What Hillary's Thinking

The New York Times has an excellent article today on Hillary Clinton and her role in the Senate. While the piece focuses on some enhanced opportunities for Clinton in the Senate should she choose to stay there, I think it does a better job in spelling out why I think it is more likely for her to end up in Foggy Bottom as the Secretary of State. Here's the part to me:

But driving her consideration, friends said, is a sense of disenchantment with the Senate, where despite her stature she remains low in the ranks of seniority that governs the body. She was particularly upset, they said, at the reception she felt she received when she returned from the campaign after collecting 18 million votes and almost becoming the first woman nominated for president by a major party.

“Her experience in the Senate with some of her colleagues has not been the easiest time for her,” said one longtime friend who insisted on anonymity in exchange for sharing Mrs. Clinton’s sentiments. “She’s still a very junior senator. She doesn’t have a committee. And she’s had some disappointing times with her colleagues.”

In particular, the friend said, Mrs. Clinton was upset when the leadership rejected the possibility of her heading a special new task force with a staff and a mandate to develop legislation expanding health care coverage.

In dismissing the idea, Senate leaders noted that Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, chairman of the health committee, planned to play the leading role in shaping a plan for universal coverage even as he battles brain cancer. In the current Congress, Mrs. Clinton is eighth in seniority among Democrats on Mr. Kennedy’s committee.

Other Democratic officials said Mrs. Clinton had then wanted to serve in a broader leadership role, perhaps as chairwoman of the Democratic Policy Committee, a sort of internal “think tank” with a staff, a budget and office space. But the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, refused to give her that post, because he did not want to force out the current chairman, Senator Byron L. Dorgan of North Dakota, the officials said.

Basically, life in the Senate is not all peaches and cream for Clinton. When she first elected in 2000, clearly the job was a stepping stone for a presidential run down the road. We all know how that turned out. Now, Clinton has little seniority and she is forced to see every day colleagues who backed Barack Obama.

As I've said before, a lot of this is about ego. If this was about being Secretary of the Interior or Veterans Affairs, it would be a non-starter. But Secretary of State is one of two plums prestigious enough for Clinton to the leave the Senate. Clearly, she is torn because she is still calculating if a future presidential run is possible. Assuming she realizes that it is almost impossible, she will take the appointment (of course, if she does not come to that, she will stay in order to fight towards 2016). Nevertheless, the Times here draws a good picture of why Clinton is likely to go to State.