First Read: “To explain why U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice pulled out of consideration
for the secretary of state post, it’s important to remember this: A
president only gets a finite number of fights with Congress, especially
in the first year of a second term (which may be the last BIG year a
president can win fights with Congress). And appointing Rice as
secretary of state was going to be a fight, no doubt about it. So if
you’re a White House with a big upcoming agenda (resolving the
fiscal-cliff situation, passing comprehensive immigration reform, maybe
tackling energy or education) and if you’re split on the top choice on
the secretary of state (our reporting indicates that Rice was never the
clear-cut favorite), sometimes the path of least resistance is the smart
play.”

The Week: Should Obama have fought harder for Rice?

A new prehistoric lizard species has been named Obamadon Gracilis after President Obama, Sky News reports.

U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice told NBC News she is dropping out of the running to be the next secretary of state after months of criticism over her Benghazi comments.

Said Rice: “If nominated, I am now convinced that the confirmation process would be lengthy, disruptive and costly – to you and to our most pressing national and international priorities.”

The Week: Why Susan Rice dropped her bid.

Former Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE) has emerged as the leading candidate to become President Obama’s next Secretary of Defense and may be nominated as soon as this month, Bloomberg reports.
 
“Hagel, who served as an enlisted Army infantryman in Vietnam, has passed the vetting process at the White House Counsel’s office… The former Nebraska senator has told associates that he is awaiting final word from the president.”

A new Bloomberg poll finds President Obama’s job approval has strengthened to 53%. The last time he enjoyed that level of public backing was December 2009, when his job approval was 54%.

The Economist: “By cynical tradition ‘abroad’ is where American presidents go to seek a legacy, after their domestic agendas have stalled. This is especially true of second-term presidents. As they lose momentum at home, the temptation is to head overseas in search of crises that only American clout can resolve.”

“At the outset of his second term, Barack Obama seems to be planning the opposite approach. Mr Obama and his team believe that his outstanding task is to secure a domestic legacy. Their fear is that foreign entanglements may threaten that goal. It may help that he secured something of a global legacy on the day he was elected four years ago amid worldwide adulation, peaking with a Nobel peace prize awarded after less than a year in office, essentially for not being George W. Bush.”

Ben Smith: “President Obama and his victorious campaign team have signaled that they won’t repeat what many Democratic activists view as the signal mistake of 2009: Failing to deploy the campaign’s massive grassroots network, and particularly its email list, to help govern.”

“But the early indications are that, despite feisty emails and tough talk, Obama is again choosing private negotiations with Congressional leaders over public pressure on legislators. The most important indicator: The President has not taken the one step that really matters: Asking his millions of supporters to deluge their local members of Congress with demands that they pass the president’s policy agenda.”

Anyone who thinks that the “caustic reaction” from GOP senators on their meeting with Susan Rice yesterday gives Democrats any pause on a Rice nomination for Secretary of State, should think again, a Democratic Senate aide tells First Read.

Said the aide: “People are happy to fight for her. This is getting people’s back up. The general sense of the mood is this is ridiculous. She’s obviously qualified.”

“The aide also questioned whether Republicans besides McCain, Graham, and Ayotte would think this is a ‘smart fight to pick’ given Rice’s qualifications and that this would mean a ‘high-profile fight with a qualified African-American woman.’ As to the threat of holds from Ayotte and Graham, the aide said that if Rice is nominated and presents well at her confirmation hearing, there’s a ‘good chance cooler heads prevail’ and there would be more than enough votes to confirm her. That would make Ayotte and Graham’s holds ‘moot’ once it goes to a cloture vote, the aide said, because “either we have the votes or we don’t.'”

The Week: 5 reasons Republicans won’t stop bashing Susan Rice.

Forbes looks at the online petitions on the White House website and notes “some are sensible, some flirt with insanity, but all provide a
fascinating window into what some American want, as well as what they
want their government to do.”

The Economist: “It is a tiring business running a big chunk of the federal government. Mrs Clinton has racked up 918,375 miles on the job visiting 112 countries. Tim Geithner, the treasury secretary, has had to cope with a state of near-perpetual crisis since he took office four years ago. Leon Panetta, the secretary of defense, is running an organization of some 2m people and overseeing the war in Afghanistan at the age of 74. The Republican leadership of the House of Representatives is pursuing a legal battle with Eric Holder, the attorney general, who has ignored some of their subpoenas. All four have signaled, with varying degrees of clarity, that they are ready to move on–leaving vacancies in the four grandest cabinet jobs at the very least.”

A new Gallup poll finds President Obama’s favorable rating at 58%, his best in over three years.

He was more popular after his first election than he is now, with a 68% favorable rating just after the November 2008 election. His all-time high of 78% was measured shortly before his inauguration as president in January 2009.

Meanwhile, The Week notes losing “is never a great way to increase your popularity. But to an unusually vocal degree, Republicans are going out of their way to show Romney the door.”

President Obama aggressively defended U.N. ambassador Susan Rice, “using his first postelection news conference to pointedly rebut Republican charges that the diplomat misled the American public in the aftermath of the attacks in Libya,” the Boston Globe reports.

Bloomberg notes Obama’s “spirited defense” of Rice “has moved her a step closer to being named to succeed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.”

First Read: “If you thought that Obama might decide to pass on nominating Susan Rice to be the next Secretary of State, think again. Yesterday’s confrontation might have been the best thing to happen to her chances of being nominated. The president is a pragmatist and is usually someone who likes to avoid confirmation fights for his appointees. But the more the GOP attacks Rice, the more dug in the White House and president might get.”

President Obama is considering asking Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) to serve as his next defense secretary, the Washington Post reports.

“Although Kerry is thought to covet the job of secretary of state, senior administration officials familiar with the transition planning said that nomination will almost certainly go to Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.”

Meanwhile, counterterrorism adviser John Brennan is a leading contender for the CIA job vacated by David Petraeus if he wants it.

NPR says that Erskine Bowles, who co-chaired up the president’s debt reduction commission, is a candidate to replace Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner in President Obama’s second term.

But “a more likely choice might be Jack Lew, the current White House chief of staff and formerly the president’s budget director.”

Wonk Wire: Who should be the next Treasury Secretary?

“I would like to see whether I can get untired.”

— Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in an interview with Gail Collins, on what she’ll do next year.

Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) bid to become Secretary of State may be in jeopardy, ironically, because of Kerry himself, BuzzFeed reports.

When Kerry ran for president in 2004, state Democrats “changed the law to for replacing retiring members, stripping then Gov. Mitt Romney of his ability to appoint a new members and putting in a place a special election process. Kerry obviously never needed a replacement, and perhaps fittingly, following the death of Sen. Ted Kennedy the new law resulted in the state electing Sen. Scott Brown, a Republican.”

“And with Brown on his way out thanks to Elizabeth Warren, he is considered an odds-on favorite to take a special election against the current crop of Democratic contenders.”

One option: Democrats could change the law back to allow the governor to appoint a successor.

After his victory speech, President Obama tried to call both House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) “but was told they were asleep,” the New York Times reports.

ABC News: “There is an unwritten tradition in Washington that cabinet secretaries all submit pro forma letters of resignation at the end of a first term for a re-elected president, but apparently it doesn’t really work that way. The last two-term president was George W. Bush and according to an official in the West Wing at the time, such letters were requested, but some secretaries had to be prodded to comply.”

Bloomberg claims that Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, is emerging as the favored candidate to succeed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. However, many think Obama’s first move will be choosing a successor to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner.

He also may need to find successors to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk.