Further, I don’t think you’re addressing a particularly fatuous crowd, here. I doubt anyone is truly expecting all walls to fall and the heavenly chorus to descend… but a soon-to-be president whose decision-making processes are actually complex (and apparently rational) enough to dissect is certainly a change from the past eight years. I’m not sure you fully grasp the depths of grating, furious humiliation Bush’s pathetic performances have put some of us through, or the baffled frustration of the 2004 election. I don’t believe that most people are habitually rigorous thinkers, but after slightly more than half of my fellow voting citizens put that congenital idiot in office for another term, I honestly began to wonder if this country was succumbing to mass insanity.

So you’ll have to excuse the Obama fascination for a bit, I’m afraid. It’s just all so new and shiny. There will be more than enough time to rip him to shreds, and I’m sure the claws will come out soon.

Lex is right, I think – Obama is smart, smart, smart.

But it does, as cousin Avi points out, neutralize her as a domestic political force. And she’d have to give up her Senate seat to do it. He put her in a bind, with only two moves (yes or no) while having to factor in many considerations. She’s already lost the historical narrative, because she could have been his first major appointment (CoS doesn’t count, that’s personal and always first). If she says yes to stoke her vanity she’ll be effectively out of the political loop. If she says no she’ll have snubbed what is being taken as a magnanimous gesture.

Unless i’m reading waaaay too much into this, i’m seeing a man who’s a cut above when it comes to political strategy.

More to say on all this, but i’m working on a post which doesn’t belong in the comments section of Russ’s post. I’m with Dr. Denny, good ammo for arguments.

Hitch: Look, this is the woman who played the race card on Barack Obama {snip} This is the woman whose foreign policy experience consisted of making a fool of herself and fabricating a story about Bosnia

I see the upside to not having Hillary in the Senate. She’s popular and would be mucking about with domestic legislative issues from a potentially meddlesome spot with no reason to restrain her own agenda. Now that Obama has won the election and Hillary has been seen to have stumped her pantsuits off on his behalf, it may not be the case that (as a Senator) their interests would always coincide. As Sec. State, her powers (whatever they are) would be directed by the Oval Office – Hillary Clinton would have no domestic agenda beyond Thanksgiving dinners with Chelsea.

While it does raise obvious targets at which the sputtering and grasping GOP might take aim – they do so love Clinton bashing and it would be a trip down memory lane to happier days for them, back to a time when they had a future – what, really, are they to make of it? By any application of reason, they are estopped from tacking at Hillary by their own machinations. It’s at best difficult for the people who brought us Dick Cheney and Haliburton no-bid contracts to cry foul over some shady Indonesian and Chinese contacts, especially when the domestic agenda is far more weighty and immediately pressing. It is only made more difficult by the lavish praise they heaped on Hillary during the general election as part of their knobheaded Palin play to attract PUMAs.
Hillary Clinton is popular. Bill was popular and in the wake of Bush, he and Barack are the delicious bread on an American foreign policy shit sandwich. The world from pole to pole and from the Greenwich Meridian to the International Dateline seems quite pleased with the election of Barack Obama, and rather well disposed to giving the new boss an opportunity. Sending out the beloved wife of an immensely popular former president to help with the building of international bridges, while at the same time rebalancing the domestic scales in a way that cannot hurt and might well help…

I want to go along with Hitchens. I haven’t forgiven Clinton for the primary campaign she ran…but I am also quite certain that, once again, Obama is just smarter than we are. When Barack Obama talks about building bridges, people tend to forget that bridges operate in both directions and not necessarily at the same time. They are commonly seen as a structure upon which folks from opposite sides might meet in the middle. It is worthwhile to note that they can be used to invite someone over. They can also be used to send someone away (rather than simply tossing them in the river).
The more I watch this guy, the less I want to play poker with him.