President-elect Obama learned some very important lessons during the election. One of the most important was that he has some easily "misrepresented" relationships with some very unusual people (yes, I'm referring to Reverend Jeremiah Wright, unrepentent Weathermen militant terrorist activist William Ayers, and convicted money-laundering fraudster and sometime real-estate developer Tony Rezko, just for starters). He also learned that as the NY Times, NBC, CBS, and the Daily Kos have done in the past to anyone associated with Bush, the NY Post, Fox News, and the Free Republic will dig for any whiff of 'irregularity' in the past of anyone he brings to the Big Table in his administration (not that the level of stench surrounding Wright or Ayers is really in the 'whiff' category).

We also know that President-elect Obama can seem to be rather vindictive. For example, when three newspapers officially endorsed McCain, Obama put the reporters from those papers off the seats in the campaign plane that their papers had paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for them to occupy and report from. And when a news reporter asked Biden some painful questions and refused to let him laugh them off, the Obama campaign cancelled all remaining interviews with the station, saying "This cancellation is non-negotiable, and further opportunities for your station to interview with this campaign are unlikely, at best for the duration of the remaining days until the election."

Now on to Senator Clinton. During the campaign, Sentator Clinton said some very hurtful things about Senator Obama, and she fought until there was simply no possible way for her to win, even if superdelegates overrode the "will of the people." She accused him of 'representing a slum landlord' as a lawyer in Chicago. She even had the audacity to suggest that he doesn't have the experience to be president on the first day in office.

So, how do these two ideas relate? Well, the Clintons also have a history of what I earlier called "easily 'misrepresented' relationships with some very unusual people," and while they've shown some cunning (in the past), and been able to hide or misdirect interest in these relationships (often with direct collusion of the press), they aren't quite the darling of the press any more. "Obama is The One" now.

Consider this: Anyone working in the Obama administration will have to fill out a very, very intrusive questionnaire. Consider the political implications - if this document were to leak, what kind of leads might it provide to 'Clinton hunters?' Would she dare be misleading on it? It's going to be investigated, could she risk the discovery (and publicizing) of it if she did? What happens if she's brutally honest - about everything - or even isn't and she is publicly and noisily 'ruled out' as a potential candidate?

IMHO, her only choice is to plead off, claiming the need to "focus on the needs of her constituents" in the Senate. But even then, it'll be easy enough for the Obama campaign to confidentially let slip to a sympathetic ear that she knew that she couldn't pass the scrutiny of the questionnaire.

Again, IMHO, this is very, very shrewd.