In an email to his mailing list this afternoon, Koch indicated that he's unlikely to make a similar move in 2012, despite deep reservations about President Obama's foreign policy. For Koch, the fundamental issue is Republican Paul Ryan's budget plan.

"Had the Republicans not sought to destroy essential protections for the middle class and poor of this country, including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and tax fairness -- they favor the top 2 percent of taxpayers -- I would not at this point in time have decided to commit myself to support the reelection of Barack Obama," he wrote.

That kind of thinking represents Republicans' worst fear in 2012--that swing voters who might be put off by President Obama (and particularly seniors like the 86-year old Koch), will take Ryan's plan not as a bold, courageous vision for deficit reduction, but as an unnecessary axe to a vital social service.

Koch, by his own admission, certainly had a litany of reasons to dislike Obama. He wrote:

After two and one-half years of President Obama, my doubts on his ability to manage American foreign affairs have grown. His hostility towards Israel, increasing our troop presence in Afghanistan, seeking to remain in Iraq, undertaking a new war in Libya, and his throwing longtime U.S. friend and ally, Hosni Mubarak, under the bus, have severely reduced my enthusiasm for a second Obama term.

In fact, Koch said he was upset with "overall attitude" of Democrats toward Israel, with only 46 percent of the party favoring Israel in a recent poll, compared to 70 percent of Republicans.

"But the Republicans have charted a radical course that I and numerous other Americans cannot support," he wrote. "For that, they will be punished. They have embraced the three third rails of American politics - Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Their proposals effectively destroying them through privatization or substantially reducing funding are anathema to the American public, and they will pay the price: defeat."

Saujani has a compelling biography for a candidate.

She’s the daughter of immigrants who fled from violence in Uganda, and has degrees from Harvard and Yale.

Saujani reportedly interned in the White House at the same time as Monica Lewinsky.

By the age of 28, Saujani had established herself politically as an effective fund-raiser for John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign. At the time, she was quoted as saying, “I'll be into active politics myself in a few years. I hope to become a Senator someday.”

Several people who supported or worked for Hillary Clinton said Saujani had expressed interest to them in running for the seat.

Despite her reputation for being quirky, and her unceremonious withdrawal from a threatened Senate campaign against Kirsten Gillibrand, Maloney is a formidable figure on Manhattan’s East Side. She’s held the seat since 1992 (sometimes dispatching primary opponents by kicking them off the ballot).

And despite the ambitions of a number of elected officials in the area, none have taken the step of trying to oust Maloney. The district had represented for years by Rockefeller Republican types, like John Lindsay and Bill Green (who was eventually defeated by Maloney) in Congress and Roy Goodman and John Ravitz in the legislature. But Maloney’s defeat of Green in 1992 helped Democrats takeover the area, and nowadays, the only really contested fights are among Democrats.

Calls to Sunjani's office at Fortress investment Group office were not immediately returned.

According to EPA’s website, the new rule was announced by EPA Chief Lisa Jackson on September 30:

“The Administrator announced a proposal requiring large industrial facilities that emit at least 25,000 tons of GHGs [greenhouse gases] a year to obtain construction and operating permits covering these emissions. These permits must demonstrate the use of best available control technologies and energy efficiency measures to minimize GHG emissions when facilities are constructed or significantly modified.”

Jackson remarked that:  “By using the power and authority of the Clean Air Act, we can begin reducing emissions from the nation’s largest greenhouse gas emitting facilities without placing an undue burden on the businesses that make up the vast majority of our economy.” EPA’s proposed climate regulation applies to the approximately 14,000 large businesses that emit about 70% of the nation’s greenhouse gases.

In Washington, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers have already voiced their opposition to the proposed rule. That is far from surprising, but, paradoxically, an interesting impact of this rule might be an increase in industry support for legislation like Waxman-Markey because it provides more flexibility in meeting emission caps. Waxman-Markey’s cap and trade provision allows companies to trade pollution allowances. The new approach to climate in Waxman-Markey also attacks the root causes of global warming by promoting the development of new energy technology and encouraging greater energy efficiency. It includes programs for climate adaptation, carbon sequestration and the transition to a green energy economy. EPA’s new rule, on the other hand, is good, old-fashioned command and control. The business community might prefer a bill with both carrots and sticks, if the alternative is the current law, which only provides sticks.
 
In comparison to Waxman-Markey, the Clean Air Act is a non-comprehensive, one-dimensional approach to climate policy. EPA’s proposed rule is a hacksaw, when the Obama Administration would rather operate with a scalpel. Nevertheless, if Congress is unable to provide an elegant tool to begin the process of reducing greenhouse gases, then the EPA will simply have to use the best tool they can grab hold of.  Though outdated, the Clean Air Act is far better than nothing. This approach to environmental regulation finds its historical roots in the early days of EPA. Seven days after EPA was created in 1970, its first administrator, William Ruckelshaus, used provisions from the River and Harbors Act of 1899 to force a number of large cities (run by mayors that were not of the President’s political party) to stop dumping sewage into local waterways.

EPA’s strong action is possible because of President Obama’s deep understanding of the climate problem and his willingness to use the authorities he has available. In the 1970’s many industry groups eventually realized that the public demand for clean water and clean air would result in new and more stringent laws. Rather than opposing all efforts at change, some decided to try to shape the change they saw coming. Today, anyone running a business with even a small amount of foresight realizes that climate and energy policies are going to be changed over the next several years.  Better-managed businesses will be trying to figure out how to plan for change rather than continue to resist it.

Unfortunately, despite the President’s desire to usher in a post-partisan period, the lines only seem to be getting more sharply drawn. Let’s keep in mind that the lobbying business has grown dramatically in recent years, along with limitless electronic communication. Intense partisanship has become a big business. And there is simply more money to be made if you are part of the entrenched, hard line opposition than if you are a moderate, pragmatic deal maker.

EPA’s tougher approach to climate regulation will enable our negotiators at the Copenhagen Climate Conference in mid-December to claim that the U.S. has put in place a new policy to dramatically reduce greenhouse gases. While a new piece of legislation would be better than what we have now, using the Clean Air Act is better than doing nothing. Here comes the hacksaw.

However, the fact remains that the green economy is creating jobs. Just as America has transformed itself from an industrial economy to a higher-end information- and service-oriented economy, we are now at the start of another transformation—to a green economy. In June the Pew Foundation released a study on this transformation, which concluded that:

The number of jobs in America’s emerging clean energy economy grew nearly two and a half times faster than overall jobs between 1998 and 2007…Pew developed a clear, data-driven definition of the clean energy economy and conducted the first-ever hard count across all 50 states of the actual jobs, companies and venture capital investments that supply the growing market demand for environmentally friendly products and services.

This does not mean that the debate will be settled by these new facts, but hopefully this information will have some influence on matters. Senator John Kerry’s response to Governor Palin’s op-ed referred to the job creating capacity of a green energy economy. While it is never a good idea to predict the future, I think that a new era of climate policy is about to begin. The public understands the reality of the issue and has begun to appreciate the vulnerability of our economy to the current energy supply system.

As I have argued before, if handled carefully, climate and energy policy can help modernize our economy’s technological base and ultimately increase our standard of living. Our goal should be to ensure that the percentage of our Gross Domestic Product (G.D.P.) devoted to energy expenditure is as low as possible. According to the United States Energy Information Agency of the Department of Energy, there has been a fair amount of volatility in this indicator over the past forty years.  The first year that the federal government reported our expenditures on energy as a percent of G.D.P. was in 1970. That year we spent eight percent of the G.D.P. on energy. This grew to 11.6 percent in 1979 and peaked at 13.7 percent in 1981. In 1999 it dropped to an all time low of six percent, due to a fast growing economy and low fuel prices. However, in the 21^st century, this percentage has tended to grow. It jumped to seven percent in 2000 and to 8.8 percent in 2006, the last year for which we have government data.

With our shrinking economy and increased fuel prices the amount of our nation’s wealth devoted to energy may be growing once again. The question we need to address in the long run, is how do we reduce the price and also the unpredictability of energy costs? Fossil fuels are subject to a wide variety of unpredictable cost factors—ranging from increased use of automobiles in China to Middle East politics. In the long run, however, the cost of fossil fuels is bound to grow. While the Earth retains huge quantities of fossil fuels, we are not making any more of the stuff. Each day that we burn fossil fuels less of them remain. Fossil fuels will continue to get more difficult and more expensive to extract, and the environmental impact of extraction will not let up. While fuel extraction can be made more cost-effective and environmentally friendly through the use of technology, the fundamentals remain: fossil fuels will become more expensive over the next century. In contrast, look at the cost of computing. According to Moore’s Law, a truism first popularized by Gordon Moore, one of the founders of Intel, the processing power of microchips doubles every 18 months and the cost of computing drops every year. Anyone who buys a laptop knows that they keep getting more powerful and less expensive. Solar technology has the potential for the same type of cost reductions over time. The basic fuel of solar power, the sun, will always cost the same to tap into—zero. Solar cells and batteries will only get less expensive as a mass market develops and as technology improves.

What is most impressive about the way Congress is approaching climate change policy is that they are linking it to the use of energy. The Waxman-Markey energy and climate bill recently passed by the House of Representatives not only sets a regulatory cap on carbon emissions, it also encourages energy efficiency and renewable energy to ensure that we can actually achieve these caps without shutting down the economy. While the start up of the green energy economy will require investment, the pay-off potential is enormous. In the case of the emerging climate policy, the anti-tax mantra of the Republican right is in reality an anti-investment policy. It is unfortunate that they are “rounding up the usual suspects,” but I continue to hope that the approach taken by Waxman-Markey emerges as the national consensus.

This is hardly the first time Democrats have sought such an overhaul; in fact, it was once a quadrennial event. This time around, the panel—which the party has dubbed the Democratic Change Commission—will be headed by South Carolina's Jim Clyburn, the House majority whip, and Claire McCaskill, the junior senator from Missouri.

According to the D.N.C., the commission will make recommendations by next January in three specific areas: (1) changing the window for primaries and caucuses, (2) reducing the number of superdelegates and (3) improving the caucus system.

The most cynical view of the possibilities is that all of the commission's work, no matter how many reforms it yields, will be for naught. The 2012 primary season should be an eventless coronation for Barack Obama, akin to the nonexistent primary season of 1996, when Bill Clinton didn't even bother to formally declare his candidacy for a second term. And if Obama were to lose the '12 general election, there's no reason the next D.N.C. regime wouldn't then tear up the new primary rules and draft its own, creating an entirely new process for 2016.

This has happened before. After Jimmy Carter was thrashed by Ronald Reagan in his 1980 reelection bid, the Democrats' D.C. establishment regained control of the party and immediately set about changing to rules to prevent another outsider like Carter—or George McGovern before him—from grabbing the party's nomination. If Obama ends up a one-termer, Democrats would likely be similarly inspired to minimize the possibility of a repeat of the '08 primary process in the future.

But if Obama serves two terms, he would retain de facto control over the party through 2016, thus ensuring that the primary rules changes imposed by the D.N.C. stick. The changes might also survive an Obama defeat in '12, especially if it were a close race—an outcome that might not create the kind of "never again" frenzy that resulted from Carter's crushing loss in '80. Either way, then, the new commission's changes almost certainly won't be felt in the next campaign, but they could loom large in the race to succeed Obama.

Of the three areas slated for reform, the most consequential—and sensitive—involves the number of superdelegates, that controversial bloc of elected leaders and party officials that accounted for nearly 20 percent of all convention votes last year. Free to vote for whomever they please, the superdelegates wield enormous potential clout in a close race, although they almost universally fell in line behind Obama last spring as he gained a decisive pledged-delegate advantage over Hillary Clinton. Still, superdelegates have the theoretical power to override the clear preference of primary voters.

This, of course, was exactly what party leaders had in mind when they invented the superdelegate concept in their post-Carter reform efforts of 1982. The rules reform commission of that era, headed by then-North Carolina Governor Jim Hunt, was created by a D.C. establishment that was intent on regaining control of the nomination process. Before the Hunt Commission (and after previous reforms of the '60s and early '70s), convention delegates were picked almost entirely through the primary and caucus process; there often wasn't room for members of Congress, big-city mayors and other party big shots.

With members of Congress pushing hard, the commission's initial consensus was to reserve 30 percent of the seats at future conventions for elected officials and party leaders, who would have the right to vote for any candidate they pleased. (The actual term "superdelegate" was introduced by opponents of the plan, who used it disparagingly.)

The 30 percent number almost certainly would have been enacted (and probably would have survived through 2008) if it weren't for Ted Kennedy. As the Hunt Commission met in early 1982, Kennedy was considered one of the two front-runners for the 1984 nomination, along with Walter Mondale, who had been Carter's vice president. While both Kennedy and Mondale enjoyed substantial insider support—the Hunt Commission was designed to ensure that one of them would win the '84 nod—Kennedy feared that Mondale, a senator before his elevation to the vice presidency, had more friends on Capitol Hill, and thus would benefit more from a gigantic superdelegate bloc.

Kennedy's forces compelled a compromise: Instead of giving delegate spots to every House and Senate Democrat, only two-thirds of each chamber's Democrats would become delegates. (Each chamber held a caucus to choose its superdelegates in early '84.) Kennedy agreed and then, 10 months later, decided not to run in '84, transforming Mondale into the overwhelming establishment favorite.

When the reforms were announced, Hunt called the creation of the superdelegate category "essential" to providing "the kind of peer review we need to have a winning candidate who can also govern."

The superdelegates did what they were designed to do in '84, lining up early behind Mondale and sticking with him even when Gary Hart, a reform-minded outsider who (like Carter and McGovern before him) became a national sensation almost overnight. In the end, though, those superdelegates merely padded Mondale's pledged-delegate advantage over Hart. Had they all switched to Hart (who begged them to do so in the run-up to the convention), it theoretically could have swung the nomination, but this wasn't a realistic prospect. As it was, none of them budged, and Mondale secured the nomination by about 900 delegates.

After '84, superdelegates became a convention fixture, and barely anyone noticed. In 1988 and 1992, the party's nominee was obvious by early April. In 2000, Al Gore sealed the nod in early March. And in 2004, John Kerry was the clear winner by February. With the primary process producing a clear result after a handful of contests, the role of a convention delegate no longer seemed to matter. (In the meantime, a rules change expanded the number of superdelegates to include all members of Congress, although the number of pledged delegates was also increased, so the collective influence of superdelegates wasn't greatly expanded.)

After last year's experience, there is much popular support to reduce or eliminate the number of superdelegates; hence the new D.N.C. commission's mandate. But the Congressional pressure that existed in 1982 won't just go away. Members of Congress and other party leaders like being delegates to the convention, even if the convention is just a meaningless coronation. It's a status thing; plus, by creating a special category for party big wigs, it frees up delegate slots for lower-profile activists and fund-raisers.

These insiders also know that a repeat of 2008 is highly unlikely. The Obama-Clinton race, which stretched from January to June and featured primaries and caucuses in all 50 states, was a perfect political storm; Obama was probably the only candidate who could have competed with Clinton, and Clinton was the only candidate who could have competed with Obama.

Far more typical are the examples of '04, '00, '92, and '88, when the candidates were less imposing and primary voters were far more willing to shrug and fall into line after a few contests. If the next few nominating contests produce a similar result, people will go back to forgetting that superdelegates even exist.

Most likely, the Democratic Change Commission will end up reducing the number of superdelegates; there's enough outside pressure to compel it. But the reductions will probably be limited—and, barring a repeat of Clinton-Obama in the near future, short-lived.

It depends on who’s doing the telling.

As Clinton is set to make her first official visit to the Middle East as secretary of state, she has reportedly expressed her frustration with Israel for restricting the delivery of aid to Palestinians.

Under the headline "Clinton Warns Israel Over Delays in Gaza Aid," Ha'aretz reported that senior American officials told Israeli counterparts that "Israel is not making enough effort to improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza. According to the article, sources at the Israeli defense establishment confirmed that the United States is increasingly pressuring Israel to open more crossings for humanitarian aid into Gaza. The number of trucks allowed to bring aid to Gaza was reportedly much lower than what the U.S. and its European allies had expected.

One prominent American dove I spoke to hailed the possibility of even a tonal shift by Clinton as a significant development.

"That's great," Steve Clemons, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation who believes that America ought to be more aggressive in influencing Israel’s relations with the Palestinians.

“It would be a logical step for her to take if she was going to try and send signals to the Israelis that you need to become part of the solution and not continue to aggravate and create the problem," he said. "We're not going to pump one billion dollars into Gaza for humanitarian aid and relief and be stymied by the Israelis because we are going to have to show results on the ground in Gaza that we are actually improving things."

According to Clemons, Clinton's frustration is likely a result of the obstacles encountered by Middle East envoy George Mitchell and Mara Rudman, who is expected to be one of the Obama administration’s senior advisers in the Middle East. The administration has a roughly billion-dollar aid package to Gaza that will flow through a variety of NGOs, international institutions and he U.N. that is intended to sidestep Hamas and fortify moderate voices in the Palestinian Authority.

"What they are finding," said Clemons, "is that even if they do that they are hoodwinked and blocked at every step by Israeli border controls."

(Last week, John Kerry visited the Gaza Strip crossings. His message was broadly supportive of Israel and critical of Hamas, but he also criticized the Israelis for blocking pasta, but permitting rice, as humanitarian aid. After raising the issue to Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, the pasta was allowed into the Gaza Strip.)

But some more hawkish backers of Israel refused to accept the premise at all, that Clinton is softening the solidly pro-Israel positions she took as a senator from New York. The report, one said, simply must have been wrong.

"That's just a report, not what I understand the State Department is saying took place," said Michael Miller, CEO of the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, and a strong supporter of Clinton. "She's going to be in the region next week I think our assessment of Secretary of State Clinton should be based on how she based on how she conducts business in the Middle East rather than on Ha'aretz."

Miller expressed skepticism about the left-leaning paper's credibility.

"I know Israeli newspapers and Israeli media," he said. "I'm ready to go with named government official from Israel who said such and such happened. I think we are going to see a lot of that next week. And I'm ready now to cut a little slack for Secretary Clinton and see what happens when she enters the region."

"The Israeli press is notoriously unreliable," said an official with a prominent pro-Israel organization in Washington.

The official said that Israel advocates in the United States had received no indication that the administration was wavering in its support of Israel, or that Clinton was anything less than the Israel hawk the community had come to know and trust. “Ha'aratz is not a reliable outlet on how that dialogue is going," said the official.

From the looks of things, Clinton has little immediate opportunity to make progress on an issue upon which her tenure at State will ultimately be judged. Her ability to play a role in facilitating compliance with minor agreements about aid and access at crossings might, at least, be a first step.

As Jason Horowitz noted, Clinton, Barack Obama's soon-to-be confirmed secretary of state, accidentally addressed Kerry, the new chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, as "Mr. President" during her confirmation hearing. After Clinton called it a Freudian slip, Kerry replied that "We are both subject to those" - to which Clinton responded, "On this subject especially."

Really, though, the joke is on Kerry - and, for that matter, on many of the other high-profile Democrats who went out on a limb for Obama's presidential campaign - because if there's been one notable trend as Obama as assembled his administration, it's that early loyalty in the campaign hasn't been rewarded, even as open hostility has been.

There's no better example of this than the two principal players at Tuesday's confirmation hearing.

Almost exactly one year ago, long before it was clear - or even highly likely - that Obama would secure the Democratic nomination, Kerry stepped forward to endorse him. Endorsements are almost always overvalued by the press, and Kerry's was probably no exception (even when he was the party's 2004 nominee, Kerry's personal popularity among Democrats was questionable), but the media stir that his decision provoked couldn't have come at a better time for Obama.

After winning the Iowa caucuses on January 3 and being prematurely handed the nomination by virtually every opinion-shaper in America, Obama had suffered a stunning loss to Clinton in New Hampshire on January 8. Order, and Clinton's inevitability, had seemingly been restored on the Democratic side, and once again the nomination seemed hers to lose. Against that backdrop, the decision of the previous Democratic presidential nominee to back Obama offered a badly needed jolt of credibility to the Illinoisan's campaign - living, breathing proof that, despite Clinton's success in New Hampshire, there were plenty of high-ranking Democrats who still believed Obama could win.

Of course, there had to be an element of calculation to Kerry's move. With so much of the party establishment already lined up behind Clinton, simply adding his name to that long list of backers would, Kerry understood, have had little impact - both with the press and with the Clintons, who had always expected him to do so (and, if anything, we miffed that he'd been holding out). Where was the upside in that? Obama, on the other hand, offered the chance of a pay-off, an endorsement that would be appreciated and remembered by the candidate - and also, if the candidate went on to win the election, rewarded.

Of course, Kerry surely had plenty of "pure" motives for choosing Obama over Clinton, but he could have done that at any point. The timing of his move strongly suggested that his own political motives were entwined in his thinking. (Not that this makes him different from any other politician.)

And it became clear as the year progressed and Obama's White House prospects brightened, what kind of reward Kerry had in mind: secretary of state. It is absolutely not a coincidence that numerous stories, in the Washington press and back home in Massachusetts, both immediately before and immediately after the November election linked Kerry to the job.

You can imagine his disappointment, then, as November progressed and it became clear that he would be passed over. He'd followed the old playbook - get in early with the winning candidate, and do so in a big way - and he had been rejected. Worse, it quickly became obvious that Obama's secretary of state choice would actually be Clinton, the same woman whose ire Kerry had risked to endorse Obama in the first place.

And Kerry's not the only Democrat who played by the political rules only to lose out to someone who defied them.

Bill Richardson, who ran a forgettable presidential race last year, willingly destroyed his own longstanding relationship with the Clinton family for the opportunity to deliver what was (at least according to the press) a pivotal endorsement of Obama. He, too, hoped to run the State Department - or even to fill out Obama's ticket as the V.P. - and he too was passed over, snubbed for the vice presidency (in favor of Joe Biden, who had refrained from endorsing Obama after dropping his own presidential bid last year) and for State, and instead offered a Commerce Department gig that no one thought he'd take and from which he was forced to withdraw last week because of a scandal back home.

Then there's Howard Dean, the Democratic Party chairman whose 50-state vision, mercilessly derided and mocked by the party's D.C. establishment, ended up playing a role in Obama's surprise fall incursions into longstanding Republican territory. And Dean's willingness to go to war with Democrats in Florida and Michigan over the dates of their primaries may well have saved Obama in his race against Clinton. Had Dean given in, Clinton likely would have picked up a marquee victory in Florida last January, just three days after Obama's stunning South Carolina landslide.

Dean hoped to serve as Obama's Secretary of Health and Human Services. But he got nothing - and was even humiliatingly snubbed last week when Obama appeared with Tim Kaine, his choice to succeed Dean at the DNC, Tim Kaine. Dean wasn't even invited - a decision that undoubtedly had much to do with the identity of Obama's new chief of staff: Rahm Emanuel.

That would be the same Emanuel who waged open warfare with Dean a few years ago, when Emanuel was running the House Democrats' campaign committee and Dean was insisting on his now-vindicated 50-state strategy. It's also the same Emanuel who served as a top aide to Bill Clinton and, despite sharing a hometown with Obama, stayed neutral

in last year's primaries.

In their at-times entertaining 76-page complaint against Rod Blagojevich, the feds allege that the Illinois governor was particularly miffed to learn that, in exchange for appointing Obama's preferred candidate to the U.S. Senate, he would be given nothing but "gratitude."

The same, it seems, goes for some of Obama's top campaign supporters.

In his first question to Clinton, Kerry asked what carrots and sticks the Obama administration was thinking of with respect to Iran's nuclear program. Clinton said that she couldn't get too specific, because she didn't want to take the country's allies by surprise, but that she would use all of the nation's instruments to keep Iran from building a nuclear weapon.

She said she and Obama "have no illusions" that their new administration's effort to engage Iran would yield immediate results and that all options were "on the table." She stressed that the administration would make the case to the world that "a nuclear-armed Iran is in no one's interests."

When Kerry pressed, asking if that meant Iran possessing nuclear arms was merely undesirable or impossible, she said the administration would try to prevent that outcome by any means. "We are not taking any option off the table at all, we will pursue a new perhaps different approach," she said, adding that "the president-elect has been very clear that it is unacceptable."

She did not answer whether she would engage personally with Iranians or whether the administration would install a liaison in Tehran, as Kerry strongly recommended to be a priority. ("I think I've got you drift, Mr. Chairman," she said.)

At another point, Clinton seemed to address Kerry as "Mr. President."

"I'll take that," said Kerry, who lost the 2004 presidential election.

Clinton called the flub a Freudian slip.

"We are both subject to those," Kerry observed.

"On this subject especially," she replied.

John Kerry, the committee's new chairman, and a onetime hopeful for the job Clinton is poised to assume, opened the meeting by admiring Clinton's "diplomatic acumen" and her "stature to project America's world leadership."

He then yielded the floor to Dick Luger, a Republican, who called Mrs. Clinton the "epitome of a big leaguer," which he said was the ultimate requirement for a secretary of state.

It fell to Luger to outline what he called the greatest concern for Clinton's appointment.

Luger questioned whether Clinton's activities as secretary of state "can be reconciled with the sweeping global activities of President Bill Clinton" and said that the former president's foundation presents "a temptation for any foreign government" to sway American foreign policy. The problem, Luger said, was the perception that a foreign donation, even a well-intentioned one aimed at the eradication of diseases like HIV-AIDS, could be perceived abroad as influencing American foreign policy. The easiest solution, Luger said, was for the foundation to simply "foreswear new foreign contributions."

He acknowledged the memorandum of understanding between the Clintons and the Obama administration to make future donations transparent, but called that a minimum requirement.

After taking back the floor, Kerry said Luger was not speaking from a partisan perspective but "is really expressing the view of the committee as a whole."

In that sense, John McCain’s comments in an extended interview on ABC’s This Week on Sunday were utterly unremarkable. Asked to define his role in politics now that Barack Obama will be president, the vanquished G.O.P. nominee replied: “I think my job is, of course, to be a part of and hopefully exert some leadership in the loyal opposition. But I emphasize the word loyal.”

It’s a nice sentiment, but not different from anything we’ve heard from the losing side in past presidential elections. When he and the first President Bush were forced from office by Bill Clinton and Al Gore in 1992, for instance, Dan Quayle said of Clinton, “If he runs the country as well as he ran his campaign, we’ll have nothing to worry about.” But Quayle and his fellow Republicans treated Clinton to one of the roughest presidential honeymoons in memory.

But there is something different about the position McCain is in right now compared to past non-incumbent presidential losers: He’s still in office (and recently announced plans to seek another six-year Senate term in 2010) but, at 72 years old, has absolutely no illusions about ever running for president again. We really haven’t seen this combination in modern times.

Some losing candidates have stayed in office like McCain, but they all believed – however irrationally – that another White House run might be in their future if they played their cards right.

John Kerry is a perfect example of this. When it became clear that he’d come up short on election night 2004, he made sure to offer a quick and gracious concession the next morning, the better to avoid the “sore loser” tag. Then, after offering a few weeks' worth of obligatory bromides about uniting the country and pulling for the president to succeed, he moved into 2008 campaign mode, loudly objecting to George W. Bush’s agenda in the Senate in an effort to convince the left he would be in 2008 everything he hadn’t been as a candidate in 2004.

Kerry’s plan, of course, was never going to succeed. He had blown an election that Democrats believed could and had to be won. There are no second chances after that kind of failure. But Kerry didn’t grasp this. Clear through 2005 and 2006, he was running for president again, even headlining a major Democratic dinner in New Hampshire weeks before the '06 midterm election. The proximal reason he didn’t end up running was the toxic reaction to his “botched joke” on the eve of the '06 vote. Absent that, who knows if wiser voices would have ultimately prevailed on him and kept him out of the '08 race? What is clear is that Kerry returned to the Senate after his '04 loss not to legislate, but to run for president again.

The same has been true of the other sitting senators who have lost modern presidential elections. George McGovern, even after coming within inches of a 50-state wipeout in 1972, still believed he could secure a future Democratic nomination. He won reelection in South Dakota in 1974 and then began positioning himself to step in late in the game and claim the 1976 Democratic nod. (Back then, it was still customary for major candidates to skip some or all of the primary season and to bid for the nomination behind the scenes.) His plan failed, and even after losing his Senate seat in the Republican landslide of 1980, McGovern still wouldn’t drop his White House dreams. He ran for the Democratic nomination again in 1984 (his best showing was third place in Massachusetts) and even toyed with trying again in 1992, when he was 70.

Hubert Humphrey was not actually a senator when he lost the 1968 election to Richard Nixon (he had given up his seat four years earlier to become Lyndon Johnson’s vice president), but he successfully returned to the chamber two years later, in 1970, so that he could position himself for the presidency again. He sought the 1972 Democratic nomination, losing out to McGovern, and while he never officially entered, he did all he could do to entice Democrats into “drafting” him in 1976. Like Kerry and McGovern, his post-campaign Senate service was hardly focused on finding ways to work with his old opponent’s administration.

Other unsuccessful nominees have simply disappeared from politics. Walter Mondale, a former vice president when he lost 49 states to Ronald Reagan in 1984, exiled himself to his native Minnesota, where he began practicing law. He briefly considered running for the Senate there in 1990 (when he begged off, Paul Wellstone entered the race) and emerging once again in 2002, when Democrats needed an emergency candidate after Wellstone’s death days before the election.

Michael Dukakis still had a job when he lost to George H. W. Bush in 1988, but when he returned to the Massachusetts governorship, he found a state in fiscal collapse, with an ugly recession looming. Within months, he swore off a 1990 reelection campaign and watched his popularity slip under 20 percent in his final year in office. He has been in academia since 1991.

McCain is different from all of these men. His Senate seat makes him an automatic player in national politics, but his age makes it pointless for him to use that role to position himself for another presidential campaign. Theoretically, this puts him in position to do what every losing candidate promises (and fails) to do: to help the winning candidate govern successfully.

A comparison to one more defeated candidate, Bob Dole, might be relevant. Dole, like McCain, long harbored presidential aspirations, and actually ran for the job three times. Through it all, he was never particularly liked or respected by the Republican Party’s conservative base, and it could be painful to watch Dole pretend to share their values in an effort to keep them from revolting against him and denying him his dream. The same, roughly, was true of McCain these past few years.

Once Dole lost to Clinton in 1996, though, he recognized that the it was over. He was 73 years old. He’d actually quit his Senate seat six months earlier in an effort to jump-start his campaign with a dramatic gesture. Dole was free to be Dole. There was no pressure to sabotage Clinton and to attack Democrats at every opening, no fear of fomenting a mutiny on the right. It’s not that Dole underwent an ideological overhaul, but he was publicly complimentary of Clinton and even found ways to work with his old foe. Clinton even awarded Dole the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

McCain, like Dole after '96, doesn’t really need to fear the right anymore. If he really is at odds with his party’s base on issues like immigration and the environment or, for that matter, on cooperating productively with the Obama administration -- he has the freedom to express those differences without worrying much about the political cost. And, with his clout in the Senate, he is in position to do more than just talk.

Whether he’ll take advantage of his position to work closely with the new president is anyone’s guess. But the fact that it’s even plausible is nearly unprecedented.