Hillary Clinton’s advisers played a key role in fanning speculation that the senator will be our next secretary of state.

While some said that President-elect Barack Obama offered Clinton the role during their meeting in Chicago two weeks ago, Elizabeth Drew’s new report in New York Review of Books suggests they were jumping the gun. Obama had met with Clinton – and another former rival, John McCain – to set things straight in the Senate. That is, he wanted to woo them a bit and make sure they wouldn’t complicate his presidency too much.

Though the subject of secretary of state did come up when Obama and Clinton sat down, there was no offer, as some of the senator’s aides claimed:

Obama’s meetings with Hillary Clinton and John McCain about playing important roles in his presidency indicated his imagination and his shrewdness, although sources close to Obama say he did not offer her the job of secretary of state when they met.

Mrs. Clinton’s and her closest advisers’ turning a suggestion by the president-elect that she might, among other things, head the State Department into an "offer" and reports that she was agonizing over whether to accept it, did not please officials in Chicago, some of whom hoped that issues over disclosure of Bill Clinton’s post-presidential record might block the appointment. But the former president’s camp blocked that by promising to cooperate with requests for information and to accept limits on his activities, including clearance of speaking engagements abroad. Statements by the Hillary camp on November 21 saying that "she’s ready" for the position but then backtracking, saying that some matters were "under discussion," typified the whole mess, the only snag thus far in an otherwise unusually smooth transition involving impressive choices — an object lesson to Obama (which he had reason to know already) that getting involved with the Clintons is rarely uncomplicated. 

That may be true, but now things seem to be "on track" for Clinton to take the spot.