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Barack Obama’s first gamble: Clinton at State

By Ben Smith

POLITICO - What is Barack Obama thinking?

We’ve heard all the rational arguments: Hillary Rodham Clinton has more star power than Richard Holbrooke, more discipline than Bill Richardson, fewer bad jokes than John F. Kerry. She’s tough and competent. She’s a woman and a Democrat, making space for a Republican guy at Defense. It would get her out of the Senate. Both Obama and Clinton loved Doris Kearns Goodwin's book, “Team of Rivals.”

But the sum of those parts seems something less than the whole explanation for Obama’s first great presidential gamble: his move toward giving his former adversary, whose judgment on foreign policy he criticized relentlessly, by offering her the most important Cabinet position in his administration.

Neither Holbrooke, Kerry nor Richardson would bring Clinton’s downsides: Her towering, volcanic husband; her own ambitions; and the endless speculation about the two of them.

“She brings so much to the table,” said Abner Mikva, a former Clinton White House counsel and an Obama mentor. “On the other hand, there are the obvious downsides, the conflicts that that her husband has.”

Insiders around Obama say the X factor at play is Obama’s icy tolerance for risk, and his belief in the power of the grand gesture.

Throughout his political career, Obama has had a tendency to “go big,” as his aides say, with dramatic moves and giant spectacles punctuating his run for president — his head-on race speech, his presidential-style tour of the Middle East and Europe, an acceptance speech held in a football stadium.

The Clinton move, like those, marries an arguably practical choice with lofty symbolism: He’s enlarging his own administration by bringing in one of the leading figures in American politics, and delivering on a promise of a new politics that doesn’t play favorites or hold grudges.

“It says that he has the personal confidence to engage someone of the notoriety and substance of Sen. Clinton,” said Democratic Rep. Robert Wexler of Florida, an early Obama supporter and prominent campaign surrogate. “Implementing change is an exciting exercise.”

Indeed, Obama’s transition appears suffused with a sense that the actors are living a historic moment, for which extraordinary gestures are appropriate.

“This would really give her a very unique platform to really be a part of this historic time we’re living in right now, even greater than her role as a powerful senator,” said Democratic Rep. Russ Carnahan of Missouri, another early Obama backer.

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