Hillary

A number of people who were die-hard Obama supporters during the primary have expressed to me their concern or dismay that Hillary is to join the team as Secretary of State, given her behavior during the primary and her attacks on Obama's foreign policy experience. I think we can probably rest easy on that account, because whatever you make of Hillary's substantive ability to be Sec State (which I think is probably pretty high), the pick is political gold for Obama.

At the end of the rough primary season, after Obama backed his way into the nomination while losing Kentucky and WV spectacularly to Hillary, making her the VP would have been perceived as a move made out of weakness, i.e. Hillary forced Obama into making the pick. Here, after a dominating general election win, Obama is adding Hillary to his team from a position of strength. He could have had anybody he wanted, and he chose her.

Once she's in place down in Foggy Bottom, Hillary loses much of her political punch. She has limited ability to raise money for other candidates (and thus earn favors), and she'll be out of the country much of the time and won't be out giving speeches around the country.

She'll also be doing some heavy lifting getting us out of Iraq, and can be expected to shoulder some of the blame when that process becomes difficult, as it almost certainly will. Because of her reputation for hawkishness, she'll effectively shield Obama from some criticism from liberal hawks as well.

My gut feeling is that she'll be cooperative in the position, and will not undermine Obama. Hillary seems to have an innate sense of the importance of chains of command (which is partially why she seemed to take the candidacy of a 1st term senator so personally) and will I think be a pretty good team player. She also has a pretty big incentive to do so- if she causes problems at State, she will almost certainly be the one blamed by the press, and Obama can also always route around her by leaning on his NSA and Sec Defense (the way that Bush worked around Powell using Rice and Rumsfeld). As a very high-profile figure, Hillary is going to shoulder a lot of blame if Obama's foreign policy isn't successful, which puts a lot of pressure on her to work well with the Whitehouse.