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The Times – No drama? With Hillary aboard? Forget it<br/> The Clintons have a knack of turning politics into their own personal stage. The President-elect must be aware of that, by Gerard Baker

[W]ith his election as president, Mr Obama surely demonstrated that the victory was his and his alone, and that the country would be spared the prospect of yet another chapter in the Clinton saga that has dominated American politics for the best part of two decades.

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

It would be an understatement to say that the sudden and unexpected emergence of Senator Clinton’s name as the President-elect’s apparent choice to be his secretary of state has caused consternation among some of Mr Obama’s most loyal followers.

They are aghast that, as they see it, having wisely steered clear of giving her the vice-presidency, their man has supposedly offered her what is, in all but the constitutional succession stakes, a much bigger job. The State Department is a vast bureaucracy that supports a Cabinet member who is the most frequently seen face of America in the world. 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.

Well that went online Thursday afternoon. Since then, it’s been announced that an announcement will be announced that Hillary will announce that she’s accepted the announcement to announce her offer of the job and will announce that she plans on announcing her acceptance of it. All on condition of anonymity, of course.

The Sunday Times – Hillary will be ‘mother-in-law the president cannot shift’

Hillary Clinton has been forced to write off the $13m she had lent to her election campaign and the family coffers will not be replenished by her public servant’s salary at the State Department. Jeff Gerth, the co-author of Her Way, a biography of Hillary, said: “The momentum for this appointment seems to be coming more from the Clinton side than the Obama side.”

If her appointment is confirmed, Hillary Clinton will join Obama, 47, on a high-profile “grand tour” of Europe that could combine three summits next spring. Gordon Brown is pressing to be the first western leader to receive Obama at a G20 economic summit in Britain, to be followed immediately by a European Union summit in Prague and a Nato summit in Strasbourg in April.

Obama’s allies are already concerned by the ability of the Clintons to upstage the president-elect after a week of leaks and nonstop “drama”, during which her friends confirmed the job offer ahead of Obama. One distinguished foreign policy expert predicted that “she’s going to be the mother-in-law you can’t get out of the house”.

Some of Clinton’s most ardent supporters are already speculating that she will triumph on the global stage while Obama will be bogged down by a collapsing economy that is beyond his power to rescue.

First: Hey B, way to let yourself (and your State Department) get carried away on the momentum of the lady you supposedly beat. Second, regarding that last paragraph there, and turning to Instapundit:

I can see why it’s good for Obama. What I can’t understand is why Hillary took the job — unless, that is, she cut a deal to be running mate in 2012.

I don’t see why it’s good for Obama, but I can see her cutting that deal, even if he doesn’t know it yet. Thirdly: Lawdy I can’t wait for the day she does (assuming she’s not VP at the time) announce that she’s “stepping aside” to “pursue” “opportunities” in the “private sector” and “spend more time” with her “family”. I’ll have to re-subscribe to cable for that, just to see the pundits heads exploding with as they try to decide which juicy tidbit to cover first.