Photo by Barack Obama

We all knew Hillary would be back -- maybe as Senate Majority Leader, or Lion of the Senate, or even governor of New York. But the possibility of Hillary Clinton becoming secretary of state, a job she was apparently offered and has reportedly accepted, was a move that no one saw coming.

As unexpected as this was, it has received very little criticism. In fact, given the praise it’s received from both right and the left, it may be the first truly bi-partisan act Obama has taken; pundits as disparate as Henry Kissinger and Alec Baldwin love the idea.

But just what’s so good about it?

Some have suggested that the Clinton appointment is some sort of diabolical political move on Obama’s part to remove Clinton from the Senate where she could have held up important legislation. But this would be too cynical for Obama. Perhaps it serves another political purpose -- satisfying the Hillary faction, or at least projecting a willingness to hear advice from all sides. Yet the job of secretary of state is more important than any of these minor political considerations, so we can only assume that Obama really thinks Hillary will do a good job.

I hesitate to question any decision made by Obama after he ran such a brilliant campaign and when he seems to have made many other smart appointments. However, since there have been so many leaks in Obamaland lately, I can't help but wish that someone would leak just what the hell Obama was thinking with this one.

During the primary, one of Hillary’s main arguments for why she would make a better president than Obama was that she was a superior manager. But as Joshua Green showed in his excellent Atlantic piece, Hillary managed her campaign horribly. Her staff bickered constantly and she wouldn’t intervene -- or would intervene too late. She was indecisive and put off making difficult decisions. The secretary of state, of course, is the head of the State Department, which has more than 30,000 employees and a budget of more than 35 billion dollars. You’d think that heading it would require a certain level of executive competence.

Ironically, Hillary showed the same indecisiveness while trying to decide whether or not to take the job. As The New York Times reported, “One friend said Mrs. Clinton decided late Wednesday to say no, reasoning that she would have more freedom in the Senate. By midday Thursday, the friend said, she was 'back in the indecisive column again.' By the end of the day, another associate said she could accept by Friday.”

It's up for debate just how ideologically opposed Obama and Clinton are; while their domestic policy proposals were pretty similar, their foreign policy viewpoints seemed to differ a bit more. Hillary scoffed at Obama’s plan to meet with leaders like Ahmadinejad and Fidel Castro without pre-conditions, calling it “irresponsible and frankly naive.” And before the campaign, she was exceedingly hawkish, most notably in the run-up to the Iraq invasion.

Just how significant are these differences? Obama has suggested that he wants to surround himself with advisors that will challenge and not be afraid to disagree with him. But the secretary of state isn’t an advisor. Tom Friedman wrote last week, “I covered a secretary of state, one of the best, James A. Baker III, for four years, and one of the things I learned during those years was that what made Baker an effective diplomat was not only his own skills as a negotiator — a prerequisite for the job — but the fact that his boss, President George H.W. Bush, always had Baker’s back. When foreign leaders spoke with Baker, they knew that they were speaking to President Bush, and they knew that President Bush would defend Baker from domestic rivals and the machinations of foreign governments.”

Hillary can only be an effective secretary of state if the public perception is that she and Obama are on the same page. They don’t even need to be so long as everyone thinks they are. Of course, if they're constantly at odds with each other, the chances of keeping that a secret are fairly low.

My biggest fear isn’t that Hillary will mismanage the State Department, or that she’ll prove to be an ineffective negotiator. It's that her appointment foreshadows a rightward lurch in Obama’s foreign policy, as Ross Douthat predicts. Now that the troop surge has proven to be a winning tactic in Iraq, we run the risk of forgetting what a terrible idea the war was in the first place, what a bad strategy we had and how unjust it was. Would Secretary of State Clinton push for a hawkish stance on Iran and North Korea? Or long-term nation building in Afghanistan?

People have argued that Hillary is smart. That she is charming. That her star power will help her at the negotiating table. Maybe these are the reasons for Obama’s decision. Maybe he’ll be able to reign her in, as Abraham Lincoln did with his rival, William Seward. For now, we’ll just have to hope that Obama knows what he’s doing.

--Hillel Aron