February will mark the 200th anniversary of the birth of the Great Emancipator, but Abraham Lincoln is already the rage. From Newsweek to President-elect Barack Obama’s alma mater and transition team, people are talking.
President-elect Obama reportedly is considering appointing a “team of rivals” that would include Hillary Clinton. The reports have reprised the drama of their epic nomination battle.
Gerard Baker, Washington-based editor of the Times of London, writes:
And yet, here we are, a couple of weeks after that historic election, and once again all we are talking about is - the Clintons.
It would be an understatement to say that the sudden and unexpected emergence of Senator Clinton's name as the President-elect's apparent choice to be his secretary of state has caused consternation among some of Mr. Obama's most loyal followers.
They are aghast that, as they see it, having wisely steered clear of giving her the vice-presidency, their man has supposedly offered her what is, in all but the constitutional succession stakes, a much bigger job. The State Department is a vast bureaucracy that supports a Cabinet member who is the most frequently seen face of America in the world. One can only guess, by the way, what Joe Biden, the man who got the vice-presidential slot over Senator Clinton, in large part because of his foreign policy credentials, now thinks about the idea of sitting quietly in his vice-presidential office suite watching Mrs. Clinton strut her global stuff on television.
While Obama loyalists may be “aghast,” a new Gallup poll found that 57 percent of Americans want Clinton to hold court at Foggy Bottom. Nearly 80 percent of Democrats think it would be a good play.
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose (The more things change, the more they remain the same).
