Mike Allen reports the latest on the Hillary for Secretary of State story:
“Team Obama, after all but offering SecState to Senator Clinton, is expressing EXASPERATION with the Clinton camp for the difficulty in getting a clean vet on President Bill Clinton’s many entanglements. “The ball is very much in her court, but the president’s finances have been a major point of sensitivity from day one,” a Democratic official said. (“Day One!”) “Given that everyone’s mystified by how deliberately public the Clintons have made this once secret process, the assumption is either that the Clintons are trying to use the public buzz to steamroll their way in, create a sense of inevitability that overcomes those concerns, or that it’s just a matter of time before they … satisfy vetting somehow, some way. Otherwise, after all this speculation, there’ll be a permanent dark cloud hanging over her finances. … But generally the sense among the no-drama Obama world is: This is well on its way to winning best Oscar for drama.”
I suspect that persuading Bill to give up his commercial work will be relatively easy; his excesses during the primaries nearly all stemmed from a desire to win it for Hillary and those who I’ve spoken to in Washington expect that if she wants the job he’ll happily give it up. After all, he has cashed in handsomely since leaving the White House and they must have budgeted for a drop in the family income in 2009 on the expectation that Hillary might be president. However, the Clinton Foundation and the Global Initiative will prove trickier. Bill will be more reluctant to give these up and there are far more shades of grey involved.
What the Obama camp will be dreading is Bill agreeing to a deal now and then constantly trying to carve out exceptions to it. Personally, I hope Bill plays ball. Of the four contenders for the job—the others are believed to be John Kerry, the former UN Ambassador and New mexico Governor Bill Richardson and the Republican Senator Chuck Hagel—Hillary has the best instincts on foreign policy. I have, for instance, far more confidence in her advocating for a sufficiently tough line on Iran than the other three. Indeed, pretty much every hawk I know is for Hillary.
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