Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton: Can They Get Along?

Journalist Bob Woodward Says Hillary (and Bill) Clinton Still Have Independent Streaks

Can they get along? The question will linger as Hillary Clinton joins President-elect Barack Obama's foreign policy team as Secretary of State.

Everything seems peachy between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton since the Democratic National Convention last August, but consider the thoughts of Bob Woodward, veteran Washington Post reporter and occasional TV news pundit. Woodward has been the ultimate political insider for nearly four decades, and he wrote several probing books about the Clinton White House during the 1990s.

Here's Bob Woodward's theory, which he aired on CNN's Larry King Live last week:

(1) Woodward believes first and foremost that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, in spite of big egos, sincerely will aim to put national interests ahead of personal political ambitions.

(2) They no doubt truly believe that they have patched things up.

(3) Sooner or later, something will happen to cause a split.

"Bold move," Woodward told Larry King, in reaction to Obama's decision to entrust Hillary with the Secretary of State role. "You know, controlling the Clintons, either of them, is very, very difficult. I'm sure (Hillary) will do it in a loyal way, but she always has - my old Watergate partner, Carl Bernstein, wrote that definitive biography. It's called 'A Woman in Charge.' That is her history. She takes charge. She has very strong ideas. She does her homework. How do you control Hillary Clinton at the State Department? Tell me?"

Woodward further speculated that Obama realizes that he will be preoccupied with the Wall Street economic crisis as "job one, two and three," and that therefore he is looking for big and experienced names on his foreign policy team. Hence, Obama made a Hillary appointment that he may otherwise not have made.

As for Bernstein's book, "A Woman in Charge, the author took a balanced look at how Hillary Clinton has equivocated on issues such as the Whitewater land deal and her cattle futures stock market bombshell in Arkansas, the firing of the White House Travel Office staff, and the discovery in her office of the FBI files of political foes.