Hillary Clinton and my unrivaled, teeming perplexity

I'll begin by saying that I find Barack Obama's apparent choice of Hillary Clinton as his secretary of state to be utterly incomprehensible.

The decision may not rise to the full, synergistic level of a "ludicrous embarrassment," as Christopher Hitchens so robustly denounced it the other day, but that's not to say it's absent of both ludicrous and embarrassing elements.

What was Obama thinking? I have no idea. And I'm far from alone.

The editor of the American Prospect, Robert Kuttner, was so bewildered on "Hardball" the other night (the topic is actually more suited to Keith Olbermann's "Oddball") that he trailed off into a despair that sounded a lot like the 1824 Adams-Clay "Corrupt Bargain" controversy.

Is that what he was suggesting? asked Chris Matthews -- an illegal, quid-pro-quo job promise made in June? Oh no, said Kuttner, he just couldn't think of any other reason why Obama would now offer it.

In print, we've witnessed a virtual avalanche of stupefaction in which even the stodgy guardians of conventional wisdom are once again making sense. That's scary. But many of these critical intoners have covered more secretaries of state than most of us can even remember by name.

The Washington Post's David Ignatius, for example, says the rumored appointment would be a "self-inflicted wound," and largely for the same reason proffered by his colleague, David Broder: "Clinton is immensely talented," writes Ignatius, "but it could be the wrong job for her since it has the potential to undermine Obama's own transformational role in foreign policy."

That -- transformation, otherwise known as change -- was what so many Americans, who've grown so tired of our Groundhog Day foreign policy -- were hoping for. Says Broder: "One of the principal reasons [Obama] was elected was that, relying on his instincts, he came to the correct conclusion that war with Iraq was not in America's interest. He was more right about that than most of us in Washington, including Hillary Clinton."

Broder summarized his thoughts in his column's opening paragraph: The whole idea of a secretarial Hillary is, simply, a "mistake."

Moving over to the Times, Thomas Friedman is panicking over the more practical, day-to-day can of worms that he -- and millions of others -- justifiably envisions. "With Mrs. Clinton always thinking four to eight years ahead … every word that is said between [her and Obama] in public, and every leak, will be scrutinized for what it means politically."

In this contemporary age that demands the very trickiest diplomacy, do we really need that … that … distraction? Does it not taint the considered resolution of global problems with the rather seedy circus of domestic politics? Is there no one else, without political ambitions, available? For that matter, is there no one else with actual foreign policy experience available?

Well, we hear, it's all about assembling a "team of rivals" -- an Obamian notion that perhaps took Doris Goodwin's hagiographic manuscript a bit too far. I've read it, as the entire cosmos has by now, and what I took from it was more a thoughtful, intimate portrait of Lincoln the man than Lincoln the manager.

For as historian Matthew Pinsker noted the other day in the Los Angeles Times, "Lincoln's Cabinet was no team. His rivals proved to be uneven as subordinates. Some were capable despite their personal disloyalty, yet others were simply disastrous. Lincoln was a political genius, but his model for Cabinet-building should stand more as a cautionary tale than as a leadership manual."

Indeed, "out of the four leading vote-getters for the 1860 Republican presidential nomination whom Lincoln placed on his original team, three left during his first term -- one in disgrace, one in defiance and one in disgust."

The betting pool is open. Take your pick, ladies and gentlemen: Which will it be for Hillary?

Having said all that, however, I end not in the same place that I opened.

For sure, I still find Obama's choice of Mrs. Clinton an absolutely incomprehensible one -- and the few reasons given above are but selections from the Greatest Hits of incomprehensibility. But -- and it's an immense but -- I'm also a profoundly confirmed believer in the proposition that every president-elect should be free to assemble whatever team he fancies -- right down to now-forbidden, Kennedyesque fraternal appointments -- for whatever reasons (some of which we likely don't know), under the least possible sniper fire.

We elect him and his judgment, not a secretary of state, so let's leave it at that -- although there's no prohibition against crossing one's fingers.