HRC is the Game, the Rest Is Misdirection Noise. 
Perennial foreign policy polymath and grumpy old man Richard Holbrooke is back in the chase for StateSec today in a squirim-making article published in the Clinton friendly LA Times. Our President-Elect Obama can read through (as he motors 12 minutes from Hyde
Park to the Chicago transition hq, right) the usual hosannahs to Holbrooke the veteran, Holbrooke the genius, Holbrooke the man who can get things done. This same story ran up the flag in 2000 prior to the Al Gore retreat, and in 2004 prior to the John Kerry defeat. A good source told me on Election Day in 2004 that he was being lobbied by Mr. Holbrooke as late as 6 pm on November 5, 2004, until the early exit poll results turned around and Kerry withered in Ohio. Now, the same story again, allowing the efficient LA Times to publish the also running. John Kerry of Massachusetts, Bill Richardson of New Mexico, Richard Lugar of Indiana, and the outlier Marine General James L. Jones (ret.). What this short list tells me is that HRC is the only planetary candidate. The other names have much smaller pedestals than HRC and will be most happy fitting into speciality tasks for the Obama administration over 8 years. HRC is the One.
David Ignatius Doubting Bill Clinton.
Then there is the sour milk column in WaPo by foreign romantic David Ignatius that asserts HRC to State is a bad idea, comparing the prospect to how badly Ed Muskie at State worked with Jimmy Carter 1977-79. This is a peculiar example and makes me think Mr. Ignatius is sending us up. Jimmy Carter is Barack Obama and Ed Muskie is HRC? Is there a deeper pit that Mr. Ignatius could have found to kick in the prospective first two years of the Obama work? Mr. Ignatius says that two egos from the same race don't work well. Then he mentions that what is mostly wrong about HRC to State is that Bill Clinton (left, at Kuwait City November 16, recommending HRC to State) is way too smart, too gifted, too restless to stay away from the contest. This makes HRC ineligible. Folly. You put your best players on the field and you find a way. Bill Clinton in the last eight years has become a planetary Teddy Roosevelt. After TR left office, he travelled and wrote and spoke and schemed. He was a fireball of foreign policy and domestic ambition, the original progressive fighting Wall Street and what he called "the Interests" -- meaning J.P. Morgan. TR drove Taft wacky, and the cartoons of the time
illustrate the scrappiness of both maharajas (right). TR shaped the outcome of 1912 with his Bull Moose revolt that wrecked Taft, shaped the Wilson-Jennings debate about the First War up to the Lusitania fiasco, shaped the GOP decision in 1916 to go with a bearded cipher of a judge and ex-NY governor named Charles Evans Hughes, and then shaped the rush to war in 1917. Unstoppable, and only fate and the Angel of Death prevented TR from returning to the White House in 192o. Good for Bill Clinton, and good for HRC, and good for the country if Mr. Obama makes the very strange decision to go with HRC at State. Do I think it will work? Did TR work with William Howard Taft, with Woodrow Wilson and William Jennings Bryan at State, with Charles Evans Hughes or General John Pershing or even his old horse soldier crony Leonard Wood? No. A TR is not supposed to work with people he invented. They must work with TR. Bully!
Update 17:30:00
Politico's Glenn Thrush runs an unnamed source item that HRC is weighing the State offer and may turn it down. Reasons are that 1. She already has a great job. 2. Second to no one.
3. It's not the presidency. The Obama transition team vetting of WJC and his global connections is a non-story. Reject a New York Senator (in Pat Moynihan's and William Seward's chair) because her husband is an ex-president with attitude and cash? Not credible. My best notion and source on this is that HRC has been offered the job and is doing her due diligence letting the forces of light and forces of darkness arrange themselves before her fortress. The hoot on Page Six, with Chris Matthews on the Acela bad-mouthing HRC as melodramatic, is a minor example of the threat of HRC obliging the snipers to look over their shoulders: consider that Mr. Matthews, a durable diva of a penurious cable, wants to run for Arlen Specter's job. Not smart to mess with Mother Nation. News from Castle Clinton: No decision has been made. Does this not sound presidential?
Mr. Obama thinks he wants a "Team of Rivals". But is he strong enough to control the team? -- I think not. Where/Who are his long term friends? We have not seen any who he can safely show or admit to. He needs a Swiss Guard who have loyalty only to him. Not a Team of Rivals who can turn into the Praetorian Guard. This poor man does not know what he doesn't know. That is dangerous for him and us.
Then there is also the twist that the Secretay of State must be a woman. One must keep up appearances, after all. Never mind past baggage. Obama himself will presumably make all the decisions. Secretaries of State simply follow orders. Should they not like their orders, they quit and write about it in books. Do I have it right so far? HRC, to my knowledge is the only woman up for consideration. The others are all white and male (except for Richardson and quite possibly Kerry).
TR was Theodore Rex. Since attaining president, I don't think any office would have done for him. A great man at a great time, and of whom we have not seen the likes of since. His place with Lincoln, Jefferson and Washington are well deserved. Comparing any of the current potentates and pretenders with him is useless.
Is there any greater signal that the real foreign policy job is DoD, and not State, than that the last two presidents, and perhaps the next one, think of it as a place to park a powerful minority (if I may be forgiven for conferring "minority" status on women)? State? Who cares who gets it? It's not one of the jobs that counts for much in most administrations. DoD, NSA, Fed Chair, occasionally Treas and DoJ. State? Rarely.
I think the job is what you make of it. TR did a lot as assistant secretary of the navy, certainly more than any would have thought that job would entail before or since.
Odd, no real rumblings yet on SecDef.