What's needed at State

SPECULATION that President-elect Barack Obama may appoint Senator Hillary Clinton as secretary of state has induced reams of commentary on their personal compatibility, Bill Clinton's income sources, and historical precedents for a Cabinet of rivals. But these are peripheral matters that obscure the real requirements for the next secretary of state.

Obama is now deciding upon the person who will carry out a dramatic change of direction in American foreign policy. This ought to be a moment for a serious public conversation about the qualities needed at this precarious juncture.

The nation's top diplomat must be someone who has - and is known to have - the complete confidence of the president. Whatever mistakes she may have made, when Condoleezza Rice spoke to a foreign head of state her interlocutors understood that she spoke for the president. The same was true of James Baker when he served as secretary of state for the first President Bush.

Baker also had another crucial quality: He treated diplomacy as a political art. He brought to an international stage the same deal-making skills that he first learned in Texas. Forging compromises is an indispensable component of statecraft that the current President Bush, under the baleful influence of Vice President Dick Cheney, for too long disdained.

If Obama wants to undo the damage, he will need a secretary of state who can sit down with Russia's foreign minister and negotiate trade-offs that suit the interests of each side. That might mean, for example, canceling deployment of a defective missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic if the Kremlin helps to persuade Iran to suspend uranium enrichment.

The next secretary will also have to be capable of venturing into the Iranian bazaar to explore a grand bargain with Tehran involving not only Iran's nuclear program, but also stability in Iraq, security in the Persian Gulf region, and Iran's sponsorship of Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza. And since Obama wants to plunge into peacemaking between Palestinians and Israel in his first year, his vicar for foreign policy must be someone who inspires confidence in both parties yet is tough enough to elicit needed compromises from both.

Last but not least, the nation's foreign service needs a dynamic manager who can breathe new life into a demoralized and underfunded organization. Perhaps Obama is confident that Clinton has all these qualities. But he shouldn't appoint her - or anyone else - to this vital post until he is sure his nominee is capable of reviving a much-diminished State Department.