If Hillary Rodham Clinton becomes secretary of state, it could not have escaped the attention of the Clinton and Barack Obama camps that this might turn out to be a nifty launching pad for her to make another run at the presidency in 2012.
What secret codicils then could have been appended to the deal? What guarantees given that Clinton would be promoting Obamas foreign policy and not her own?
The choice of Clinton would be a fascinating innovation for an Obama presidency that has not yet even officially begun. True, Clinton would not exactly be breaking new ceiling glass. Madeleine Albright and Condoleezza Rice have been successful women in the role before her.
But in Clinton, Obama would be launching a diplomatic superstar, whose face and name are instantly recognizable from Iran to Nigeria and Brazil to Pakistan.
She would have no problem gaining the attention of kings and presidents and prime ministers and foreign ministers around the globe.
For Clinton, it would be a new world of protocol, and carefully parsed communiqus.
I think this secretary of state would want to surmount the protocol and the bureaucracy and be eager for major diplomatic achievements, big breakthroughs. There are plenty to be made.
What would Iran make of a Secretary of State Clinton, who, during the presidential election debates, threatened that an Iranian nuclear attack on Israel would mean Irans obliteration by the United States? Could she engage in prepresidential talks with Iran that Obama may be willing to permit? Is President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad up or down? Have falling oil prices for Iran contributed to economic problems and public discontent? What should we read into an apparent 180-degree turnabout in Irans position on the Status of Forces Agreement that will permit U.S. troops to remain in Iraq until 2011?
If Iran is perhaps the most pressing international problem confronting the new administration, there are plenty of other major ones. Could a Secretary of State Clinton succeed, where others have labored fruitlessly for decades, to bring Arabs and Israelis to a two-state solution a Palestinian state, with security for Israel?
Could a Secretary of State Clinton snatch victory, from what looks suspiciously like pending defeat, of the forces of freedom in Afghanistan? Could she help shore up democracy in Pakistan, while the Taliban and al-Qaida are put to rout? Could she enlist other democratic nations in this cause? Could she draw China more closely into the community of nations while persuasively urging reform of Beijings autocratic rule? What of Russia, still smarting from loss of empire and lusting for power and prestige? Can it, too, be drawn into the family of nations while being made to understand that invasion of former satellites such as Georgia, and angry posturing against former satellites such as Ukraine, is not acceptable behavior for admission into that family?
Could a Secretary Clinton connect with women, particularly women in the Islamic world, in helping their emancipation from inferior status?
Clinton is a past, and perhaps future, political rival to Obama. He deserves praise if he appoints her to one of the most important positions in his Cabinet.
John Hughes teaches journalism at Brigham Young University. He is a former editor and chief operating officer of the Deseret News and a former editor of the Christian Science Monitor, which syndicates this column. He was assistant secretary of state in the Reagan administration.