Is Bill Clinton a liability?

Barack Obama has been considering Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, but how much of a liability is the Clinton Foundation? Former President Clinton has been "reluctant to disclose the donors," according to Philip Rucker of the Washington Post. Rucker goes on to say,


"It's a little bit unclear what happened there, but there are some reports that he's helped -- that Bill Clinton helped facilitate a deal there in uranium in Kazakhstan, and in turn, there was a donation to the foundation."

Clinton has offered to disclose future donors and "'major' past contributors -- a term that has yet to be defined."

The possible offer of a cabinet position for Hillary Clinton is certainly an interesting one, and one that I am having trouble with for two reasons, in addition to Bill's charity posing a conflict of interest.

1) Hillary Clinton has a big personality is very ambitious. There's no way that Clinton would like being subordinate to Obama and, if anything were to go wrong in the Obama administration, she would be jumping off the ship as fast as possible to preserve a future bid for the White House. I think that it would behoove Senator Clinton to stay in the Senate and push for Universal Healthcare and Pre-K, and other programs she was touting during the primaries. Rushing off from her Senate seat might seem disingenuous and give creedance to those carpetbagging allegations launched against her a few years back. She has plenty of time to season and mature as a politician, and, with more experience, could be an excellent President. She's in a position to run for President in 8 years with more experience than many other female candidates (ex: Sarah Palin) and the blessing of name recognition.

2) Bill Clinton hasn't seemed as calm, cool, and collected as usual for the last few years and, both during and after the campaign, he was rather unfair to Obama. The Clinton's played dirty pool during the campaign. They (presumably they were behind those "anonymous" leaks) lobbed every single allegation that they could against President Elect Obama, but Hillary still lost, perhaps due to disorganization within her own campaign. Plus, if Senator Clinton did take the Cabinet position, Bill Clinton's personal relationships with world leaders, if not his charity, could pose a conflict of interest. There's no way to know what Bill Clinton has said to some of the most powerful people in the world, whom he counts as friends. Barack Obama's presidency is not the Clinton Administration Part III. Obama will have his own agenda and this could cause points of contention between Bill's dealings and the official stance from the administration.

Hillary and Bill Clinton still seem surprised by Hillary's loss to Obama, and, not only are they not over it, I would bet that they're planning a run in 2016, if not sooner.