During the campaign a lot of people asked “When will Hillary quit?“.  But now that she’s settled into her new job, that question isn’t raised much.  Tina Brown at the Daily Beast argues Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (and Bill) were cleverly checkmated by Obama, but Hillary may not have a whole lot to lose if she bucks…

Hillary finds herself in a familiar bind with a different twist. If she allows daylight between herself and the president, she becomes the kind of lame duck Colin Powell became once foreign powers realized the ex-general was nowhere near Bush’s inner circle. It becomes clearer by the day how brilliantly Obama checkmated both Clintons by putting Hillary in the topmost Cabinet job. Secretary Clinton can’t be seen to differ from the president without sabotaging her own power. And ex-President Clinton has been uncharacteristically disciplined about not threatening the careful political equilibrium his wife is trying to maintain. Besides, when Hillary had her own deep misgivings about taking the job in the first place, it was Bill who seconded Obama and encouraged her to accept.

Any discontent over this turn of events, however, is locked in the basement of the Clintons’ house in Chappaqua. Hillary, with her usual iron discipline about the big picture of power, is behaving like a stalwart team player.

That’s the trouble. You could say that Obama is lucky to have such a great foreign-policy wife. Those who voted for Hillary wonder how long she’ll be content with an office wifehood of the Saudi variety.

Swamp Report would not be surprised to see Hillary Clinton, with freshly-polished foreign policy credentials, resign about 6-12 months from now, leading a new articulation of a scathing list  of the “failed policies of Barack Obama”.  Checkmate? – not so fast…