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Can Hillary Clinton Succeed?Only if she can overcome a lot of problems.

By Shmuel RosnerPosted Tuesday, Nov. 25, 2008, at 5:02 PM ET

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Clinton is also unique because she has a husband with baggage of his own. Earlier this week, Christopher Hitchens raised important questions about the obvious problem of the Clinton money machine—and the possible conflict of interest between her role as secretary of state and his role as someone who has spent the last couple of years raising funds in all kinds of countries and from all kinds of people with all manner of agendas. But while Hitchens focused on the past, it is worth asking the same questions about the future: Will the Clinton Foundation cease to exist when Hillary Clinton becomes secretary of state? And if not, how likely is it that Bill Clinton's future adventures will complicate Hillary Clinton's job?

But the most obvious downside to Clinton's selection is the possibility that she will not be a close confidante of Obama's. Two weeks ago, writing in the Los Angeles Times about the six secretaries of state he worked under, former State Department official Aaron David Miller noted that "only one—[James] Baker—had a truly close relationship with his president." Not surprisingly, Baker is one of two secretaries Miller considers "great." The Lincoln-era "team of rivals"—popularized to exhaustion by Doris Kearns Goodwin's book—might ring nicely. But a long interval has passed since Lincoln's day, and the role of secretary of state has changed a great deal. In today's world, as Miller wrote, you "cannot expect to do serious diplomacy abroad, or in the sometimes even more perilous world of Washington, without knowing that the president has your back, will not allow domestic interest groups to undermine you or permit his other advisors to do so."

Can you imagine a Clinton secretaryship that isn't undermined by Obama advisers—or an Obama who isn't heavily pressured by "interest groups" to rein in his secretary—unless you are a true believer? And how can this work if we assume that the two of them still disagree on many of the issues they debated during the campaign?

Take Iran, for example. Obama wants to engage—as does Clinton, though she is a latecomer to this view. But he was soft, cautious even, when speaking about Iran, and she was forceful—some even described her attitude as "saber rattling." Will she be his emissary for preparatory work prior to a higher-level meeting? Will he trust her to explore the possibilities for negotiation the way he wants them to be explored? And how long will it take for Obama's other supporters to start complaining that it is her fault—not, say, the Iranians'—that the talks have not succeeded?

According to his own testimony, Obama thinks the American people—Clinton included, I presume—are "pragmatic." And in selecting Clinton, Obama sends a signal that he wants a pragmatic—not a "fundamentally ideological" type of foreign policy. Of course, the assumption that there's a pragmatic solution to every problem is quite absurd—but it tells us something about Obama: He is not much different than the Clintons. A year and a half ago, criticizing (in retrospect too harshly) the appointment of Tony Blair to be Middle East peace envoy, I wrote that Blair shares "the hubris of Clinton and the Clinton era. The idea that all the Israelis and Arabs need to solve their problem is a good-enough lawyer."

Now Obama is displaying the same hubris. With all the obvious difficulties surrounding Clinton's appointment, with all the baggage she brings, with all the clear disadvantages she will have as secretary—Obama nevertheless wants her at his side. They're both good lawyers, so clearly they believe that there's no problem that doesn't have a "pragmatic" solution.