Meanwhile, I owe it to my readers to acknowledge that I was simply wrong recently, when I ventured that President-elect Obama would not name Hillary Clinton as his secretary of state. My estimate was that to do so would just give her a superb platform from which to pursue her own ambitions for the presidency in 2012 or 2016, while creating the potential for all sorts of public disagreements between the two during the Obama administration.
Obama's decision makes it clear that he's not all that upset by the prospect of Hillary running to succeed him (even if his own choice might be Vice President Biden), and that he doesn't anticipate -- or calculates that he can win -- any public disagreements between the two of them in the meantime.
These are legitimate political calculations, though either or both of them may prove to have been unwise.
William Rusher
William Rusher is a Distinguished Fellow of the Claremont Institute for the Study of Statesmanship and Political Philosophy and author of How to Win Arguments .
Be the first to read William Rusher's column. Sign up today and receive Townhall.com delivered each morning to your inbox.