NY Fed Prez Lands Top Job at Treasury

Clinton a strong secretary, but not yet administration's voice

(NEWSER) - Ask Hillary Clinton or her staff about President Obama and they’ll praise him and tell you the relationship between the two really is strong. But the tensions between the State Department and White House are starting to show, writes Joe Klein . The president’s foreign policy hasn’t yet yielded results, and on her recent Pakistan trip, Clinton gave the first hints that she’d like to assert her independence—and move beyond what Klein calls “the Rodney King ‘Can’t we all just get along?’ phase.” More»

(NEWSER) - As Hillary Clinton takes over the State Department, it's worth remembering that her train-wreck presidential campaign followed an "audacious 2000 run for Senate" and an excellent record as a legislator, Michael Crowley writes for the New Republic. "The question—not only for Hillary's legacy but for US foreign policy—is which of these models she will bring to" her new job, Crowley observes. More»

Forget Geithner, it's Clinton who's queen of the 'hot nerds': Dowd

(NEWSER) - Hillary Clinton breezed through her Senate confirmation hearing yesterday, writes Maureen Dowd, "performing as the A-student she always is" on topics from nuclear proliferation to governance in the Arctic. While Tim Geithner got caught up in controversy over back taxes, Hillary charmed the windy John Kerry and buttered the skeptical Dick Lugar. For the New York Times columnist, it looks as if Clinton, and not Geithner, could be the Obama Cabinet's real "hot nerd." More»

A la JFK's Cabinet, too often masks poor judgment, inexperience

(NEWSER) - Barack Obama has won praise for appointing “the best and the brightest” to his Cabinet during a time of war and economic hardship. But all the back-patting sounds a little too familiar, Frank Rich writes in the New York Times. “The stewards of the Vietnam fiasco had pedigrees uncannily reminiscent of some major Obama appointees,” he observes. More»

Commerce gig seats him next to rival Clinton

(NEWSER) - Bill Richardson appeared to make a peace offering to the Clintons today in his speech accepting Barack Obama's nomination to be Commerce secretary, writes Chris Cillizza in the Washington Post. Richardson, whose relations with the power couple turned icy after he endorsed Obama in the primaries, objected to the term "team of rivals" in his speech because "rivals implies something harder edged and less forgiving." More»