Cheat Sheet

The Democratic primary may have been a no-holds-barred slugfest, but Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have been growing ever closer since he won the primary and then the election. The New York Times has a behind the scenes look at how the onetime foes became confidants, including details about personal phone calls he made to her and a friendly plane ride to their first campaign event together after the primary. Insiders tell the Times that the discussions the two political powerhouses have had about the secretary of state position show that have a "working chemistry." But while Obama and Clinton are no longer the rivals that Richard Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger were, they're also not the best buds that George W. Bush and Condoleezza Rice are. They're somewhere in the middle. “I think that Obama and Clinton could form a perfect partnership based on respect for each other’s view of the world,” said Walter Isaacson, the author of The Wise Men, a history of America’s postwar foreign policy establishment.