Ok, fine so it’s Hillary

As Donadio has noted, it is indeed Hillary. Why? David Frum provides a succinct explanation while neatly eviscerating Bob Shrum’s cloyingly saccharine take:

[B]y circulating her name, Obama makes it difficult for Hillary to say no. Can she afford to be less gracious in defeat than Obama has been in victory? But if she says yes—poof, there vanishes her independent power base. She serves at the pleasure of the president. More consequential still, in order to pass the vetting process, she must open to Obama’s team all the tangled financial records of the Clinton family. If there is any part of her that imagines, say, a primary challenge to Obama in 2012, or even a campaign to replace Biden on the ticket in the VP slot, that hope diminishes with the opening of the files. She will have done Obama’s oppo research for him. From then on, she is utterly exposed and vulnerable.
She gets only what Obama chooses to give.

Frum also notes that appointing Hillary fills a top-tier position with a woman. Megan McArdle sees a similar dynamic at work with the news that the chair of Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors may go to Cecilia Elena Rouse over the more qualified Austan Goolsbee.

In any event, it seems clear that Obama has graduated summa cum laude from the Chicago school of politics. Whether this translates into effective governance of our nation remains an open question. But while one can only hope that it works out better in DC than it has in Chicago, the prospect of Hillary at Foggy Bottom does not fill me with confidence.