Opinion: Hillary Clinton reportedly accepts Barack Obama’s Cabinet offer
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Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has decided to accept the role of secretary of State, according to several published reports. (See news video below)
The reports, if confirmed, mean that Clinton will relinquish her Senate seat from New York to become the nation’s top diplomat in an administration led by her former rival, Barack Obama.
The Ticket reported earlier today that talks between Clinton and the president-elect were progressing.
Obama asked the former first lady and runner-up for the Democratic presidential nomination to fill the role last week. Since then, she and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, have undergone intense vetting.
Hillary Clinton made her foreign policy experience a selling point during the primaries, telling crowds that as first lady she visited 80 countries. During the battle for the Democratic nomination, she and her husband often criticized Obama for lacking the foreign policy credentials necessary to be president. Remember ‘Ready from Day One’?
But after Obama clinched the nomination, Clinton campaigned hard for him. She allegedly made Obama’s short list for vice president but lost out to Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware.
Clinton would become only the third woman in U.S. history to hold that post, after Condoleezza Rice and Madeleine Albright.
We will update with official confirmation. Meanwhile, The Times’ Peter Nicholas has a smart piece about the Clinton-Obama negotiations.
-- Kate Linthicum
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