HILLARY - AGAIN

Posted at 9:09 a.m. ET

We've said before at Urgent Agenda that some of the best writing on American politics is done by British and Australian reporters.  The best of the best is Gerard Baker of The Times of London, who examines the whole Hillary as secretary of state thing.  The Brits must be astonished: 

When the man they call No Drama Obama met the Clinton Psychodrama in the Democratic primary campaign, it was bound to produce an epic for the ages. The iron self-discipline of the long-shot pretender proved just enough in the end to overcome the front-runner whose strengths were undermined by the self-indulgent incontinence characteristic of the Clinton political machine.

And...

From the Democratic convention, the word went out that Hillary - and even Bill - was finally resigned to a late life of public service, toiling diligently in the vineyard of President Obama's America, seeking nothing more than to serve the new leadership, loyally committed to a cause greater than their own self-advancement.

Ah, but wait...

And yet, here we are, a couple of weeks after that historic election, and once again all we are talking about is - the Clintons.

Yes.  And we're not talking about another guy:

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.

They will keep him in the closet and away from microphones.  Hillary might ask him to arrange room service at foreign hotels.

What's more, it is not as though there was a great range of alternatives. John Kerry, first mooted for the job a while back, famously aloof and arrogant, might have proved a diplomatic disaster. Bill Richardson, the New Mexico Governor with the colourful past, was too risky for the global stage.

The Dem bench is not deep, especially where national security is concerned.

So what's the problem? The problem is that should Senator Clinton, by any chance, be looking to make her own mark in the next four years and subtly distinguish herself from the new president, there could hardly be a better perch from which to do it. Differences between the two during the primary campaign were sharpest over foreign policy. Mrs Clinton denounced Mr Obama's pledge to meet foreign dictators without preconditions and generally mocked his inexperience.

Hmm.  Yeah.  We see his point.  The Clinton leak machine could make clear where she differs with him, even as she carries out his instructions.  And - we're dreaming here - a Clinton resignation "on principle," just before, oh, 2012, could be devastating to Obama.

What most troubles Obama loyalists is that a Clinton nomination threatens to destroy a feature of the new president's politics that has been essential to Senator Obama's success: its cohesion and unity of purpose...

And that is the risk in the Clinton nomination, should it come. You don't even have to believe that Senator Clinton will actively try to undermine the president. She's surely a loyal Democrat and a patriotic American who in any case understands that active pursuit of her own cause would do her more harm than good.

The problem is that the Clintons really can't help it. For all their protean talents, for all their political and intellectual skills, they have an unrivalled knack for making politics into very personal theatre, an unerring capacity to turn any crisis into a drama, one in which they play all the central roles.

Finally...

For President Obama the opportunity in Secretary of State Clinton is knowing that his message to the rest of the world is in capable political hands. For No Drama Obama, the danger is that American foreign policy for the next four years becomes the gaudy stage on which the latest act in the engrossing saga of Clinton Agonistes is played out.

Yeah, no doubt about it.  This is theater.  The best show in town.  Can you just see inauguration day, in two months?  The networks will give as much attention to the Clintons as to the Obamas.  Hillary, as an appointed cabinet official, will probably be sitting right behind Obama as he rises to take the oath.  She'll know she's on TV, so she won't curse.  But I'll give anything I have to see the expression on her face, and I'll give more than I have to see the expressions when her eyes meet Michelle's.

Politics is occasionally fun, even when the other guys win.

November 22,  2008.