Clinton Considering Biden for Secretary of State; Does Biden Even Know?

Hillary Clinton is seriously considering Vice President Joe Biden to fill her secretary of state cabinet slot if she wins the White House, according to a source with knowledge of the deliberations. Clinton and her aides are composing a strategy of how to convince Biden to join a Clinton administration, the source told Politico, and the vice president, who nearly ran against Clinton in the Democratic primaries, has yet to be approached by her camp.

“[Clinton] is spending a lot of time figuring out the best way to try to persuade him to do it if she wins,” the source told Politico. Biden seemed to have shot down the possibility in an interview on Friday: “I’ll do anything I can if Hillary’s elected to help her, but I don’t want to remain in the administration,” he said. It’s unclear if he has spoken to Clinton about the matter, and if she still plans to sway him to her camp.

Biden certainly brings a wealth of international experience–he headed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee–yet he and Clinton share a history of divergent opinions on key foreign policy issues. As secretary of state, Clinton consistently held more hawkish stances than Biden: He was resistant to the troop surge in Afghanistan; she supported the move. Biden opposed maintaining a troop presence in Iraq, a move Clinton supported. Clinton supported arming Syrian rebels; Biden did not. And Clinton was in favor of bombing Libya–she in fact pushed the move–while Biden was not.

Other names that the Clinton camp is reportedly chewing on: Wendy Sherman, undersecretary to Warren Christopher from 1993 to 1996, and the former CEO and President of the Fannie Mae Foundation; Bill Burns, currently the President of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and a former U.S. Ambassador to Russia and Jordan.

A key question, of course, is whether Biden, if approached by Clinton, would want to continue to serve in political office. He flirted with a 2016 presidential run (“Lord, have mercy,” Clinton’s Director of Communications Jennifer Palmieri wrote in an email at the time”), ultimately deciding to forgo that path. While campaigning for Clinton on Monday in Toledo, Ohio–he has ravenously campaigned for her–Biden offered a tiny hint of where he might be headed in the coming months: “I may write a book,” he said.

Alec Siegel

Alec Siegel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. When he’s not working at Law Street he’s either cooking a mediocre tofu dish or enjoying a run in the woods. His passions include: gooey chocolate chips, black coffee, mountains, the Animal Kingdom in general, and John Lennon. Baklava is his achilles heel. Contact Alec at ASiegel@LawStreetMedia.com.