Cabinet speculation, or, Who does Bill Richardson have to kill to get noticed in this town???

By now even the meteors circling the Planet Formerly Known as Pluto have heard that Sen. Hillary Clinton is “on track” to be President-elect Barack Obama’s nominee for Secretary of State. My reaction is a decided “meh.” I can understand the pressure Obama is under to offer Clinton a senior post, and she is certainly qualified to do *something* in the Cabinet. But State? I just don’t see it.

If I were asked what Clinton’s A-number one expertise is, I wouldn’t say foreign affairs or diplomacy. When it comes to domestic issues like education or health care, I couldn’t think of anyone better. But not State. And there’s the small issue of her disagreeing with Obama on many fundamental foreign relations issues – she still won’t admit that supporting the war in Iraq was a mistake, for instance. With the exception of her goodwill trips as First Lady, she has zero foreign policy experience.

Of course, any Clinton appointment will bring up the elephant in the room – Bill’s finances. When his foundation has accepted shady donations from some of the same nations that the State Department will have to deal with, the neon light reading “Hel-LO! Conflict of Interest!” is flashing so frantically that I can’t help but wonder if Obama isn’t setting her up for failure. “Sorry, PUMAs, I tried to appoint Hillary to a post that matters, but that Big Bad Congress wouldn’t confirm her nomination. Oh, well.”

(Today one of my co-workers wondered if Obama weren’t just trying to get her out of the way. I say no, because first of all State is not exactly a chump job. But it’s an idea…How ’bout Joe Lieberman, Ambassador to Madagascar?)

Meanwhile, we have a former U.N. Ambassador and energy secretary who negotiated more peace agreements than Carter has liver pills, and who endorsed Obama early on to boot. Yep, my man Gov. Bill Richardson still can’t get any respect. You know where CNN has him? The Commerce Department. I don’t even know what they do.

In that vein, I don’t get Tom Daschle at Health and Human Services. Not only would HRC be a million times better here, Daschle’s wife (until recently) worked for a lobbying firm that represents the health industry. That’s not exactly the most reassuring thing in the world.

I’m more reassured by the leak that Tim Geithner will be the nominee for Treasury Secretary. As head of the New York branch of the Federal Reserve, Geithner’s been at ground zero of the financial crisis on Wall Street. And, at least according to my favorite economics professor, Geithner was warning about the sub-prime danger years ago. I like prescience. Also, he’s backed smaller commercial banks (the life-blood of credit in the 99.9% of the country that isn’t Wall Street), but also has the confidence of the big market guys.

At this point, it looks like the Obama team is still in trial-balloon mode – I won’t allow myself to get too happy or pissed off until he makes the actual nominations.