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Hillary Rodham Clinton served as the 67th United States Secretary of State, under President Barack Obama, from 2009 to 2013, overseeing the department that conducted the foreign policy of the Obama administration. She was preceded in office by Condoleezza Rice, and succeeded by John Kerry. She was the third woman to hold this position. She is also the only former First Lady of the United States to become a member of the United States Cabinet. ==Nomination and confirmation== Within a week after the November 4, 2008, presidential election, President-elect Obama and Clinton discussed over telephone the possibility of her serving as U.S. Secretary of State in his administration. Clinton later related, "He said I want you to be my secretary of state. And I said, 'Oh, no, you don't.' I said, 'Oh, please, there's so many other people who could do this.'"〔 Clinton initially turned Obama down, but he persisted.〔 Some Democratic senators welcomed the idea of her leaving, having been allied with Obama during the campaign, and believing that Clinton had risked party disunity by keeping her candidacy going for so long.〔 Obama and Clinton held a meeting on the subject on November 11. When the possibility became public on November 14, it came as a surprising and dramatic move, especially given the long, sometimes bitter battle the two had waged during the 2008 Democratic Party presidential primaries.〔 Obama had specifically criticized Clinton's foreign policy credentials during the contests, and the initial idea of him appointing her had been so unexpected that she had told one of her own aides, "Not in a million years."〔 However, it has been reported that Obama had been thinking of the idea as far back as the 2008 Democratic National Convention.〔Wolffe, ''Renegade'', p. 313.〕 Despite the aggressiveness of the campaign and the still-lingering animosities between the two campaign staffs,〔Wolffe, ''Renegade'', pp. 205–207.〕 as with many primary battles, the political differences between the candidates were never that great,〔Libert and Faulk, ''Barack, Inc.'', pp. 133–134.〕 the two rivals had reportedly developed a respect for one another,〔 and she had campaigned for him in the general election.〔 Consideration of Clinton was seen as Obama wanting to assemble a "team of rivals" in his administration, à la Abraham Lincoln.〔〔 The notion of rivals successfully working together also found applicability in other fields, such as George Marshall and Dwight Eisenhower in relation to Operation Overlord during World War II and Indra Nooyi keeping on her top rival for CEO at Pepsico.〔 At the same time, the choice gave Obama an image of being self-assured.〔Libert and Faulk, ''Barack, Inc.'', p. 52.〕 Clinton was conflicted whether she wanted to take the position or remain in the Senate, and agonized over her decision.〔〔 While the Senate leadership had discussed possible leadership positions or other promotions in rank with her even before the cabinet position became a possibility, nothing concrete had been offered. The prospect of her ever becoming Senate Majority Leader seemed dim.〔 A different complication was Bill Clinton; she told Obama: "There's one last thing that's a problem, which is my husband. You've seen what this is like; it will be a circus if I take this job", making reference to the volatile effect Bill Clinton had had during the primaries.〔 In addition, there was a specific concern whether the financial and other involvements of Bill Clinton's post-presidential activities would violate any conflict-of-interest rules for serving cabinet members.〔 There was as well considerable media speculation about what effect taking the position would have on her political career and any possible future presidential aspirations.〔 Clinton wavered over the offer, but as she later related, "But, you know, we kept talking. I finally began thinking, look, if I had won and I had called him, I would have wanted him to say yes. And, you know, I'm pretty old-fashioned, and it's just who I am. So at the end of the day, when your president asks you to serve, you say yes, if you can."〔 Chief of Protocol of the United States Capricia Penavic Marshall, who had known Clinton since her First Lady days, later confirmed the same rationale: "When asked to serve, she does. And her president asked."〔 On November 21, reports indicated that Clinton had accepted the position. On December 1, President-elect Obama formally announced that Clinton would be his nominee for Secretary of State. Clinton said she was reluctant to leave the Senate, but that the new position represented a "difficult and exciting adventure".〔 As part of the nomination, Bill Clinton agreed to accept a number of conditions and restrictions regarding his ongoing activities and fundraising efforts for the Clinton Presidential Center and Clinton Global Initiative. The appointment required a Saxbe fix,〔 which was passed and signed into law in December 2008 before confirmation hearings began. Confirmation hearings before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee began on January 13, 2009, a week before the Obama inauguration. Clinton stated during her confirmation hearings that she believed that "the best way to advance America's interests in reducing global threats and seizing global opportunities is to design and implement global solutions" and "We must use what has been called 'smart power', the full range of tools at our disposal — diplomatic, economic, military, political, legal and cultural — picking the right tool or combination of tools for each situation. With smart power, diplomacy will be the vanguard of our foreign policy." On January 15, the Committee voted 16–1 to approve Clinton.〔 〕 Republican Senator David Vitter of Louisiana was the lone dissenting vote in the committee.〔 By this time, Clinton's public favorable/unfavorable rating had reached 65 percent, the highest point in her public career since the Lewinsky scandal during her time as First Lady, and 71 percent of the public approved of the nomination to the cabinet. Even before taking office, Clinton was working together with Bush administration officials in assessing national security issues. The night before the inauguration of the new president, contingency plans against a purported plot by Somali extremists against Obama and the inauguration was being discussed. Clinton argued that typical security responses were not tenable: "Is the Secret Service going to whisk him off the podium so the American people see their incoming president disappear in the middle of the inaugural address? I don't think so." (The threat turned out to not exist.) On January 21, 2009, Clinton was confirmed in the full Senate by a vote of 94–2. Vitter and Republican Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina voted against the confirmation.〔 Clinton took the oath of office of Secretary of State and resigned from the Senate that same day. She became the first former First Lady to serve in the United States Cabinet. She also became the first Secretary of State to have previously been an elected official since Edmund Muskie's less-than-a-year stint in 1980,〔 with Christian Herter during the Eisenhower administration being the last one before that. In being selected by her formal rival Obama, she became only the fourth person in the preceding hundred years to join the cabinet of someone they had run against for their party's presidential nomination that election year (Jack Kemp ran against and was later chosen by George H. W. Bush to be Secretary of HUD in 1988, George W. Romney by Richard Nixon for Secretary of HUD in 1968, and Philander Knox by William Howard Taft for Secretary of State in 1908 preceded her; Obama's pick of Tom Vilsack for Secretary of Agriculture followed her a couple of weeks later to be the next such person). (On January 29, 2009, the constitutionality of her Saxbe fix was challenged in court by Judicial Watch; on October 30, 2009, the courts dismissed the case.) 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Hillary Rodham Clinton's tenure as Secretary of State」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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