...OR IS SHE?

A technicality known as the emoluments clause may prevent Hillary Clinton from being named Secretary of State. Emoluments...didn't Bill used to have a tube of that in the glove compartment of his El Camino back in the day?

LET THE MERRY-GO-ROUND BEGIN

Now that Hillary's off to State, the decision falls to Gov. Paterson as to who's filling that seat. Suffice to say ain't no Moynihans in this crowd:

On the other hand, the New York State chapter of NOW wants a woman to succeed Clinton. That could boost the chance that New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn could become the first openly lesbian member of the U.S. Senate. And if all that speculation weren't enough, the New York Post reports that Paterson and Senator Chuck Schumer may already have a deal to appoint a relative nobody to the spot. It seems that Schumer's priority is that he get recognized as New York's senior Senator, and Andrew Cuomo would be the only contender for the Senate seat to threaten that status. Schumer apparently wants a less high-profile junior Senator -- someone like Buffalo Representative Brian Higgins, or Congresswoman Kirsten Gillibrand. Whoever ultimately succeeds Clinton, both the successor and Paterson will be up for re-election in 2010. Waiting in the wings are New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg (whose popularity has dipped since he announced his plan to seek a third term), and former Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

A relative nobody? Shoot, I'll apply.

SEN. MARIANO RIVERA (D-NY)

Every time I get thinking it's time to ditch the New York Times for good, they dig up a juicy little news nugget like this one, on what happened forty years ago the last time a New York governor had to appoint a replacement US Senator:

His first choice turned him down. That was John Gardner, a liberal Republican who had just quit as Lyndon Johnson’s Health, Education and Welfare secretary — in part because he considered the cabinet too preoccupied with Vietnam to fulfill the Great Society domestic agenda. Rather than accept Rockefeller’s offer, Gardner remained chairman of the Urban Coalition, a private campaign to transform America’s cities.

Next on the list was Mayor John V. Lindsay, although his appointment to the Senate would return City Hall to Democratic control. The job was widely believed to be his for the asking. But Lindsay was too stubborn — and committed to his own urban agenda — to ask, especially without a firm commitment from Rockefeller. The governor never directly made the offer.

Rockefeller even considered his nephew Jay — a transplant to West Virginia (where he was later elected to the Senate), and a Democrat no less.

Five other names were on a list forwarded by Bobby Douglass, the governor’s counsel: Joseph Wilson, the chief executive of Xerox; Jackie Robinson, the retired Brooklyn Dodger, who was being promoted by Rockefeller’s pollster; former Senator Kenneth Keating, whom Kennedy had defeated; and two congressmen, Ogden Reid of Westchester and Charles Goodell of Jamestown upstate.

And if you're thinking Jackie Robinson? Nah...consider this: how cool would it be to have a senator whose campaign theme song was "Enter Sandman"?

On the other hand, Mo's got at least a couple more good years left. So what's Bernie Williams up to?

SECRETARY OF STATE CLINTON?

Hmm. She ain't talkin':

“I am not going to speculate or address anything about the president-elect's incoming administration,” she said. “And I'm going to respect his process, and any inquiries should be directed to his transition team."

Does anybody reading this ever remember a public figure actually stopping and giving a scoop to the press gaggle that shouts out the questions they know doggone well aren't going to be answered? What's the point? I've seen her at plenty of these wonky kinds of conferences, and this is where she's locked into full policy-geek mode - I doubt she'd answer these kinds of off-topic questions even if she was Senator Random Democrat who hadn't run in the primaries.

If Clinton were to join the administration, Gov. David Paterson would name a successor.

Nobody north of I-84 need apply. It's not like Pindars Corners is churning out any more Moynihans.

THE WEEK OFF SURE WAS NICE

Mike Huckabee and Bobby Jindal are already campaigning in Iowa.

So where's Hillary? It's never too early to get rolling on 2016, right?

O'ROURKE HOLDS FORTH

We Blew It is the title of P.J. O'Rourke's latest rant. He's beautiful when he's angry (and that's not a sexist observation):

We've had nearly three decades to educate the electorate about freedom, responsibility, and the evils of collectivism, and we responded by creating a big-city-public-school-system of a learning environment.

Mm-hm. I do have a quibble with:

People are even more conservative if they have children. Nobody with kids is a liberal, except maybe one pothead in Marin County.

This is not entirely true. When you have kids you become half-conservative-firebreather, half-liberal-nancypants. So when somebody suggests that it might be a bit much to hire Padma Lakshmi for the grade-school lunchlady, we start in bleating on how They Don't Care About The Children^TM; on the other hand, some years down the road when the first young fellow comes to our doorstep calling on Noodle he will be greeted by me as Ted Nugent and my wife as Gunny Hartman, and woe betide any nanny-stater who dares challenge our right to make that boy dance to the tune of our combined weaponry.

Continuing:

And yet we chose to deliver our sermons only to the faithful or the already converted.

Yes, yes, a thousand times, yes. Once upon a time, in September, New York was actually kindasorta in play if you go by the Marist and Siena polls that had McCain down between 5 and 10 points, and yet the McCain campaign never even bothered to open a campaign office in New York, let alone campaign here - their Jersey operation, such as it was, covered both states. Pathetic.

Here in New York was an enormous opportunity for McCain to really let both parties have it - after all, the state GOP establishment was in the tank for Bush back in '00 and tried keeping McCain off the primary ballot even, so it's not like McCain owed them anything even if the NYGOP were Republicans in more than name. And as for the state's Democrats, it's time to turn in your vast right-wing conspiracy secret decoder ring if you can't make hay taking swipes at the likes of Hillary, Sharpton, Shelly Silver, the departed Spitzer, and father and son Cuomo.

All these sharp operators at Camp McCain and not a one of them saw the parallels between Barack Obama and Mario Cuomo circa '82-83 - soaring oratory joined at the hip to a legislature gone flabby, locking in unsustainable gold-plated benefits for preferred constituencies. How'd that whole taking-care-of-the-base thing work out for you again, lads?

The whole thing, you go read it, yes?