The news that Hillary Clin­ton may be our next Sec­re­tary of State has trig­gered all the expected reac­tions in all the expected quar­ters: Clin­tonites are secretly ecsta­tic, polit­i­cal reporters are not so secretly sali­vat­ing, and many Obamaphiles are won­der­ing, in a word, WTF?

If the appoint­ment hap­pens, every­one agrees, it will owe much in inspi­ra­tion to Doris Kearns Goodwin’s 2005 Team of Rivals. The book’s sub­ject is Abra­ham Lincoln’s Cab­i­net, to which he appointed three of his rivals for the Repub­li­can nom­i­na­tion of 1860, and Obama’s fond­ness for both the book and its ani­mat­ing idea is well known. Back in May he described Team of Rivals as “wonderful” and spoke admir­ingly of how Lin­coln “basically pulled in all the people who had been run­ning against him into his Cab­i­net because what­ever, you know, per­sonal feel­ings there were, the issue was, ‘How can we get this coun­try through this time of crisis?’”

The Boston Globe recently asked Good­win what she thought of the Clin­ton possibility:

Goodwin…said Obama’s con­sid­er­a­tion of Clin­ton for sec­re­tary of state is anal­o­gous to Lincoln’s select­ing William Seward for the same post in 1861. Seward was con­sid­ered the favorite for the Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion, as Clin­ton had been for this year’s Demo­c­ra­tic nom­i­na­tion. Though ini­tially dejected from the loss, Good­win said, Seward even­tu­ally accepted Lincoln’s offer to join his Cab­i­net and the two men devel­oped a pro­duc­tive friend­ship. “The par­al­lel with Hillary is almost eerie,” she said yesterday.

The deal isn’t done (though Politico’s Mike Allen is report­ing it’s close) and yet that hasn’t stopped the election-​deprived pun­di­toc­racy from feed­ing a frenzy about what the appoint­ment would mean for Obama, for Hillary, for Bill, for the Repub­li­cans, for Iran, etc., etc.

But there is, I submit, a more impor­tant ques­tion that needs our atten­tion: if Hillary Clin­ton is going to be the new William Seward, what’s going to be the new Seward’s Folly?

[Read more]

John McCain sur­ro­gate Carly Fio­r­ina, speak­ing to NBC’s Andrea Mitchell about Sat­ur­day Night Live’s por­trayal of Sarah Palin last weekend:

I think, of course, the por­trait was very dis­mis­sive of the sub­stance of Sarah Palin, and so in that sense they were defin­ing Hillary Clin­ton as very sub­stan­tive and Sarah Palin as totally super­fi­cial. I think that con­tin­ues the line of argu­ment that is dis­re­spect­ful in the extreme, and, yes, I would say sexist in the sense that just because Sarah Palin has dif­fer­ent views than Hillary Clin­ton does not mean that she lacks substance.

It strikes me that in the last 48 hours the notion of a commander-in-chief test has gained new rel­e­vance. May I sug­gest this one?

Holy shit, what did I just do? (Photo by Jim Wilson.)

 
+ First thought: John McCain better hope that he doesn’t get so much as a snif­fle between now and Novem­ber 4.

+ Second thought, echo­ing Rick Perl­stein: don’t laugh. Yes, Palin’s a hail mary. Yes, McCain is des­per­ate. Yes, the haste and appar­ent rash­ness of his deci­sion prob­a­bly means that his VP vet­ting left a few skele­tons lurk­ing in their clos­ets. And yes, the Repub­li­cans are prob­a­bly going to wake up next Friday with a huge Palin-​sized hang­over. But this is Amer­ica, folks, and cra­zier things have hap­pened. What’s more, the Palin pick has evan­gel­i­cal con­ser­v­a­tives–most of ‘em, anyway–burn­ing up the inter­nets, and remem­ber that they’re the Repub­li­cans (not the civil lib­er­tar­i­ans or the busi­ness wing of the GOP) who staffed Karl Rove’s phone banks in 2000 and 2004. If McCain could some­how recap­ture that orga­ni­za­tional energy (though it’s almost cer­tainly too late) Obama might be in trouble.

+ The “inexperience card” is a loser for Obama. [Read more]