…I’m guessing that that was probably contraindicated. She’s starting in with Obama’s own inner circle, and I fully expect her to steadily work her way outward:

Before Hillary Clinton has been formally offered the job as Secretary of State, a purge of Barack Obama’s top foreign policy team has begun.

The advisers who helped trash the former First Lady’s foreign policy credentials on the campaign trail are being brutally shunted aside, as the price of her accepting the job of being the public face of America to the world. In negotiations with Mr Obama this week before agreeing to take the job, she demanded and received assurances that she alone should appoint staff to the State Department. She also got assurances that she will have direct access to the President and will not have to go through his foreign policy advisers on the National Security Council, which is where many of her critics in the Obama team are expected to end up.

The first victims of Mrs Clinton’s anticipated appointment will be those who defended Mr Obama’s flanks on the campaign trail. By mocking Mrs Clinton’s claims to have landed under sniper fire in Bosnia or pouring scorn on her much-ballyhooed claim to have visited 80 countries as First Lady they successfully deflected the damaging charge that he is a lightweight on international issues.

Before we go any further, I just thought that I’d note something. A very common criticism of President Bush is that he is too loyal to his people, often protecting them at the cost of his own personal political capital.

I don’t think that this is ever going to be said about President Obama.

Moving along, this was an update by Allahpundit to the post of his that I referenced earlier, and he’s wondering why Obama wants Clinton this badly. I’d think that the answer would be obvious: because the alternative is to rely on the people that The New Republic’s James Kirchick mocks here for his foreign policy. Which would, of course, be insane.

Anyway, the two mentioned by name by the Telegraph are Greg Craig and Susan Rice – both of whom were apparently angling for plum State Department jobs. The article notes that Craig is now White House counsel (yeah, real exciting) and guesses that Rice will end up in the NSC… whose head is likely going to be Gen. James Jones, who gets along just fine with Sen. Clinton. So it’s probably a good guess, not to mention a safer place for Rice to be while her career regenerates from the sudden hit it’s taken. And it has: I don’t think anybody was seriously contemplating the notion that Senator Clinton was going to get such a serious role in the administration – effectively what Vice President Biden thought that he had signed up for – so there’s a bunch of people out there who really did miss a lot of good opportunities to keep their mouths shut.

It’s quite a long list, really – but Senator Clinton does have four years to work her way down it.

Moe Lane