Tom Friedman: When it comes to appointing a secretary of state, you do not want a team of rivals.

Tom Friedman writes in The New York Times:

So President-elect Barack Obama is considering Hillary Clinton as secretary of state. How should we feel about that?

Mrs. Clinton is a serious person. She is smart, tough, cunning, hard-working and knows the world — all key qualities for a secretary of state. She would also bring a certain star quality to the top of the State Department that can be useful. I don’t know if she is the best person in America for that job right now, or if she’ll get it, but if one is just looking at qualifications, Senator Clinton certainly passes the bar.

The important question, the answer of which is not at all clear to me, is about the only relationship that matters for a secretary of state — the kind of relationship he or she would have with the new president. My question: Is Obama considering Mrs. Clinton for this job in order to get her off his back or as a prelude to protecting her back?

I covered a secretary of state, one of the best, James A. Baker III, for four years, and one of the things I learned during those years was that what made Baker an effective diplomat was not only his own skills as a negotiator — a prerequisite for the job — but the fact that his boss, President George H.W. Bush, always had Baker’s back. When foreign leaders spoke with Baker, they knew that they were speaking to President Bush, and they knew that President Bush would defend Baker from domestic rivals and the machinations of foreign governments.

That backing is the most important requirement for a secretary of state to be effective. Frankly, Obama could appoint his dear mother-in-law as secretary of state, and if he let the world know she was his envoy, she would be more effective than any ex-ambassador who had no relationship with the president.

Our current president never cared about this, so neither of his secretaries of state were particularly effective. Rather than having Colin Powell’s back, President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld delighted in stabbing Powell in the back, particularly when he was on the road. But being close to the president is not enough. Condoleezza Rice had a close relationship with Bush, but Bush had no coherent worldview to animate her diplomacy, so all her travels added up to less than the sum of their miles. The two most impactful secretaries of state in the last 50 years were Baker and Henry Kissinger. Both were empowered by their presidents, and both could candidly talk back to their presidents.

Foreign leaders can spot daylight between a president and a secretary of state from 1,000 miles away.

My question is whether a President Obama and a Secretary of State Clinton, given all that has gone down between them and their staffs, can have that kind of relationship, particularly with Mrs. Clinton always thinking four to eight years ahead, and the possibility that she may run again for the presidency. I just don’t know.

Every word that is said between them in public, and every leak, will be scrutinized for what it means politically and whether there is daylight. That is not a reason not to appoint Mrs. Clinton. But it is a reason for everyone around the president-elect to take a deep breath and ask whether they are prepared to have the kind of air-tight relationship with Mrs. Clinton that is required for effective diplomacy.

When it comes to appointing a secretary of state, you do not want a team of rivals.