So the Washington Post version is true & the NY Times' isn't.

That's the takeaway.

How so?

Here's something I've known for quite some time: Obama is smart and deft at playing political games without fingerprints. His end game is pretty apparent. He wants her for Secretary of State and it benefits him much more than it does Hillary. It gets his competition out of the Senate and weakens Congress. As Secretary of State, she needs to tow the administration line. There's no free agent in foreign policy. If you want to see how sidelined a Sec. of State can be where there is not a lot of trust in their opinions and the person was only chosen to keep the competition close at hand, look no further than Colin Powell. And Secretary of State could be fired; Senator from the Great State of New York, not so much. That said Hillary's a team player as she proved campaigning across the country for Obama. Who knows, maybe she will want the role of Secretary of State. She'd be a great face for American diplomacy (and hopefully have significant influence as well).

Hillary is more potentially troublesome in the Senate for Obama. She's going to have lots of influence and media attention. Does Obama want her in the Senate with her own agenda wthat may sometimes differ from his (particularly on healthcare etc), or does he want her close to home?

I'd rather Hillary in the Senate because Obama's domestic policy could use some liberal influence and I don't think there's anyone else in the Congress that will have the leverage to push for that as effectively as Hillary, but I must say that Hill as Secreatry of State would be great personal satisfaction since it will torment so many Clinton haters :)

So I'm in a win-win situation and it's kind of enjoyable :) The rumors of the death of the Clinton-wing of the Democratic party have been greatly exaggerated. :) Yay! :)

I'm with Atrios. There are some fringe players, mostly on Hillary's side (or who claim to be "close advisers" even if they have no idea what's going on) trying to stir the pot of what is probably a relatively smooth vetting process, especially given the folks involved. The media - because they loves them some Clinton drama - seizes on that BS to make is sound like there's shady stuff going on. Everything I read coming out of the Obama camp - even though it's always attributed to unnamed sources - makes it sound as if this is going as smooth as can be expected and that it's pretty much a done deal save for crossing the "t"s and dotting the "i"s. Hill and Bill don't seem to be promoting any drama themselves...in fact, they are downplaying any drama.

So, who do we believe - the Obama camp (when have they led us astray before?) and the folks involved themselves or some unnamed (cough - Lanny Davis) Clinton "insider" who claims to be "familiar with her thinking"

You know, Mark Penn might be involved in stirring all this crap up as well because he's worried that because Hillary won't be able to actively fundraise while she's SoS, he won't get paid.

It's definitely that jagoff Lanny Davis...

AP, 11/18/2008:

"Would she be willing to give up her independent stature in the U.S. Senate, Robert F. Kennedy's seat, to be in the Cabinet? It will be a considerable decision for her," said Lanny Davis, a former Clinton adviser not involved in the vetting. "It's a completely different life than you lead in the Senate, where you are your own spokesperson, your own advocate. When you join the Cabinet of the president of the United States, that is no longer the case."

NY Times, 11/18/2008:

The adviser described Mrs. Clinton as flattered by President-elect Barack Obama’s interest but said she was agonizing over the decision. Mrs. Clinton likes being her own boss and is reluctant to give up the independence that comes with that, said the adviser, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the process was at a delicate stage.

“If you are secretary of state you work for the president,” the adviser said in an e-mail response to questions from The New York Times. “If you are a senator, you work for yourself and the people that elected you.”

You can't blame him, really...Clinton drama is great for FoxNews ratings.

What a tool.

Double, double, toil & trouble,
Fire burn and cauldron bubble,
Ere Barak's regal sum,
Something Clinton this way comes.

I VERY seriously doubt that Obama would approach Hillary about being SOS if he didn't want her. If he asked her to take the position, put her through the vetting and then decided against picking her he would gain a real enemy in the Senate. If he made nice with Lieberman he sure as hell isn't looking to antagonize someone who really worked hard to get him elected.

So the Times article doesn't really make sense unless the "people close to the Clintons" are just paranoid. Which, given the Clintons, is quite possible. But it has no bearing on Obama's intent.

Short of a major obstacle found in the vetting it's her spot if she wants it. And if she turns it down then he's already repaid her for her efforts helping him. I think it may prove to be a brilliant move on his part.

I don't believe the NYT or Washington Post. After all these the same newspapers the led the drum beat to war in Iraq.

Both Obama and Clinton are quite astute politicians. Perhaps the big deal going on here is to raise a big ruckus, to publicly vet Hillary and Bill. To prep Hillary for the klieglights of a Supreme Court nomination.

Or... maybe the press still has a massive hard-on for The Clenis.

All in all, it's a tempest in a teapot.

It's not about Hillary anymore. It is about President Obama. Keep that in mind and it all makes sense.

Sorry, but that NY Times quote is just insane. The Clintons are going to *force* Obama to offer her the job?

Hello? He just got elected president of the United States!!! Who's going to force him to do anything?

Remember when the Clintons were going to force him to pick her for VP?

What this kind of speculation really shows, I'd argue, is the extent to which reporters are actually under pressure to report on the Clintons exclusively through the "Clintons scheming Lady Macbeth Machiavelli" prism.

Well, I have no idea what is really going on. But Greg seems to be saying both that we don't know what's going on, and that he does know enough about what's going on to say the Times is wrong.

As long as we are making guesses, my own impression is that the Clintons have a lot of close and exceptionally catty friends and associates in the media. And whenever a Clinton story comes out, those friends go into full-out Hollywood gossip mode, and start spinning things in the direction they perceive as Clinton-beneficial. Whether Clinton wants things to be spun this way, or the friends unilaterally assume she wants them to be spun this way, or they just take it upon themselves to spin them in the way they think Clinton ought to want them spun is anybody's guess.

Remember that last two years of the Clinton administration, for reasons we needn't review, had degenerated from a state of normal political reporting into a lurid, steaming industry of gossipy Hollywood Tattler stuff that remains with us. In other worlds, the world of the Clintons jumped the shark, and it now may be impossible to bring it back down to any kind of normal plane of reporting. It's not all Clinton enemies; but also Clinton friends, political supporters and fans, idle celebrity-watchers and interested bystanders who keep it going.

I've been wrong before. But I still believe Obama interviewed her out of courtesy, did not in any way actually offer her the job, and does not intend to do so.

She's the least qualified of those on the short list for consideration. Foreign policy is the area in which they most clearly disagree. She voted yes on the Iraq war resolution. She said that only she and McCain were qualified to be president, specifically in the context of questioning Obama's foreign policy credentials. She lied and exagerated her own experiences with diplomacy, and turned a touching encounter with a little girl offering her flowers into a harrowing dance with death under sniper fire.

What am I missing here? Does no one else want the job?

LOL...for all these stories of intrigue, this doesn't seem complicated to me. What "drama" have the Clintons caused here? It's not like they're taking years to make the decision. Hillary being SoS would involve a MAJOR upheaval in their lives - particularly for Bill, who would have to step down from a number of his current roles and permit a magnified look at his post-WH life. For Hillary, she'd be more or less giving up her power base by going into the Obama administration and giving up what probably amounts to Senator-for-life status.

Here's an analogous situation. David Axelrod didn't decide to accept Obama's senior adviser offer until yesterday, though it was very likely on the table even before Rahm Emanuel's CoS offer. Could it be because Axelrod would basically be taking a monster pay cut AND no longer be involved with the two consulting firms he founded? That's not an easy decision.

Obama didn't suddenly forget why he didn't make any serious attempt at putting Clinton on the ticket. He certainly realized that any Administration offer to HRC would involve vetting WJC, and all the public drama that would entail.

After the failed attempt to pressure Obama into picking Clinton as VP nominee, I think Hillaryland is playing it straight this time. Vetting the two of them (especially WJC's entanglements) is going to take a few weeks - and even that truncated timetable is only possible because WJC is giving full cooperation.

And it's probably not an easy decision for Clinton. Were she higher up on the seniority ladder in the Senate, she'd have much more initiative to say "no". However, she likes power, she likes being in charge, and she REALLY likes making a difference. Being a second-term Senator doesn't help much there. Being Secretary of State? That's a whole different ball o'wax.

For those who love the Machiavelli angle: Let's say Obama wins two terms, and Clinton is SoS for both. She'll be 68 - and, despite the talk, that's hardly too old to be President. Perhaps she thinks getting to the White House might be easier if she had most of the Democratic Party behind her in 2016? (NOTE: This paragraph is strictly conjecture. But it's not unreasonable conjecture.)

Look, I apologize for the multiple posts. I'm not usually like this. In fact, I rarely post at all.

But there is just something about that absurd NY Times passage, and Greg's interpretation of it.

Come on! They're not reporting on Hillary as "scheming Lacy Macbeth." They're reporting on her as if she won and Obama lost, just like they did in the primary. It's like the Clintons are royalty and are in charge even when they're not.

Oh, goodie. More Clinton pseudonews.

My take:
This was NOT (as Joe S was proclaiming loudly this a.m.) a "Bush-league" fumble that got out of Obama's control, is going to box him in, etc. Hasn't he learned yet? (No, of course not.) Geesh.

Start with the basics: Obama is NOT a fool and he is NOT suicidal. Therefore he has to know (heck, even I would know) that you don't even *mention* SOS to Hillary unless you are prepared to make the offer and (therefore) feel that she would be very good in the spot. Anything else would be painting a target on your back and inviting 18 million archers to aim for it, as well as setting yourself up to be Big Bubba Bulldog's snack for lunch the following day. So it's a "given," at least in my mind, that the job has been offered and it's hers if she wants it and if vetting doesn't show up something TOO terrible, and if she and Bill can at least be moderate in their desire for drama.

What Obama can't control, and knows he can't control, is what the Clintons will do about the offer being made, both immediately (i.e., leaks, statements, etc.) or in the end (i.e., acceptance or rejection, and if rejection what the 'story' would be). So - he tosses out a jump ball: make the offer and see what happens.

Look, he's had a long time to watch the Clintons and reason to pay attention. So he knows they will probably do something other than, more than, a polite, discrete, immediate acceptance or rejection -- and he knows that the media will take anything and magnify it 100 times just because it's the Clintons. So what are the optional outcomes:

--- If it gets out and grabs lots of attention before she accepts, then that takes the searchlight off him so he can attend to other appointments while the soap opera plays itself out.

--- If it gets out and grabs a lot of attention and she then *rejects* the offer, then she - not Obama - will look the fool. (But to soften that for her, the position on Kennedy's health committee is put on the table so she can save face that way.)

--- And if the Clintons play it up *too* far, for too long (or if vetting turns up something that just can't be gotten around), then at some point he can - and I'm confident will - say, in effect, "I'm sorry that's just too much drama. I'm going to have to withdraw the offer."

If you've thought of a step to take and figured that any possible outcome will be acceptable, then what's to worry or bother about?

Is his side leaking information, etc., etc.? They didn't really have to. All they had to do to get the story out there was to set up a "detectable" meeting when she flew out to Chicago (he can do secret meetings quite well, remember?) and follow it with the very public meeting with Richardson. Just that is enough to get the ball rolling. (If she'd wanted to speak briefly with Bill and then either accept or reject, it simply wouldn't have had time to become a story.)

And I'm willing to bet that his conversation with Richardson was along the lines of "Bill, I've offered the job to Hillary. I don't know whether she's going to accept - as you know, with the Clintons you just have to let things play out. If she doesn't wind up as SOS, I'm going to offer the job to you (Kerry's needed in the Senate, esp Foreign Relations Committee). If she winds up taking SOS, then there are a couple of other key spots I'd like you to consider ... but but until we know Hillary's decision, I'm not going to do anything more about you. Okay?"

Would this be manipulation by Obama? Not exactly - is it manipulation if you don't know and aren't controlling what the outcome will be? What it WOULD be is being on top of things, thinking ahead, and being rather crafty ..... qualities we've all come to associate with Obama.

I just hope this whole clinton drama is over soon. I don't think that I could, nor could the world, stand 4 years of her at state and all the freaking leaks and drama. No clintons at state. It would be a major clusterf*ck and a disaster. Talk about a train wreck. Our foreign policy is too important and too screwed up right now to have the clintons as secretaries of state. Let's please move on.

If it actually happens, just how good is this extensive vetting process we're hearing about going to be for the Clintons? He's a former president. She's a US senator. And they need vetting? What does that say?

No matter how the vettng concludes, every major issue that comes up will get leaked, and it means all the old Clinton scandals, real or imagined, take another turn through the spin cycle, right?

I'm not saying this is what's happening. But if you were a particularly clever person, subjecting your former rival and her scandal-challenged ex-president husband to a lengthy vetting process, on whatever pretense (oh, say, you're considering her for Secretary of State)could be a way of taking her down a peg or two.

Uh, I'm a freak because I dont't think HRC is the best pick? Or because I think she ran an ugly campaign?

No matter what happens, I won't be eating anything of the kind. My guy won, so why don't you eat some instead?

Seems to me the risk of having the clintons involved in anything, especially bill, just isn't worth it anymore.

And no one I have read has made a convincing argument as to why hillary is such a good pick.

As a representative of the president Bill Richardson would do fine.

Not only is hillary a war monger but bills continued dislike of Obama would guarantee interference and backstabbing that Obama would be forced to deal with.

Dump her now.
The manipulation that her or bills lackeys are showing is repulsive.

Fascinating discussion. Over a hundred comments, with some good points scored on both sides of the debate. All leading me to the same inevitable conclusion.

Clintonpalooza.

Bill take the pledge on the schmoozing and the big-bucks speechifying and hand over the world stage to the man who derailed the Clinton dynasty? Please.

Hillary tamp down her ambitions and pass up a bully pulpit in the Senate to become Obama's acolyte? Right.

America's biggest, baddest political tag team staying out of the cage and in separate corners with the whole world screaming for blood? You betcha.

Don't get me wrong. I think the Clintons could wind up being huge assets to the administration. But not with Hillary as SoS.

Why Obama would want this sideshow in the State Department makes no sense to me. At all.

Clintons always are the story.I say goodluck to Obama if he has the idiotcy to choose HRC as SOS.Does he really think he can have the Clintons put country first rather than 'emselves.