If Hillary Rodham Clinton serves as a secretary of state, Clinton vetting would also include a closer look at Bill Clinton. Obama's transition team has been carefully reviewing Bill Clinton's international business deals and the Clinton-foundation fundraising to see whether certain activities would preclude the appointment of his wife as secretary of state.

Would Bill Clinton stand in the way of his wife's chances to serve as secretary of state? It is said the vetting has gone smoothly and both Clintons had been fully co-operative with the process. He has already agreed to disclose some major donors to his charitable foundation and to subject his future foundation activities to ethics reviews. It has also been reported that Bill Clinton would step away from day-to-day responsibility for his foundation while his wife serves.

Would Bill Clinton also have to agree to forswear any personal income from foreign sources? Probably. The former president would also have to alert the State Department to his new income sources and speaking plans. The former president has engaged in other deals, like raising money for his foundation from the Saudi royal family, Kuwait, Brunei and the Emirate of Qatar, and from a Chinese internet company seeking information on Tibetan human rights activists. That may complicate his wife's work with foreign governments as secretary of state.

However, as one Clinton adviser noted, former President George HW Bush has given paid speeches and participated in international business ventures since his son, George W Bush, has been president - without stirring public complaints or controversy about a possible conflict of interest.

Would Clinton's appointment be a distraction to Obama administration and Obama will end up spending lot of time defending actions of the Clinton family? Would the message of change will be washed away as Obama brings into the administration the very same people he had to fight in the primaries to steer the nation in a new direction? Or would her appointment unify the democratic party? Would qualified people such as Senator John Kerry, and Governor Bill Richardson be a better choice?

We agree it is wiser not to put a military man, like Collins, in charge of diplomacy because it leaves diplomacy out of the equation when discussing conflicts. If Hillary says that negotiating with our enemies without preconditions is naïve, how is Obama going to get his foreign policy implemented if his secretary of state remains dead set to a softer negotiation approach? Would that be perceived as a lapse of judgment from Obama's part almost comparable to Sen McCain's choice for vice-president?

Would Hillary be best as an Ambassador to Israel, a nation she claimed to favor over all other nations during her presidential campaign? Or would her appointment as secretary of state bring out the best in her skills making her an ambassador to the world in the tradition of her idol, Eleanor Roosevelt?

Could Hillary be a great diplomat? Has her previous campaign demonstrated any instinct for negotiation or knowledge about the scientific field of study about negotiating? Many people do not think so. Because she has devoted most of her public career to domestic issues, especially children, poverty and health care, she is probably most needed in the Senate. She's been waiting a long time to get her health care initiatives passed and probably knows more on the subject than anyone else. Universal health care has been her particular issue since her husband entered the White House; Obama has promised to work toward it, and she is in every way the ideal person for that post. She will be an enormous help to Obama in the Senate and, frankly, the Senate, itself, needs her.

One has to agree in one thing: It cannot be worse than President Bush's administration!