As you know, today is Friday, and Hillary Clinton's been to Chicago, and Barack Obama's transition team is in Chicago, and so everyone who's got an ankle or an elbow in the newshole is straight up speculatin' that Hillary's poised to be named as the next Secretary of State. This gives everyone a chance to drop the name of Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team Of Rivals like they were the first to think of it, then immediately pivot and fret over the possibility of Clinton being nothing but a dollop of underminer sauce on the promised Hope and Change Hoagie.
It's all frightfully interesting for a few minutes, but if there's any news organization that's just caught the gollydarned vapors over it, it's ABC News' The Note, who do what they do best: take the day's conventional wisdom and dress it up with fluttery melodrama and overheated pretentiousness. Here's how they captured the moment:
So much for no drama.
Surely a certain soon-to-be-ex-senator knows this by now, but here's the thing about Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton: She tends to steal the scenes she's playing in.
Until the subject of her "private business" Thursday in Chicago is resolved -- and maybe until and even beyond the press conference announcing the new secretary who's headed to Foggy Bottom -- it will be 3 am in the transition process.
The Hillary rumors are the first potential stumbling block for the smooth machine that is President-elect Barack Obama's transition efforts -- and it revolves around a storyline that seems never to get old.
We sort of want to send a valentine to The American Prospect's Tim Fernholz, who responded to The Note like so:
No, it does get old! It's old right now! I spent some time looking around for some damaging blind quote from the Clinton camp, and shot an e-mail to an Obama aide to see if I missed anything. In fact, nothing happened. ABC is just being ridiculous -- have those writers had a vacation since the primaries? Get some down-time, folks.
HA HA ZING. And, noting that John McCain is scheduled to come to Chicago on Monday to meet with Obama and all the other radicals affiliated with the Annenberg Challenge Fund, presumably, Fernholz adds this kicker: "Possible Note headline: OMG MCCAIN SECRETARY OF DEFENSE?"