Fumbling the Big One

"Obama has selected a former Marine commandant close to John McCain, Gen. Jim Jones, as his national-security adviser; asked President George W. Bush's defense secretary, Bob Gates, to stay on; and selected Hillary Clinton, a relative centrist who denounced Obama's naiveté in the primaries, as secretary of state.

"It's as moderate as any Democrat's national-security picks could possibly get. Just when it seemed that the hawkish Scoop Jackson wing of the Democratic Party was dead forever, a jerry-built version of it is making a comeback via the impending administration of a man championed by anti-war zealots. Yes, God does have a sense of humor."

Actually, the signals were there all along. But you can't expect conservatives to say they misread Obama, so most are depicting him as lurching to the right.

Hillary continues to fascinate the media, as she has since 1992, so we might as well get used to it.

"Is this the end of Hillary? Will she no longer be the bright star, blazing her own path across the political skies?" asks Roger Simon.

"Drama and Hillary seem to go hand in hand, though this is not always her fault. Her husband seems the source of much of it. The negotiations between the Obama campaign and Hillary were protracted. True, Obama was getting a superstar. True, he was getting a well-qualified secretary of state who will have no trouble being approved by the Senate. But it was reported that Clinton made several demands, including the ability to pick her own staff without anyone's approval. Could this really be true? If so, it is a mistake.

"When it came to picking her most recent staff -- the staff of her presidential campaign -- she made disastrous choices, picking people with little or no presidential campaign experience and a near total lack of discipline. She chose a staff that never understood either the central motivation of voters in 2008 (a desire for change) or the mechanics of how to win the nomination. Let's hope Obama exercises quiet, behind-the-scenes but firm control over who will be part of Clinton's staff at the State Department."

The New Republic's Michael Crowley cites speculation "that elevating Susan Rice's U.N. ambassador job to cabinet level is a kind of shot across Hillary's bow. Maybe. But a smart foreign-policy watcher I know makes a different point: That Obama has created a new foreign policy power center amid an existing surplus of strong figures (Biden, Hillary, Gates, Jones) in that mix. On the flip side, Rice may well have trouble competing with Madame Secretary if it comes to that: 'In turf battles Hillary will eat Rice for lunch,' says this person, noting that of the five foreign policy appointees onstage today, Rice's resume is by far the thinnest."

Slate's Emily Yoffe goes beyond diplomacy in her analysis:

"Isn't it time for Hillary Clinton to get a quickie divorce from Bill (it can be done; it took about 20 minutes for Madonna to dissolve her marriage) before her confirmation hearings start? The New York Times reports that over the last few weeks of negotiations between Obama's representatives and Bill, he has agreed to various restrictions on his business and philanthropic dealings to keep Hillary from getting mired in a bunch of scandals and conflicts. He promises 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.' Yeah, that should work, because if we know anything about Bill Clinton it's that a) He responds well to being on a short leash, and b) He's really good at filing timely paperwork.

"Surely Hillary will not have trouble getting confirmed, but her hearings will be all about Bill -- Sen. Richard Lugar virtually promises that. As her presidential campaign made clear, not only does Hillary not need Bill anymore, he has turned into a liability (except financially, and she would come away with a big settlement). And just think, if she divorced him, it would be the first time that their relationship made sense."

Even on the hostile Upper West Side, the following scenario can hardly be what Bush's closest aide had in mind when his boss's presidency began: