CNN and AP: Obama to Nominate Hillary for State after Thanksgiving
20 November 2008 10:07 pm by Taylor Marsh
President-elect Barack
Obama plans to nominate Hillary Rodham Clinton as secretary of state after
Thanksgiving, an aide to his transition said Thursday.
– AP
This is what I’ve been waiting for today. President-elect Obama stepping up through his transition team to announce the news on the day WJC handed over 200,000 names, but also agreed to substantial compromises on his global work, which obviously went a long way to letting the Obama-Biden team feel more confident about the arrangement, assuring that no conflicts of interest between WJC and the woman President-elect Obama wants as his secretary of state would occur going forward.
CNN reported this story earlier tonight. Jessica Yellen and Ed Henry confirmed the story.
President-elect Obama is on track to nominate Sen. Hillary Clinton as his secretary of state after Thanksgiving, three aides on Obama’s transition team told CNN Thursday.
As has been the case all along, Clinton senior adviser Philippe Reines repeated a statement that “any and all speculation about Cabinet or other administration appointments is for President-Elect Obama’s transition team to address.”
The cacophony around the bogus stories, the leaking from people with a “predilection for leaking things” likely pushed this announcement and details of when forward. Traditional and new media regurgitating whatever they’re told from anonymous sources, sucking anything coming their way up through a straw. I’ll let Digby say the rest for me this time.
Whether or not you love or hate the Clintons this behavior should be upsetting. (I will remind everyone that there was a time when the media loved them some Clinton too — until they turned.) But there is something truly sick about a political system
in which the press plays a key role as insiders while pretending to be innocent bystanders — and uses its power to create scandals and gin up controversies about politicians it doesn’t like and then blames the politicians for the terrible coverage.
Letting everyone know that this will come after Thanksgiving was important, because the roar right before the holiday if Obama and Clinton hadn’t come forward would have caused the press to go into a collective seisure. Uncertainty causing a problem, with so many important appointments still to come.
Hillary Rodham Clinton will finally get the job I believe not only suits her talents, intellectual prowess and political star power, but will also give President-elect Obama the best person at State he could possibly have in these very troubled times. It’s as official as it’s going to get until after Thanksgiving.
