Secretary Clinton?

Since I wrote this, yesterday, the talk of Hillary Clinton as the next secretary of state has not abated. The New York Times carried this report, yesterday.

Some commentators have noted a similarity in appointments to high positions, between Barack Obama and that earlier Illinois lawyer who became president, Abraham Lincoln. The main theme of Doris Kearns Goodwin's 2005 book about Lincoln, Team of Rivals, was about how he brought politicians who had opposed him for the 1860 Republican presidential nomination into his administration.

Lincoln practiced the old maxim, "keep your friends close, and your enemies closer".

Obama began emulating Lincoln in that regard in August, when he chose one of his rivals, Joe Biden, to be the vice-presidential nominee. Now, there is talk of Cabinet jobs for at least two of his other rivals, Clinton and Bill Richardson.

The Times article points out that the disciplined Obama team would probably not have allowed the story to go this far, if they were not prepared to seal the deal. The only potential stumbling block that is noted in that report is conflict of interest with the activities of former President Clinton.

I wonder whether any member of Obama's transition team might use such financial/legal issues as a proxy for concerns about the awkwardness of having a former president that close to the official foreign-policy apparatus. There were similar concerns in the Clinton Administration about Jimmy Carter's post-presidential free-lance foreign policy work.

An earlier first lady to whom Hillary Clinton has often been compared, Eleanor Roosevelt, was also involved in public life after her husband's presidency. She was part of the American delegation to the United Nations during the Truman Administration. But she was a widow at that point, so Truman had no need to be concerned about a presidential predecessor being indirectly involved in foreign policy.