helpful for the United States to appoint a special envoy to work with leaders of the two countries. They said yes.

On her return to Washington, she called White House national security adviser Stephen Hadley to pitch the idea, but to no avail. National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe says the White House did look into her suggestion but decided it wasn't feasible because the administration, while also working on tensions between Musharraf and Karzai, was focused on a governmental transition in Pakistan and the need to name a new U.N. representative for Afghanistan.

As secretary of State, Clinton would be in a position to put her ideas into action.

From bellicose to 'brilliant'

As they competed for the Democratic nomination, Clinton portrayed Obama as naive in his approach to rogue leaders around the world.

Obama, meanwhile, questioned her judgment in voting to authorize the Iraq war and cast her as unnecessarily bellicose toward Iran. He and his top aides - including Susan Rice, set to be named United Nations ambassador - mocked the idea that Clinton's work as first lady amounted to substantive experience.

Now, associates of both describe their differences on foreign policy as overblown in the heat of battle. They say Clinton's public campaigning for Obama during the general election and their private conversations in the four weeks since he won have helped mend fences and begin a budding partnership. Obama strategist David Axelrod now calls Clinton "able, tough, brilliant."

Even so, no appointment Obama has considered has generated as much chatter as the choice of the New York senator.

Some leaders of anti-war groups are dismayed that Obama, whose national ambitions were launched by his opposition to the invasion of Iraq, would give such a key role to someone who supported it.

"One of the ways in which he separated himself from Hillary Clinton during the primary season was to remind people that early on he was opposed to the war in Iraq, was opposed to her position, which was always quite supportive of war," says Leslie Cagan, national coordinator of United for Peace and Justice, a coalition of anti-war groups.

She calls the prospective nomination of Clinton "quite disappointing" but says the "real question" will be the policies Obama himself sets.

Then there are the potential complications of choosing the spouse of a former president who continues to pursue his own initiatives on AIDS and other issues around the world. Will foreign leaders assume Bill Clinton speaks for the White House? And what happens if he disagrees with a step the president and secretary of State decide to take?

The former president has agreed to take steps to minimize conflicts or the appearance of them, including submitting future speaking engagements and business dealings to the State Department or White House for approval. Under the arrangement, first reported by The New York Times Sunday, Clinton will release the names of more than 200,000 donors to his foundation.

The former president could prove to be an asset for the new administration. In an interview in October with Joe Klein of Time magazine, Obama said he had talked with Bill Clinton about the possibility of serving as a special envoy to ease tensions between India and Pakistan - a task that takes on special importance now.

Bill Clinton has been "foursquare" in favor of his wife's appointment, says Strobe Talbott, a former deputy secretary of State who has been a friend since they were Rhodes Scholars together. "I know his initial reaction to the idea was, 'She'd be great; (Obama's) smart to offer it.' ...

"She obviously had to make some pretty basic decisions" whether to accept the job, Talbott says. "It's a major career change."

She has made those before.

Clinton was a Little Rock lawyer and activist on children's issues when her husband was governor of Arkansas. After he was elected president in 1992, she headed the task force charged with his signature domestic initiative, on health care.

The proposal she helped draft failed spectacularly, never coming to a vote on Capitol Hill and contributing to devastating Democratic setbacks in the congressional elections in 1994. Hillary Clinton, a political lightning rod in the United States, became increasingly engaged in global travels and programs.

"She was very interested in a combination of things that led her to get more active on foreign issues," recalls Madeleine Albright, who was U.N. ambassador in President Clinton's first term and secretary of State in his second. She and Hillary Clinton regularly met for lunch in Albright's private dining room at the State Department.

"She could see what her voice meant when she got involved in a particular issue," Albright says. "There were specific areas she got interested in - human rights and women's issues and international health issues - and then more and more that gave her the capability of understanding developments in those countries."

Eight years, 82 countries

During eight years in the White House, Hillary Clinton visited 82 countries. She met with dozens of foreign leaders including President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, president Ion Iliescu of Romania and prime minister Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan. (In her 2003 memoir, Living History, Clinton says Bhutto commiserated on their mutual challenges. "Women who take on tough issues and stake out new territory are often on the receiving end of ignorance," Bhutto told her.)

One of Clinton's most embarrassing missteps during this year's presidential campaign came when she exaggerated her experiences as first lady, giving audiences a vivid account of landing in Bosnia in 1996 under sniper fire. CBS footage of the trip - posted on YouTube this spring and viewed more than 2 million times since then - shows her and daughter Chelsea at a placid welcome ceremony on the airport tarmac, greeted by a young girl with a long braid.

Clinton's schedule abroad included hundreds of photo ops and sightseeing expeditions, but she also routinely held meetings on such substantive issues as the political empowerment of women, equal opportunities for girls and the availability of health care.

After a 1995 trip to India, Pakistan and other countries in South Asia, she delivered a presentation at the State Department of what she found that Talbott calls "stunning" in its analysis of the region's importance and its challenges. He says it laid the groundwork for President Clinton to visit India, Pakistan and Bangladesh in 2000.

On that trip and others, Hillary Clinton spotlighted the emergence of "microcredit" programs that offered small, unsecured loans to give the impoverished a path to self-sufficiency.

"When Hillary Clinton says something, the whole world listens," Mohammad Yunus, founder of the Grameen Bank, told reporters after she sat down in the remote village of Moishahati with a group of Bangladeshi women who had benefited from the bank's microcredit loans.

After she was elected to the Senate in 2000, Clinton sought a seat on the Armed Services Committee, a step that would bolster her credentials as a potential commander-in-chief. Since then, she has regularly traveled abroad, making three trips each to Iraq and Afghanistan and two to Israel as well as visits to Pakistan, Kuwait, Canada and Europe.

Clinton remains determined to focus on such issues as maternal health and the education of girls. She argues there is a direct link between those "soft" issues and the stability of governments, and with that U.S. security interests.

"Typically, governments (including that of the U.S.) limit their foreign policies to diplomatic, military and trade issues, the staple of most treaties, pacts and negotiations," Clinton wrote in her memoir. "Yet it was clear to me that in the new global economy, individual countries and regions would find it difficult to make economic or social progress if a disproportionate percentage of their female population remained poor, uneducated, unhealthy and disenfranchised. ...

"Issues affecting women and girls should not be dismissed as 'soft' or marginal but should be integrated fully into domestic and foreign policy decisions."

Still, it is on such traditional "hard" issues as authorizing the U.S. invasion of Iraq and dealing with the nuclear program in Iran that Clinton has clashed most with Obama. Those questions and others - including the perilous situation between India and Pakistan - will be among the new secretary of State's most pressing challenges.

"For the Obama administration, foreign policy is not going to be easy," says Lindsay, a former National Security Council aide. "Their inbox is filled with lots of intractable problems."

By Susan Page, USA TODAY, November 30, 2008

President-elect Barack Obama planned to nominate Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton as his secretary of state on Monday, transforming a once-bitter political rivalry into a high-level strategic and diplomatic partnership.

Obama will name the New York senator to his national security team at a news conference in Chicago, Democratic officials said Saturday. They requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly for the transition team.

To clear the way for his wife to take the job, former President Bill Clinton agreed to disclose the names of every contributor to his foundation since its inception in 1997. He'll also refuse donations from foreign governments to the Clinton Global Initiative, his annual charitable conference, and will cease holding CGI meetings overseas.

Bill Clinton's business deals and global charitable endeavors were expected to create problems for the former first lady's nomination. But in negotiations with the Obama transition team, the former president agreed to several measures designed to bring transparency to his post-presidential work.

The former president had long refused to disclose the identities of contributors to his foundation, saying many gave money on condition that they not be identified. He's now agreed to do so, and has volunteered to step away from day-to-day management of the foundation while his wife serves as secretary of state.

Bill Clinton also agreed to submit his speaking schedule to vetting by the State Department and White House counsel, and to submit any new sources of income to similar ethical review.

Obama's choice of Hillary Clinton was an extraordinary gesture of goodwill after a year in which the two rivals competed for the Democratic nomination in a long, bitter primary battle.

The two clashed repeatedly on foreign affairs during the 50-state contest, with Obama criticizing Clinton for her vote to authorize the Iraq war and Clinton saying that Obama lacked the experience to be president. She also chided him for saying he would meet with leaders of rogue nations like Iran and Cuba without preconditions.

The bitterness began melting away in June after Clinton ended her campaign and endorsed Obama. She went on to campaign for him in his general election contest against Republican Sen. John McCain.

Advisers said Obama had for several months envisioned Clinton as his top diplomat, and he invited her to Chicago to discuss the job just a week after the Nov. 4 election. The two met privately Nov. 13 in Obama's downtown transition office.

Clinton was said to be interested and then to waver, concerned about relinquishing her Senate seat and the political independence it conferred. Those concerns were largely ameliorated after Obama assured her she would be able to choose a staff and have direct access to him, advisers said.

Remaining in the Senate also may not have been an attractive choice for Clinton. Despite her political celebrity, she is a relatively junior senator without prospects for a leadership position or committee chairmanship anytime soon.

Some Democrats and government insiders have questioned whether Clinton is too independent and politically ambitious to serve Obama as secretary of state. But a senior Obama adviser has said the president-elect had been enthusiastic about naming Clinton to the position from the start, believing she would bring instant stature and credibility to U.S. diplomatic relations and the advantages to her serving far outweigh potential downsides.

Clinton, 61, a Chicago native and Yale Law School graduate, practiced law and served as the first lady of Arkansas during her husband's 12 years as governor of the state, from 1979-81 and 1983-1992.

Clinton was the nation's first lady from 1993 to 2001. The same year George W. Bush defeated Al Gore to succeed her husband in the White House, Clinton ran for the Senate as a New York Democrat. She won re-election in 2006 and was widely regarded as the favorite for her party's nomination for president in 2008.

In the Senate, Clinton served on the Armed Services Committee, the Committee on Environment and Public Works and the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.

By BETH FOUHY, Associated Press, November 30, 2008

With Clinton as secretary of State, retired Marine Gen. James Jones Jr. as national security advisor and Gates remaining in Defense, Obama will have a choice among often starkly differing views.

Reporting from Washington -- President-elect Barack Obama says he wants to lead an administration where strong-willed senior officials are ready to argue forcefully for differing points of view.

It appears that in two months, he'll get his wish, and then some.

But Obama will have some clear choices among their views, which differ in nuance in some cases and more starkly in others. Obama appears to be determined to keep them in line; advisors say he believes the Pentagon has become too strong in the Bush years, and he wants to reassert White House control.

Some American supporters of Israel have already been buzzing over the potential for conflict between Clinton and Jones on Arab-Israeli issues.

Jones, an admired former Marine commandant and supreme allied commander of NATO, was appointed last November as a Bush administration envoy charged with trying to improve the often dysfunctional Palestinian security forces. As part of that assignment, he drafted a report that caused a stir in Israel by criticizing the Israeli Defense Forces' activities in the Palestinian territories.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz said the report, which was never released publicly, "makes Israel look very bad."

Jones also reportedly favored the temporary deployment of a NATO-led international force in the territories -- a position the Israeli government would probably oppose as a potential interference to its right of self defense.

Clinton is generally viewed as holding center-right views on Israeli security issues. Although some liberal, pro-Israel activists insist she leans toward those on the dovish side of the dispute, she declared during the primary campaign that the United States could "totally obliterate" Iran if it used a nuclear weapon against Israel.

Jones has separated himself from the Obama playbook on a few issues. In 2007, he warned that setting an arbitrary deadline for removing U.S. troops from Iraq, which would presumably include Obama's campaign call to remove combat units in 16 months, would be "against our national interest."

In other areas, Jones is more in harmony with Obama. He has agreed with the president-elect that the focus on Iraq has distracted from a needed emphasis on Afghanistan.

Clinton hammered Obama during the campaign, saying he exposed his inexperience by calling for high-level talks with Tehran and advocating unilateral U.S. action in Pakistan.

But their differences have narrowed since their rivalry ended, and they now hold similar positions on many issues.

Gates, on the other hand, has indicated significant differences with Obama and with Clinton. He is a believer in missile defense, while Obama has said he favors it only if it proves technically feasible.

Many experts on Russia believe that the Obama administration will slow the deployment of a proposed missile defense system in the Czech Republic and Poland as a means of easing tensions with Moscow.

Although Gates is admired by the Obama team, they differ on nuclear weapons policy, an issue important to the Obama faithful. Gates has endorsed the development of a new generation of nuclear weapon called the Reliable Replacement Warhead. Proponents of nuclear disarmament, including close Obama advisors, believe the U.S. does not need a new warhead.

Still, there has been speculation that Obama's team could accede to Gates' position to reach a more important goal -- Senate passage of the long-stalled Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, an international agreement prohibiting new testing of nuclear weapons. Some centrists argue that accepting the warhead program may be a compromise needed to win over military leaders, nuclear labs and other influential players. Gates has suggested that a replacement warhead could be developed without testing.

On other issues, Gates has not supported Obama's 16-month Iraq troop drawdown plan, and has publicly urged U.S. leaders to brace for a commitment that could last years. Still, Gates has differed from the Bush administration on Iraq troop policy.

Gates' approach to the war in Afghanistan has come under fire from Obama's team, which complains it has relied too heavily on air attacks that result in civilian casualties.

Like Obama, Gates has been eager to engage countries such as Russia. But Gates has been skeptical about diplomatic approaches to Iran.

Gates frequently recounts his experience as a member of the high-level U.S. team that tried to negotiate with Iran after the 1979 revolution. The talks broke down, leading to seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran, persuading Gates that hopes of engaging reasonable Iranians might be an illusion.




By Paul Richter, Los Angeles Times, November 30, 2008

CHICAGO - Former President Bill Clinton has agreed to disclose publicly the names of more than 200,000 donors to his foundation as part of an accord with President-elect Barack Obama that clears the way for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to become secretary of state, Democrats close to both sides said on Saturday.

Mr. Clinton has kept his contributor list secret, as permitted under federal law, but he decided to publish it to avoid any appearance of conflict of interest with Mrs. Clinton's duties as the nation's top diplomat, said the Democrats, who insisted on anonymity to discuss the agreement with Mr. Obama's team. Mr. Obama plans to announce Mrs. Clinton's nomination on Monday, according to advisers.

The disclosure of contributors is among nine conditions that Mr. Clinton signed off on during discussions with representatives of Mr. Obama; all go beyond the requirements of law. Among other issues, he agreed to incorporate his Clinton Global Initiative separately from his foundation so that he has less direct involvement. The initiative, which promotes efforts to fight disease, poverty and climate change, would no longer hold annual meetings outside of the United States or accept new contributions from foreign governments.

Mr. Clinton also agreed to submit his future personal speeches and business activities for review by State Department ethics officials and, if necessary, by the White House counsel's office.

The former president's web of business and charitable activities raised questions about how he could continue to travel the world soliciting multimillion-dollar contributions for his foundation and collecting six-figure speaking fees for himself from foreign organizations and individuals while his wife conducted American foreign policy.

Lawyers for Mr. Clinton and Mr. Obama spent days crafting the agreement in hopes of addressing any concerns about Mr. Clinton's activities. He had previously said he would do whatever the Obama transition team asked in order to make it possible for his wife to serve without questions. Mr. Obama's team said it was satisfied that the concessions Mr. Clinton made should defuse any potential controversy. Until Saturday, only some elements of the agreement had become public.

Neither Mr. Obama's office nor Mr. Clinton's office would comment. The disclosure of Mr. Clinton's full agreement on a Saturday night might have the effect of drawing less attention to it while keeping the focus Monday on Mrs. Clinton. Her nomination will be announced along with the retention of Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and the appointment of Gen. James L. Jones, a retired Marine commandant, as national security adviser.

In the eight years since he left the White House, Mr. Clinton has built a new life as a businessman and international philanthropist, which has made him rich while he helped fight AIDS, malaria, malnutrition and other maladies around the world. Since its formation a decade ago, the William J. Clinton Foundation has raised more than $500 million to build a presidential library and to finance charitable programs.

Mr. Clinton has never revealed his contributors, but among those whose identities have become known over the years are the Saudi royal family, the king of Morocco, a foundation linked to the United Arab Emirates, the governments of Kuwait and Qatar and a tycoon who is the son-in-law of Ukraine's former authoritarian president.

For his speeches, Mr. Clinton could command as much as $425,000 for one hour, often paid by foreign companies or individuals who might have an interest in American foreign policy. He gave at least 54 such speeches last year for a total of $10.1 million. Even as his wife was first approached by Mr. Obama about the State Department job this month, the former president was heading to Kuwait to speak at an economic symposium sponsored by the National Bank of Kuwait.

To eliminate any concerns, Mr. Clinton turned over to Mr. Obama's team the names of all 208,000 individuals and organizations that have given money since 1997. The agreement will ensure that the foundation releases the names to the public as well by the end of December. The names will be divided into categories giving the general level of contributions rather than the precise dollar amount. Any future donors will be disclosed as long as Mrs. Clinton is in the cabinet.

The Clinton Global Initiative, now part of the foundation, will be incorporated separately to establish some distance from the former president in its day-to-day activities. Mr. Clinton will continue to host gatherings of the initiative and invite participants who pay registration fees, but will not solicit sponsorships, according to the agreement.

The agreement, most of which will become effective once Mrs. Clinton is confirmed, will prevent the Clinton Global Initiative from holding just the sort of meeting that it is sponsoring in Hong Kong starting Tuesday, the day after Mr. Obama's scheduled announcement. The meeting was scheduled to be the first of a series around the world bringing together leaders of government, business and nonprofit groups to discuss education, energy, climate change and public health.

Four other initiatives under the umbrella of the Clinton foundation - focused on H.I.V./AIDS, climate change, development and sustainable growth - will continue to do work under agreements with foreign governments that provide financing, including Britain, France, Norway and Sweden. But if any of those countries increases its commitment or a new country decides to contribute, the foundation will notify State Department ethics officials.





By Peter Baker, The New York Times, November 29, 2008

Pact Allows Obama To Tap Sen. Clinton

INDIAN WELLS, Calif., Nov. 29 -- Former president Bill Clinton has agreed to make public 200,000 donors to his presidential library and foundation as part of an agreement with President-elect Barack Obama's transition team designed to allow his wife -- Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton -- to be named secretary of state, according to two sources familiar with the arrangement.

The former president has also agreed to allow the State Department and, potentially, the White House to vet his personal business interests and speeches so as to avoid potential conflicts of interest, according to transition officials.

The outlines of the deal cut by Obama and the Clintons emerged in the last week as it became increasingly clear that the New York senator would be named secretary of state.

The transition team said the president-elect will make the announcement Monday in Chicago.

Bill Clinton has long resisted calls to make public the donors to his library and foundation, insisting that he has complied with all federal laws governing the disclosure (or lack thereof) of the contributions and the contributors to the foundation.

During the primary fight between Obama and Hillary Clinton, the Illinois senator's campaign described his opponent as a "veteran of non-disclosure" -- using the donors to the library as a cudgel in the argument.

By Chris Cillizza, The Washington Post November 30, 2008

WASHINGTON - Even for a city practiced at handling huge protests, marches and funerals, the inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama will put an unusual strain on local resources.

Because Washington has been allotted only about $15 million in federal money to help pay for all major events in the city for the entire year, local officials say they are most concerned about the costs of handling the more than 1.5 million spectators expected to come here, the largest crowd in inaugural history.

The $15 million is roughly $2.3 million less than the city spent just for President Bush's second inauguration, in 2005, which attracted 300,000 spectators.

The amount also pales in comparison with the $50 million that Denver and St. Paul each received from the federal government for security for the Democratic and Republican national conventions this year.

"Our city has plenty of experience hosting the inauguration, and it cherishes being the seat of the federal government," said Eleanor Holmes Norton, Washington's delegate to Congress. "But it doesn't come cheap."

The expense comes as the city announced $130 million in budget cuts this month to deal with a revenue shortfall caused by the larger economic slowdown.

Most of the inauguration is financed by private donations and federal money, but the city takes on a range of responsibilities.

While the Secret Service will oversee security, including the sharpshooters, air patrols and monitoring of the city's 5,000 or so surveillance cameras, most of the city's 4,100 police officers will help direct traffic, operate metal detectors and escort dignitaries. An additional 4,000 officers from surrounding states have been called in to bolster the city's force. It was unclear who would pay for them.

The city will also be responsible for providing more than 1,200 first responders to handle medical emergencies and several hundred sanitation workers to clean up after the festivities.

"If we get snow, things could get even more expensive," said Dan Tangherlini, the city administrator, pointing out that in 1961, inauguration planners called out 700 troops with shovels and flamethrowers after an unexpected storm blanketed the city in eight inches of snow before John F. Kennedy's ceremony. To clear the snow from the inauguration parade route can cost the city more than $1 million alone, Mr. Tangherlini said.

Ms. Norton said she was trying to get an additional $15 million allocated to the city, since the $15 million already set aside was supposed to cover the cost of policing all large events throughout the year.

"If we spend all these funds on the inauguration," she said, "how is the city is going to pay for events like the Fourth of July celebration and the antiwar marches that happen every year and are federal in focus?"

Despite such concerns, local businesses are expecting big benefits.

Restaurants throughout the city and hotels as far away as West Virginia are booked. The Metro transit system is charging $10 for commemorative tickets bearing Mr. Obama's picture. City residents have been posting advertisements on the Internet offering rooms in their homes for $500 a night. Others have even offered parking for a camping vehicle in their driveway for $80 a night, or tent space in their garden with access to toilet and shower facilities for $100 a night.

The city and surrounding area have about 95,000 hotel rooms, which are quickly filling up and being priced at two to three times the normal rate.

But the region's housing and transit systems may be stretched to capacity.

While some federal officials are predicting crowds of 1.5 million people, Mayor Adrian M. Fenty of Washington has said the number could be as high as 3 million, breaking the record of 1.2 million who attended Lyndon B. Johnson's inauguration, in 1965.

The city is planning to run double the usual number of subway trains and buses. Eighteen Washington-bound trains on the Northeast Corridor are already sold out for the long weekend, and Amtrak is monitoring whether to add more trains to the schedule, said Cliff Black, a spokesman for Amtrak. Virginia Railway Express and Maryland's commuter trains typically do not run on federal holidays but will do so for the inauguration, city officials said.

Because of limited hotel space and limited budgets, many charter services are running "there-and-back" or "turnaround" specials. These buses will roll out the evening of Jan. 19, arrive in Washington the morning of the swearing-in and depart later that day.

Some city officials worry that there is not enough room to handle the crowds, and they have been pushing for more space.

Officials from the National Park Service said they planned to open more areas than in past years along the Pennsylvania Avenue parade route.

A spokeswoman from the mayor's office said it had lobbied for National Park Service officials to open large sections of the Mall east of the Washington Monument, a space normally used for staging the many components of the inaugural parade. That would make the Mall a viewing area that experts said could accommodate several million people - significantly more than in the past.

It is not clear, though, if there will be enough indoor space for older people who cannot stand outdoors in frigid January cold.

"There are so many people from around the country, especially older folks, who are saying this is the one thing they thought they would never see in their lifetime," Ms. Norton said, "and so now they're saying they are not going to miss it for the world."

Older people may not realize they will have to walk long distances, she said, because, for security reasons, trains and buses will not be able to carry passengers all the way to the event site.

As an alternative, city officials and Ms. Norton have been pushing for inauguration planners to use arenas and stadiums to help with overflow crowds wanting to view the ceremonies on big-screen televisions. They are also urging churches to hold viewing parties.

"But renting these facilities costs money too," Ms. Norton said, "and so far it's not budgeted."

By Ian Urbina, The New York Times November 29, 2008

SAN DIEGO -- Check out this gold-plated resume: Seven-term member of Congress; special envoy to North Korea, Iraq, Cuba and Sudan; U.N. ambassador; energy secretary; governor; and five-time nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize.

You would think such an overachiever would be a shoe-in for secretary of state in the Barack Obama administration, especially if that person was also a member of a highly sought-after ethnic group that gave two-thirds of its votes to Obama and helped him win four battleground states. And what if that person also happened to be a former presidential candidate who had stuck his neck out to endorse Obama over Hillary Clinton and wound up persona non grata among Team Clinton and even likened to "Judas" by ever-loyal Clintonista James Carville?

Finally, what if that person had the backing of the National Hispanic Leadership Agenda, an association of 26 national and regional Hispanic civil rights and public policy organizations. The NHLA recently sent a letter to President-elect Obama recommending New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson as secretary of state. John Trasvina, the group's chairman who also serves as president and general counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, wrote: "No one is more qualified to serve as our country's chief diplomat than Gov. Bill Richardson." Board member Janet Murguia, the president and CEO of the National Council of La Raza, added this about Richardson: "His appointment would send a powerful message to Latinos throughout our country as well as to our neighbors in this hemisphere."

Now I wonder what message it sends that President-elect Obama has apparently passed over Richardson and seems ready to offer the post at state to their former rival, Hillary Clinton. While known the world over from her days as first lady, Clinton doesn't have anywhere near Richardson's level of experience in foreign affairs. Besides, she treated Obama reprehensibly during the primary. Does anyone really think that if Hillary had been elected president that she would be vetting Barack Obama for secretary of state?

After the snub, Richardson turned the other cheek and got slapped again. He is reportedly about to be offered, as a parting gift, a job -- secretary of commerce -- that someone else turned down. That someone else was Penny Pritzker, the president-elect's chief fundraiser who reportedly was Obama's choice for the post. A billionaire heir to the Hyatt hotel fortune, Pritzker withdrew her name from consideration.

What a mess. Supporters of both Obama and Richardson, along with a willing media, are spinning like mad and trying to clean it up. They're desperate to convince anyone who will listen that no one was slighted and that everything worked out as planned. It's all rainbows and puppy dogs.

Sadly, that includes those Latinos "leaders" -- using the term tentatively -- who, just weeks ago, were pressuring Obama to give Richardson an entirely different job.

When I called Trasvina to ask what he thought of recent events, the former Clinton Justice Department official served his disappointment sunny side up.

"Sure, I'm disappointed," Trasvina said. "A lot of people are disappointed. But is Richardson a good fit for the Commerce Department? The answer is yes. And is this a good fit for the community? The answer is yes."

And do you suppose Latino leaders are going easier on a Democrat who ignored them than they would a Republican who did the same. The answer is yes.

Don't fall for the spin. It's humiliating to be second choice for secretary of state. But it is even more humiliating to be second choice for secretary of commerce.

This isn't about Richardson, who might be very happy heading for ribbon cuttings in Toledo while Clinton heads for blue-ribbon summits in Tel Aviv. This is about something larger. Richardson is the nation's only Hispanic governor and the most prominent Hispanic elected official in the country. And the way he was treated doesn't say much about Obama's respect for the Hispanic community. Nor does the fact that Obama seems to have filled his top four Cabinet posts -- justice, treasury, defense, and state -- and couldn't find a single Hispanic to put in any of them.

America's largest minority took a chance on Obama despite the fact that the president-elect had no track record in reaching out to them and didn't break a sweat trying to win their votes. They deserve better.

By Ruben Navarrette, The Washington Post, November 29, 2008