So here’s my take on this whole “Hillary For Secretary Of State” thing: it’s a ploy.

Obama took a lot of flak for not making Hillary his running mate. The campaign made a very cursory effort at making it look like they were at least putting her on the short list, but nobody except the Hillary-Hating Republican crowd thought it was anything except the illusion it turned out to be.

They are doing the very same thing now, but doing a slightly better job of making it look realistic. The stories right after the election about John Kerry wanting the job were more of a traditional “trial balloon”, and they got shot down pretty fast by a very unhappy party. Hillary Clinton seems to be getting far more serious consideration as an actual possibility, but over the last 48 hours there have been all these stories about how Bill Clinton’s assorted post-presidential activities might create conflicts of interests and how he hasn’t been all that cooperative about turning over his lists of donors and contributors. And it’s my belief that the Obama people completely and utterly anticipated that and are ready to use it as a way to shuffle her out the door without looking like the bad guys.

I also believe that Hillary’s people knew all of this, too, and needed to play along for the sake of rehabilitating her public image after the “sore loser” end-game of her primary campaign. She sucked it up and played nice in the fall campaign, but did not get as much credit for it as she probably deserved. So this gives her a more favorable opportunity AND lets Bill look like the bad guy all over again. Moreover, I think HRC herself is 100% aware that her destiny is now in the United States Senate as the likeliest successor to Ted Kennedy as the ideological leadership of the Senate Democrats, and recognizes that there is absolutely no upside for her in actually becoming Secretary of State.

And for Bill, he takes the short-term hit on his reputation in the U.S., which isn’t all that great to begin with, but he doesn’t have to curtail his present-day activities for Hillary’s behalf. WIN-WIN-WIN.

Personally, I think Obama’s stealth candidate for State is Chuck Hagel — openly critical of Bush and the GOP, but with enough cred to fit the “bipartisan” approach Obama seems to be taking, has sufficient foreign policy experience, AND because State doesn’t have any domestic policy role to speak of, it helps to neutralize the elements of Hagel that are more objectionable to us pinko commie liberal bastards, namely his conservative and religious positions on domestic issues.