Barack Obama's cabinet choices reflect a centrist approach in the tradition of former President Bill Clinton.

Julian E. Zelizer
Author of “Rightward Bound: Making America Conservative in the 1970s”

Many observers use historian Doris Kearns Goodwin’s term, “A Team of Rivals,” to describe the cabinet that President-elect Barack Obama is assembling.

They use the term to characterize choices like former Obama opponent Sen. Hillary Clinton — expected to be nominated Monday as Secretary of State — and current secretary of defense Robert Gates who is being asked to stay on by Obama.

But a more useful term might be a team of centrists. The most striking characteristic of the current lineup is how the personalities reflect the centrist vision of the Democratic Party promoted by Bill Clinton and his colleagues at the Democratic Leadership Council in the 1990s.

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Program note: Watch Tom Foreman’s full report about how Former President Bill Clinton’s foundation fund raising affects a possible Secretary of State position for Hillary Clinton. Tonight, 10p ET.

Tom Foreman | Bio
AC360° Correspondent

Harry Houdini used to perform a famous trick called The Metamorphosis.

He would be handcuffed, sealed in a large cloth bag, and stuffed into a trunk, which was wrapped in chains. His wife, Bess, would then raise a curtain, and in a flash, he would be standing free, and she would be discovered locked and sealed inside the trunk.

It was a trick that required discipline, carefully orchestrated movements, and teamwork; and the Washington heirs to Houdini’s throne are Bill and Hillary Clinton.

Lest anyone doubt their commitment to being the dynamic duo of miracle working politicians, just witness his latest agreement to divulge information about donors to his foundation as a way of possibly clearing her path to becoming Secretary of State.

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Editor’s Note: Hilary Rosen appeared on CNN’s Election Center tonight, below are her feelings about Bill Clinton’s effect on Hillary’s chances at becoming Secretary of State.

Campbell Brown: Hilary, what kind of things are they looking for in this vetting process? What is it that they’re worried about? What kind of conflicts of interest that could pose problems?

Hilary Rosen: Campbell, I just have to say, though, this is somewhat maddening if you’re, you know, a supporter of Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton or both. The Obama transition team is saying that the Clintons are being completely cooperative. The Clinton campaign — the Clinton team isn’t saying anything. And we know that Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton have done more financial disclosure than any candidates in history. This — he’s never made a nickel from his foundation. He has disclosed every source of income on her senate financial statements. So this kind of speculation that this evaluation is somehow going to hurt her is silly.

CB: In fairness, though, I mean, during the primaries there were a lot of questions that went unanswered about the fund-raising that went toward the Clinton library. And, yes, of course he was raising money for charity, but a lot of that is influence pedaling. You can’t deny that. That’s just a fact of life. And it’s clearly worth vetting or the Obama campaign wouldn’t spend the time on it.

HR: I don’t think raising money for the presidential library for Bill Clinton is influence pedaling. And what the library has done with the Obama campaign is making the Obama transition team is making them fully satisfied. As far as his income goes or the Clinton Global Initiative, the things he’s most directly connected to, he’s had full disclosure on those things all along.

Robert Zimmerman
CNN Political Analyst

Ask most people who have real lives and do not dwell on political speculation the following question: Who served as Richard Nixon’s Secretary of State? You will get one of two answers: I don’t know (usually followed by an expression that means stop boring me and go away) or Dr. Henry Kissinger. That answer is instructive as we analyze and speculate about the prospect of Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State in the Obama Administration.

William P. Rogers served as Richard Nixon’s Secretary of State for the entire first term of the Nixon presidency. He was a major figure in the Washington establishment, well known in power and media circles. Rogers had an extensive government resume including serving as President Eisenhower’s Attorney General. Henry Kissinger was a relatively unknown professor who was an advisor to then New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller, Nixon’s opponent for the Republican nomination. Kissinger was chosen by Nixon to serve as his National Security Advisor, eclipsing Rogers and then went on to serve as Secretary of State.

There are no comparisons between Obama and Clinton with any of these players. However, this shows that Washington politics and Administration power plays are such strong forces that they can defy expectations.

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Former president Bill Clinton at a global forum on leadership in Rotterdam on Friday.

Program Note: President-elect Barack Obama and Sen. Hillary Clinton have met to discuss top jobs in the next administration, but what about Bill? Watch Tom Foreman’s report on ‘The Bill Factor,’ AC360° tonight 10p ET.

Tom Foreman
AC360° Correspondent

Maybe, like they say in the old westerns, “this town ain’t big enough” for the two of them.

The former fastest gun in the Democratic party, Bill Clinton, and the newest sharpshooter, Barack Obama, once again appear to be poised at opposite ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. They are not saying anything bad about each other, and in truth they could both say circumstances (as opposed to personal or professional animus) have put them at potential odds this time, but the fact remains: Team Obama is once again wrestling with what role Bill Clinton might play in the next administration.

Specifically, DC is buzzing over whether making Senator Hillary Clinton Secretary of State would open an unwanted diplomatic back door to the White House, via the former president.

The sticking point this time is all the good works Bill Clinton has tried to pursue outside of politics.

The Clinton Foundation, started by the former President in the wake of his White House years, has been widely praised for its efforts to fight AIDS, malaria, and global climate change. It has earned respect and support from many of the world’s poorest nations for promoting economic development, better health care, and improved education.

Problem is, all of that takes money. And when you are in the charity business, that means donors. And when you are a former president, that means donors from many far flung places, including countries which might be interested in palling around with a man whose wife is the U.S. Secretary of State.
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Jack Gray
AC360 Associate Producer

What a difference two weeks make.  Barack Obama is meeting in Chicago today with John McCain.  I’m sure McCain is looking forward to it.  Because there is nothing at all humiliating about flying halfway across the country to hear the guy who beat you say, “John, don’t forget to have my secretary validate the parking for your Hertz rental.”

Meanwhile, the guessing game continues about whether the president-elect will nominate his longtime ally Hillary “Shame on you Barack Obama” Clinton to be Secretary of State over such vocal critics as John “Barack Obama can help our country turn the page” Kerry and Bill “Barack Obama will be a great and historic president” Richardson.

There is concern among some that there could be conflicts of interest between Hillary Clinton’s leadership of the State Department and her husband’s overseas business dealings.  With that in mind, the Obama transition office is looking into the former president’s fundraising, consulting deals and speaking fees.  And his stint as a greeter at the Riyadh Wal-Mart.

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Editor’s note: See Randi’s full report tonight on AC360° at 10p ET.

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton campaigning for Senator Obama in Las Vegas on October 19.

Randi Kaye
AC360° Correspondent

Tonight, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama will campaign together for the very first time.

Did you ever think you’d see that?

Let me take you back to last January, just a day before the New Hampshire primary, when Bill Clinton called Obama’s opposition to the war in Iraq a “fairytale.”

It got even uglier between these guys a couple of weeks later in South Carolina.

Mr. Clinton compared Obama’s victory in the South Carolina primary to that of Jesse Jackson’s.

Yes, he did go there!

That left Hillary Clinton to clean up the mess. You see, many Democrats, including many African Americans, viewed that as a dig at Obama… an effort to minimize his victory and diminish him… because Jackson went on to lose the primary big time. Mr. Clinton, long called the nation’s first black president because of his popularity among African Americans, was suddenly labeled a racist. He denied that his remarks were racist in any way and accused the Obama campaign of leading the charge against him.

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Tom Kalil says an inexpensive kit can save the lives of many newborns.

Editor’s Note: The Clinton Global Initiative, founded by former President Bill Clinton, is meeting in New York this week, focusing on issues such as health, poverty and climate change. Tom Kalil is chairman of the initiative’s global health working group and special assistant to the chancellor for science and technology at the University of California, Berkeley.  In the Clinton administration, Kalil was deputy assistant for technology and economic policy and deputy director of the White House Economic Council.

Tom Kalil
Special to CNN

Last year, 9.2 million children didn’t make it to their fifth birthday. Of these, roughly 4 million children died within the first 28 days of life — the newborn period.

Many of these newborns die for reasons that are easily treatable or preventable. Their lives could be saved with very simple and low-cost interventions. For example, birth attendants can wash their hands before helping with a delivery, and use a clean blade to cut the umbilical cord.

Mothers can breast-feed their babies within an hour after birth and provide exclusive breast-feeding for the first six months.

This week, a group of leading organizations are joining together to help give moms and dads around the world tools and information to help their newborns survive. PATH (a Seattle-based nonprofit), Save the Children, and Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health will commit to create and distribute a “Better Beginning for Babies” kit.

Their goal is to raise at least $20 million over five years and reach 2 million newborns, and set the stage for a much larger and more ambitious global movement.

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Inside Denver's Pepsi Center, host to the 2008 Democratic National Convention.

Carl Bernstein
AC360° Contributor

A few observations as the convention is about to convene:

This is Barack Obama’s convention. It will have his stamp on it, including ushering the Clintons off center-stage and into supporting roles-however reluctantly.

It is also a Democratic Party convention, with threads of history and some immutable principles since the 1960s-especially regarding civil rights, women’s rights, and a certain perspective on economic issues. The Clintons are (whatever their shortcomings) a big part of that story, especially the successful parts: Bill Clinton is the only Democrat to be
elected twice to the presidency since FDR.

The Clintons-like Ted Kennedy, who will be powerfully present tonight-do not want to see the presidency turned over to John McCain or four more years of Republican policies: remember, they have spent their adult lives fighting against the Republican Right….even to the extent of Hillary Clinton labeling it “the vast right-wing conspiracy.”

We journalists, especially on television in the past few days, have placed far too much emphasis on recent polls, a notable example being trying to divine the effect of Joe Biden’s addition to the ticket within hours of his being named. This is silly.

The presidency will be won in the electoral college, something very different than national polls about the popular vote. Polls can be good snapshots, useful tools-but, as Mark Penn and Hillary Clinton learned, they can be far off-course.

Barack Obama confounded almost every poll to defeat Hillary Clinton-and concentrated on superior organization, the consistency of his message (sometimes perhaps vague in terms of what he would specifically do as president), and remarkable discipline. Most Republican professionals I have talked to believe he has a large organizational advantage in the states he must win to become president.

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Roland Martin
AC360° Contributor

Poor, Bill.

Stuck in no man’s land, no longer able to stand before adoring crowds of African Americans who would welcome him as the “nation’s first black president” with thunderous applause and all kinds of pats on the back, he clearly is having issues dealing with the new world order.

Almost two months after Sen. Barack Obama captured the Democratic presidential nomination, the former president is at a loss, trying to figure out what happened along the way. And his chief complaint? That the Obama camp accused him of being a racist.

Never mind that the Obama camp - loaded with white male advisers - was so afraid to bring up race that it wasn’t funny. What Bill doesn’t understand is that it was the masses of black people who know what it feels like to be marginalized, and they saw that with some of Clinton’s comments.

In an interview with ABC’s Kate Snow, Clinton desperately wants his black mojo back, and when she asked him a question about regrets in the campaign, he immediately threw out, “I am not a racist.”
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