Report: Hillary Plans to Accept Secretary of State Position

From the "keep your friends close and your enemies closer" file:

Hillary Clinton plans to accept the job of secretary of state offered by Barack Obama, who is reaching out to former rivals to build a broad coalition administration, the Guardian has learned.

Obama's advisers have begun looking into Bill Clinton's foundation, which distributes millions of dollars to Africa to help with development, to ensure that there is no conflict of interest. But Democrats do not believe that the vetting is likely to be a problem.

Clinton would be well placed to become the country's dominant voice in foreign affairs, replacing Condoleezza Rice. Since being elected senator for New York, she has specialised in foreign affairs and defence. Although she supported the war in Iraq, she and Obama basically agree on a withdrawal of American troops.

Clinton, who still harbours hopes of a future presidential run, had to weigh up whether she would be better placed by staying in the Senate, which offers a platform for life, or making the more uncertain career move to the secretary of state job.

This is a good move for both Obama and Clinton. Instead of being a perennial junior senator spending her time naming post offices in upstate New York with little hope of ever becoming Majority Leader, she suddenly becomes a player on the world stage. She's more of a hawk than Obama (she voted for the Iraq War and never apologized for it), so she certainly would be better in that job than John Kerry who was actively lobbying for it.

On Obama's side he accomplishes two things:

1. He gets Clinton out of the Senate where she might have been a thorn in his side on issues where her views diverged from his.
2. He gets rid of the most potent Dem rival in 2012 and pretty much assures his renomination barring a complete disaster of an administration. With Hillary at State she'll have to back Obama and support him and won't be able to spend two years telling primary voters they could do better with her.

Obama makes a pretty shrewd move by choosing Hillary. Now, if he can only keep Bill Clinton from getting involved....

UPDATE: Just another thought. If Hillary accepts the SoS position you could see it as her admission that she'll never be president. Her best chance was 2012, but it seems she's given up on that with this appointment. In 2016 she'll be 68 years old, and probably several years out of the SoS job since they don't tend to stay through the president's entire term. She may realize that by that time she won't have the political base she had in 2008.