New York Mag Heilemann Must Read: What's Behind Obama's Consideration of Hillary as SOS

The Closest of Frenemies

In all the dizzying personal and political complexities of Hillary at State, one thing is clear: Obama has nerve.

By John Heilemann
Published Nov 21, 2008

It wasn’t a done deal when these words were written, but there’s an extremely good chance that by the time you read them, Barack Obama will either have named or be on the verge of naming Hillary Clinton his secretary of State. The job would seem to be hers if she desires it, with her spouse vowing to do “whatever they want” to eliminate potential conflicts of interest posed by his promiscuous globe-trotting and buckraking. Although I’m told by people close to Hillary that she’s ambivalent about exiting the Senate, she craves a new challenge and sees a grand one in being America’s ambassador to the world at this hinge-of-history moment. And, hey, let’s be blunt: Were the idea, having coming this far and become this public, to fall apart now, the ensuing humiliation would be grievous and mutual for Obama and Clinton. Too grievous and too mutual, that is, for them to let it happen.

So it appears that we’re about to embark on a new chapter in the Obama-Clinton saga. Motivating the characters is a blend of cold-eyed calculation and gauzy idealism; selfishness and selflessness; the good, the bad, and the ugly—all the stuff that’s made the drama in which they have co-starred as operatic, twisted, and riveting as any in modern political history. What is different now is where Obama and Clinton might be headed: toward a kind of reconciliation that eluded them even after the hatchets were supposedly buried once their nomination fight was over.

No one disputes that the implications of this putative development are huge: for Obama and the Clintons, for foreign and domestic affairs. And opinions differ wildly over whether the pairing would be a stroke of genius or a match made in hell. But what strikes me as most interesting about it—along with the other appointments Obama has made so far—is what it suggests about the president-elect, from his conception of his embryonic administration to the size and contours of his ego.

The sheer improbability of the thing is striking, too, of course. All the happy-pappy posturing of the general election—the emphatic endorsements, the labored “unity” in Denver, the energetic stumping by Hillary for Barack, the two-way tongue bath between 42 and the soon-to-be 44 at a rally in Florida in the campaign’s final week—did little to alleviate the bedrock enmity between the two sides. The Clintons continued to regard Obama as a featherweight, a phony, a usurper. Obama neither liked nor trusted nor thought he needed Hill or Bill; he bridled at their apparent insistence that he kiss their rings.

http://nymag.com/news/politics/powergrid/52428/