Mike Madden

For Obama, the motivations for the happy ending to all the drama were reasonably clear. With the announcement Monday that the economy has actually been in recession for nearly a year, he intends to focus on domestic policy early in his term — and a high-profile surrogate on foreign affairs might give him the time to do it. Along with Robert Gates (currently serving as George W. Bush’s defense secretary) and James Jones as national security advisor, Clinton gives Obama a foreign policy team that’s hawkish enough to give friends and enemies pause before assuming he’ll be easy to shove around once he takes power. And bringing Clinton into his Cabinet nicely fits both Obama’s instinct to seek consensus on thorny issues and his thing for Abraham Lincoln (consider that today’s mandatory “Team of Rivals” reference).

What’s in it for Clinton might seem a little less obvious. After all, she won 18 million votes in the Democratic primary campaign; you’d think that would give her a pretty good head start on building a national constituency as a power player in the Senate. But you’d probably be wrong, and that, former Clinton advisors say, is likely why she decided, in the end, to sign up with Team Obama. Ask John Kerry (or, for that matter, John McCain) how much clout losing presidential candidates bring home with them once it’s all over. It turns out 18 million votes don’t go that far on Capitol Hill.

“While the Senate provides an important platform and the opportunity to do important work, being one of 100 is a different proposition than being the secretary of state,” said Geoffrey Garin, a Democratic pollster who managed Clinton’s campaign as the primary fight lurched to a close in the spring and summer. “It’s clearly an important moment for the country and a place where she can do a lot of good.”

Clinton said the choice wasn’t easy (which jibes with reports and rumors from within her orbit that had her zigzagging between yes and no as Obama’s offer of the job waited). “Leaving the Senate is very difficult for me,” she told reporters Monday morning. “But during the last few weeks, I thought often of our troops serving bravely under difficult circumstances in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. I thought of those other Americans in our foreign and civil services working hard to promote and protect our interests around the world. And I thought of the daunting tasks ahead for our country.” In the end, Clinton decided, Obama’s mandate for change needed the kind of help only she could bring it — and not with a few field hearings in Utica. “President Kennedy once said that engaging the world to meet the threats we face was the greatest adventure of our century,” she said. “Well, Mr. President-elect, I am proud to join you on what will be a difficult and exciting adventure in this new century.”

Saying no, though, might have been just as difficult. “Her life truly is about public service, and when the next president says, ‘We need you,’ someone like Hillary Clinton’s natural inclination is to agree to do the job,” Garin said. Besides, leaving the Senate may not prove to be that difficult. For all the back and forth over experience during their primary campaign, Clinton has only been there four years longer than Obama has — this isn’t exactly Bob Dole sacrificing his beloved seat after nearly three decades in a failed effort to defeat Clinton’s husband. “I think Hillary loves being a senator, but at the same time, I don’t think she loved a lot of the headaches that come along with being a senator,” said one former advisor.

After all, the Senate still runs on seniority — and there are a lot of people who have been around a lot longer, even if none of them could ever hope to taste victory in such exotic locales as Puerto Rico or New Hampshire. If Clinton wanted to be the one to push Obama’s healthcare agenda through Congress, for example, she would have had to get in line behind Ted Kennedy and six others who outrank her just on the Senate’s committee of jurisdiction. “It’s not as simple as people think” to retain national prominence in the Senate, the former aide said — there’s a lot of jockeying for turf that never makes it in front of the C-SPAN cameras.

Of course, any administration has its fair share of turf battles as well, as Clinton surely knows. She’ll be relatively autonomous in Foggy Bottom, yet in the end, the decisions are Obama’s to make. But that may not bother her as much as she wanted people to believe back in March, when she was talking about how Obama wasn’t ready to handle a 3 a.m. phone call. Looking back, her former advisors said the campaign probably overplayed the differences with Obama on foreign policy. “As they got into the details, their positions became more and more alike, rather than more different from each other,” Garin said.

And besides, if there’s anyone who understands that winning is everything in politics, it’s Clinton. In the end, Obama earned the right to tell her what to do every now and then. “She wanted to be president,” another former advisor said. “She didn’t win.”

Yes, I spent the historic 2008 Election Night at a golf resort in Phoenix and missed the parties in the street back home in D.C. But that’s alright — once Barack Obama had won, there was more news to come. I met Orly Taitz, and saw the first signs of stress appear in the relationship between progressives and the incoming White House. The new administration got moving quickly, and the conservatives were already starting to get a little freaked out (not least because the Republican Party was suddenly in the hands of Michael Steele). Between Tea Partiers and the endless healthcare reform debate, 2009 flew by. And suddenly, another campaign is in full swing.

But this time, I won’t be around to chronicle the rest of it on Salon. Today is my last day here; in two weeks, I start a new job as managing editor of Washington City Paper, an alt-weekly I’ve been reading for 20 years. As you may have gathered if you read any of the various posts and stories about D.C. voting rights that Salon’s editors indulged my desire to write, I consider myself a bit of a D.C. nationalist — my dad’s family has lived here for three generations, and I grew up in the area and have been back for a decade now. So the chance to help shape coverage of the city and region I’m so proud to call home was irresistible. (Besides, if I wasn’t leaving voluntarily, I’d probably manage to get myself fired over the next couple of weeks for ducking out of work too often to watch the World Cup.) At least in this new job, I should be safe from Andrew Breitbart’s rage.

It’s been a thrill, and a privilege, to write about these last few crazy years in national politics and government here. My colleagues at Salon are smart, funny, creative and supportive, and working with them has been a blast every day. And you, our readers, always keep the staff on our toes, sending complaints, ideas and — occasionally — compliments over the transom on just about every story. I’m happy to be joining you again as a consumer of Salon’s brilliant writing, just as I was when the site first started (though, fortunately, I no longer need to depend on a 14.4k modem to do it).

So thanks for letting me be your guide through the last two-and-a-half years of politics. (You can still keep track of me on Twitter if you feel the urge, and of course, I hope you’ll check out what we’re doing at City Paper, even if you don’t live near the District.) And for now, so long.

Watch here:

The recipient of $25 billion in TARP funds in 2008, Morgan is by far the worst offender. Its guide to the tournament, produced by the bank’s “quants” (yes, that’s the same term used for the math wizards whose models utterly failed to predict the collapse of the housing market), expects the U.S. to lose to England on Saturday, follow that up with a loss to unheralded Slovenia on June 18, then finally salvage some pride with a win over Algeria on June 23 — which would be too little, too late to advance to the tournament’s knockout stage. And just like that, the Yanks would head home, losers, along with the likes of New Zealand, Paraguay and North Korea.

Goldman’s team, in its report (PDF), wasn’t that much more generous to the nation that’s treated the firm so well over the years. “Group C looks very friendly to England, and in an effort to help boost the game in the U.S., let’s assume they come second!” the Goldman analysis says. “Both Algeria and Slovenia may have good grounds to question this.” In other words, the bank doesn’t really expect the U.S. to advance to the round of 16, but since this whole thing is just a silly exercise designed to get them publicity (you’re welcome, Goldman), the writers threw U.S. Soccer a bone. Then again, while Goldman did get $10 billion in TARP funds a couple of years ago to stay in business, it’s had a more tumultuous relationship with the government since then. Maybe if the SEC hadn’t sued the bank, they would have picked the U.S. to win it all!

Meanwhile, the Swiss bankers at UBS — who didn’t take any money from the U.S. government (but did get a bailout from their own taxpayers) — appear to predict that the U.S. will, at least, advance from the group stage to the single-elimination round. (Though only barely, and their chart ranks South Africa, Mexico, France and Uruguay — who can’t all make it, because only two teams from their common group will advance — as likelier to move on.) But they give the U.S. less than a 13 percent chance of winning their first knockout game, in which the Americans would likely face Germany.

Yes, I realize I’m taking these predictions more seriously than they’re intended to be taken, and that the reports are — as you might expect for a research document prepared by investment firms — larded up with disclaimers about past performance and statistical models being no guarantee of future returns. Still. This is the World Cup! It’s serious business! And for these Wall Street bankers to blithely write off the U.S. cause as hopeless — or worse, as Goldman does, a charity case — is downright un-American.

So if they don’t like America, which nation’s citizens do these cold-hearted bankers think will be dancing in the streets after the July 11 finals? UBS picked Brazil, five-time winners already. Goldman put Brazil in the final — but in a rare nod to style over mathematical models, picked Spain to beat them: “Here we are going to go against history and stick with flair.” And JP Morgan, picking Slovenia to make it all the way to the semifinals after edging out the U.S. for a spot in the knockout rounds, predicts England will beat Spain — on penalties — for its second-ever World Cup title. (For what it’s worth, I don’t expect the U.S. to win the tournament; I do expect them to advance to the second round, behind England, and maybe win another game if they get lucky. Spain will probably win, which would be fine with me, but I’m really rooting for Argentina, and I wouldn’t mind the Netherlands winning, either.)

These reports, then, should give anyone in America plenty of motivation to watch the U.S.-England game on Saturday: Not only is the U.S. the underdog, but Wall Street is rooting for the English. No, an upset win this weekend won’t fix the economy and undo the damage years of corporate influence have had on our politics. But it might help humble some smug bankers somewhere. And if that’s not a victory, what is? U.S.A.! U.S.A.!

With the 2012 Republican presidential primary set to start on Nov. 3, the day after the midterm elections, Romney has been busy endorsing candidates all over the country, and especially in early primary states like Nevada. Last night was a good one for one of his picks, Nikki Haley, who fell just short of winning the GOP gubernatorial nod in South Carolina and seems sure to win a runoff. But Romney hadn’t gotten involved in the Nevada race up to now — which was probably wise, since the GOP establishment backed loser Sue Lowden, and endorsing Angle before she won the nomination might have made Romney look a bit too enthusiastic about the Tea Party set.

Still, it’s not exactly a profile in political courage to endorse your party’s nominee against the very vulnerable sitting Senate majority leader. Romney took a similarly bold stand in the Florida Senate race a week before Gov. Charlie Crist quit the party — and well after it was obvious that Rubio was going to wipe the floor with Crist if he stayed in. Those risk-averse political instincts, though, could help Romney win the nomination as the safe choice this time around. After John McCain in 2008, Republicans have probably had enough of self-styled mavericks.

Then again, the folks Angle beat to win the nomination weren’t exactly world class politicians, either. Establishment pick Sue Lowden — who Tea Party activists in Nevada hated because, as party chairwoman, she had dared to cross Ron Paul during the 2008 presidential primary campaign — was leading for months. Until she collapsed suddenly, after babbling about people bartering chickens for healthcare and drawing legal challenges over a campaign bus. Businessman Danny Tarkanian never managed to get any buzz for his own race, which seemed to be grounded entirely in the fact that his father had coached the UNLV Runnin’ Rebels.

Still, it says a lot that given a choice between Angle and the Republican who endorsed chickens for healthcare, Reid’s team preferred Angle. (And in fact, his statement on the race didn’t even mention his opponent, as he aimed for the high road instead.) Reid’s performance in poll after poll in Nevada has been abysmal, with barely a third of voters approving of the way he does his job. But aides have said for months that the race would sharpen once it settled into a contest between Reid and an actual opponent. And Angle’s record, which didn’t get much exposure during the GOP primary, gives them some good ammunition to work with.

Announcing her campaign last year, Angle told the Reno Gazette-Journal that families with two working parents “dilute” healthcare and retirement benefits. Unlike many politicians in Nevada, she’s fine with the idea of trucking nuclear waste into the state to bury it at Yucca Mountain. In the state Assembly, she once voted against tougher penalties for repeat drunk driving offenders — but also said alcohol should be illegal. She says custodial work is something “Americans just won’t do.”

Besides Reid, some very conservative people were pleased with the results Tuesday, too. Angle’s win is another victory for the Club for Growth, the rabidly anti-tax (and, essentially, anti-government) group that endorsed her, as well as Utah Republican Mike Lee, who knocked off Sen. Bob Bennett last month. The Tea Party Express, an Astroturf group that held a big rally in Reid’s hometown in March, claimed another win, too; they spent millions of dollars supporting Angle, helping her offset Lowden’s stronger fundraising.

National Republicans tried to put a brave face on the news. “With Sharron Angle’s nomination today, I am confident that this seat will be a prime pick-up opportunity for our party in November,” GOP Senate campaign chief John Cornyn, R-Texas, said in a statement. “Sharron Angle has earned Nevada’s trust and respect through her long record of public service as a teacher, school board member, businesswoman, and state assemblywoman.” Michael Steele chimed in, too, with a promise of financial resources for the various GOP candidates in the state.

Angle will need a lot of  financial help against Reid. Last month, Reid reported having $9 million in the bank — compared to Angle’s $138,000. That can pay for a lot of ads about banning booze.

Ever since the Tea Party arrived on the scene last year, Republicans have been happy to ride along with its nutty members and their eccentric ideas. Just about all the energy in the GOP, after all, comes from Tea Party anger. Angle’s win Tuesday, though — and Rand Paul’s, in Kentucky — might represent the flip side of that energy.

Could she still win in the fall? Sure. Very few incumbents recover from political situations like Reid’s. But by nominating the candidate sitting farthest out on the right wing fringe, the GOP base — and especially the Tea Party chunk of it — may have thrown Reid a lifeline.