Below The Beltway

And, apparently, her price for accepting the job of Secretary of State was quite high:

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.

No wonder some Obama aides are already voicing regret about the choice:

[A] little after lunch on Wednesday two Obama aides went to a local coffee shop to talk. Both were veterans of the campaign, hailed as the best organised and most disciplined in US history, which has made their boss the first black president.

Both had come to believe, in the crucible of the campaign, that Mr Obama’s judgment was superior to their own. But when they met on Wednesday they agreed on one thing: “He’s making a mistake.” As one of the participants told a friend later that night: “She’ll do a good job but she’ll do it for herself, not for Barack. I can’t bear the drama again.”…

The Obama aides who went for coffee on Wednesday discussed how the initial tentative talks between Mr Obama and Mrs Clinton were leaked by the Clinton camp, then how every twist and turn of the financial vetting found its way into the media.

Those in Mrs Clinton’s camp who wanted her to take the job wanted the financial issue off the table believing Mr Obama would find any excuse not to give her the job.

“They can’t help themselves,” the Obama aide told his friend, a fellow Democrat strategist. “Every event is a potential ladder up or a bullet to be dodged. They’re positioning and spinning all the time. They lost. Now we seem to be handing them the farm.”

(…)

many sceptical Obama aides will reserve judgement for a month, or a year, or two on whether their boss still has better judgment than them.

Steven Clemons, senior fellow at the left-leaning think tank the New America Foundation, summed up their dilemma: “This rock star President-elect may either be confused, deluded and self-destructive in sculpting a team that has a high probability of paralysing itself in vicious internal skirmishes – or he may just be brilliant, really, really brilliant.”

What is certain is that Hillary Clinton is here to stay – and it won’t be dull.

So, you know, sit back, relax, and enjoy the show.