HILLARY?

Posted at 11:10 a.m. ET

We've asked the question before:  Why would Hillary Clinton give up a probable lifetime seat in the U.S. Senate to become a Cabinet officer for a man who defeated her and wants to neutralize her as a political threat? 

Reader Jim Birdsall alerts us to the fact that Dick Morris has been asking the same question.  Morris writes a devastating column explaining Hillary's plight:

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is finding that her job description is dissolving under her feet, leaving her with only a vestige of the power she must have thought she acquired when she signed on to be President Obama’s chief Cabinet officer.

This is what's happened since she took the job:

Vice President Biden has moved vigorously to stake out foreign policy as his turf...

...Richard Holbrooke, the former Balkan negotiator and U.N. ambassador, has been named special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan. He insisted on direct access to the president, a privilege he was denied during much of the Clinton years...

...Former Sen. George Mitchell (D-Maine), negotiator of the Irish Peace Accords, was appointed to be the administration’s point man on Arab-Israeli negotiations...

...Samantha Power, Obama’s former campaign aide, who once called Hillary a “monster,” has been appointed to the National Security Council (NSC) as director of “multilateral affairs"...

...Gen. James L. Jones, Obama’s new national security adviser, has announced an expansion of the membership and role of the NSC...

...Susan Rice, Obama’s new United Nations ambassador, insisted upon and got Cabinet rank for her portfolio...

Where does this leave Madame Secretary?

While sympathy for Mrs. Clinton is outside the normal fare of these columns, one cannot help but feel that she is surrounded by people who are, at best, strangers and, at worst, enemies.

Yeah, you do get the feeling.  For Hillary, though, that's the normal condition.

Hillary’s essential problem is that she is an outsider in the current mix. She was the adversary in the campaign, and Rice and Powers — at the very least — know it well, having helped to run the campaign that dethroned her. Can they — and she — be devoid of bitterness or at least of normal human trepidation? Not very likely.

And the reality:

The power of the secretary of State flows directly from the president. But Hillary does not have the inside track with Obama.

Finally...

So what is Hillary’s mandate? Of what is she secretary of State? If you take the Middle East, Afghanistan and Pakistan out of the equation, what is left? One would have to assume that the old North Korea hands in the government would monopolize that theater of action. What, precisely, is it that Hillary is to do? The question lingers.

And for this she gave up a Senate seat?

Yes, she did.  And we can almost envision the day she'll see it in her interest to resign, possibly in protest over a policy, possibly because Obama will fail and she won't want to be linked to the failure.  Don't count her out.  That mistake has been made before.

February 11, 2009.