Hillary would make a better Secretary of Defense

I’ve been wondering whether the whole Hillary for Secretary of State thing might just be a feint — floating her name to pay her back for services rendered — but after speaking to people in the know, I now think there’s a very real possibility she’ll be the pick.

It’s hard to deny that naming Clinton would let an awful lot of air out of the Hope and Change balloon before the new administration even takes office, but I confess, there’s also a good argument for it. As my colleague Tom Carothers points out, Obama is going to face a very thankless first couple years in foreign policy, and it’d be nice for him to be able to step back and say “I’ve put someone serious on it.”

Though there’s inevitably continuity from administration to administration — and there often should be — it’s important to the country for new teams to repudiate their predecessors, at least initially. A large part of the appeal of Obama’s victory lies in the fact that he puts a fresh new face on the country, and allows us to expiate for our national sins without really turning all that much from old our ways.

Hillary seems to me a much more appropriate pick for Secretary of Defense, a job that involves more fist, and less face. But I’d like to see Bob Gates stay on, and I don’t know where else Obama could realistically keep a Republican (or at least a guy who’s served in a Republican administration) in his administration.