ALREADY?

Posted at 7:06 a.m. ET

Well, it didn't take long:

WASHINGTON (AP) - The first sign of cracks in President-elect Barack Obama's foreign policy team of rivals emerged on Monday as his choices for secretary of state and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations visited the State Department.

As Secretary of State-pick Hillary Rodham Clinton and U.N. envoy-choice Susan Rice separately visited the diplomatic agency's headquarters in Washington's Foggy Bottom neighborhood, persons familiar with the transition said that Rice wants to install her own transition team inside the department.

Such a move by an incoming U.N. ambassador is rare, if not unprecedented, because the job is based at the United Nations in New York, where Rice already has a small transition staff, the sources familiar with the incoming administration.

Watch Obama on this one.  He must immediately step in, inform Rice that the secretary of state is senior, and that Rice should go arrange the furniture in the posh apartment that our UN ambassadors have at the Waldorf.  Bad move by Rice.  Looks pushy, with some sour grapes on top.

During the presidential campaign, some Clinton aides saw Rice's early decision to back Obama as a betrayal because of her previous role as a high State Department official during President Bill Clinton's administration. Rice's desire to place her own team in Washington could fuel speculation that those tensions will carry into the new administration.

Well, I guess Rice figures she'll stake her claim early, because Hillary will certainly be staking hers.  This could get very juicy.

Technically, the job of U.N. envoy falls under the authority of the secretary of state, although some previous U.N. ambassadors have held cabinet rank. The last U.N. ambassador to be part of the president's cabinet was Richard Holbrooke, who had a famously icy relationship with then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright during the Clinton administration.

Albright, who was President Clinton's first ambassador to the United Nations, was a mentor to Rice. But the two had a falling out when Albright, America's first female secretary of state, lined up behind Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination and Rice backed Obama.

Lots of falling out with Ms. Rice.  The sound you hear is the knife sharpener sharpening the Clinton arsenal.

Also Monday, Clinton was to meet privately with Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass. and the incoming chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, according to a Democratic official. Kerry, once a contender for the secretary of state job, will oversee Clinton's confirmation. Kerry has pledged to hold "swift and fair" confirmation hearings.

A meeting between Clinton and Kerry.  Which one curtsies first?

And so a new era begins.  So much change.  All harmony, no conflict.

December 9, 2008.