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Clinton fans, foes weigh in on secretary of state post

BY ELIZABETH MOORE | elizabeth.moore@newsday.com

November 20, 2008

elizabeth.moore@newsday.com

Barack Obama will soon be the new leader of the free world, but Topic A this week has become the will-she-or-won't-she speculation about Hillary Rodham Clinton and the secretary of state's job.

So superheated is interest in the question that the Gallup Organization polled on it, finding 57 percent of Americans and eight of 10 Democrats favor Obama naming her to the post.

A Marist poll released yesterday found 55 percent of New Yorkers want to see Clinton named to the post, and 72 percent think she'll do a good or excellent job at it.

As transition team lawyers vet the complex dealings of former President Bill Clinton - and as Clinton herself is said to be weighing whether she really wants to surrender her Senate seat for the job as the nation's top diplomat - ordinary citizens, pundits and pols have joined their voices in a rising cacophony of opinion.

Out in Mentor, Ohio, a die-hard Clinton backer who has been following news accounts yesterday called her "an excellent choice."

"She and her husband would be wonderful around the world - but I do have some concerns that the media starts treating her with a little respect," said Jeff Dameron, an unemployed bankerwho went door-to-door for Clinton in the cold winter months before Ohio's primary, and still won't say how he voted in November. "I am hoping maybe this was the happy ending I was looking for after all this mess."

Clinton surrogates and some analysts are publicly and privately circulating her doubts about whether she should take the job.

"She has to evaluate whether she's comfortable closing down her political operation," said one person familiar with the situation.

Syndicated columnist David Broder, who calls himself a fan, argues the job would be a "mistake" for Clinton because she would find it hard to subordinate her views to those of her new boss, and her husband would be "unlikely to remain silent."

Dick Morris, a onetime Bill Clinton adviser who is now a poison-pen critic of the couple, contends the public is witnessing Hillary's "brazen" and "desperate" efforts to get the job.

She may have discussed it with Obama in Chicago last week, Morris wrote on his Web site yesterday, then tried to lock that into an "offer" by leaking an account of their meeting to the media. Obama, Morris argues, is seeking to escape the trap by having allies talk about the potential conflicts of interests and lining up Senate jobs for her.

"In the world of Hillary and Bill, predictions are almost impossible," Morris wrote. "But Obama and the world would be well served if Hillary did not get the job."

At the other end of the spectrum are posts on the Web site of the New Agenda, an organization set up by Clinton backers who believe her primary campaign was undermined by rampant sexism in the media and her own party.

"Hillary on Obama's leash as SOS? ... I would want her out of the Senate too if I were him," posted one reader. And psychotherapist Barbara Cohn Schlachet contributed a piece expressing irritation at those afraid Clinton will "suck up the limelight" in an Obama administration.

"Will secretary of state be enough for Hillary's army?" asks The Daily Beast, a news-buzz site founded by Tina Brown, which yesterday released a poll finding 61 percent of American women see gender bias in the media, and eight in 10 women see it in politics as well.

When the going gets rough, Brown wrote, Obama will need Clinton "like Batman needs Robin. ... And God help Bill if he screws it up for her."

Stella O'Leary, president of the Irish-American Democrats, a political action committee, said Clinton as secretary of state would be "absolutely wonderful from our perspective; she's such a friend of Ireland.

"... It's always nice to have a friend in high places. But now I'm hearing in these last hours that she may not want it," O'Leary said. "She likes politics a great deal, she and Bill Clinton, they like the rough and tumble of political argument, and she also seems to really love New York."