I'm only now watching Hillary Clinton's confirmation hearings yesterday—for fun, I'm watching them on Fox News's website (here), and I have the volume all the way up, since no one else is at work yet. Her voice is echoing through the office. It's strange how, under the blizzard of Blagojevich, the Bill Richardson blip, the freaking out over Rick Warren, the new questions about Timothy F. Geithner's late taxes, and the extraordinarily long Democratic primary season, no one's really talking about Hillary Clinton much (we've talked about her to death). It has to be said that, as usual, she's not much to listen to, her statement to the Senate heavy with bureaucratic cliches ("picking the right tool or combination of tools for each situation," "the State Department will be firing on all cylinders"), but damn if she doesn't have the grave poise and deep learning you want a Secretary of State to have. Not to mention those eyes. You don't want to fuck with those eyes. (Contrast her presence with the puppety figure John Kerry, who is sitting there listening to her speech and for a while there was favored for the job.)

Joe Klein has blogged his impressions, and said it better than anyone:

I spent the day at the Clinton confirmation hearings and came away impressed, as always, with the woman's sheer ability to process information. Not a missed beat, not an "I'll have to get back to you on that..." It was several hours into the hearing that the full force of the new Administration hit me. Clinton was being asked by Senator Benjamin Cardin whether we could exert our influence on mineral-rich countries to share their wealth with their people. The Secretary of State-designate immediately brought up Botswana's "excellent work" in this area, the education and infrastructure programs that had been funded. And I thought: Botswana? Wow. We've got people who are really interested in governing—who really love public service, who understand that foreign policy means more than simply issuing threats—coming back to your nation's capital! Enthusiasm and care don't always result in wise policy-making, but we've seen how fecklessness and carelessness works.

(Via.)