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Rove’s Advice for Obama

Appoint Hillary, take your time shutting Gitmo.

Free advice may be worth what you pay for it, but Karl Rove’s opinion on strategy and tactics is worth hearing at any time. In his appraisal of what Obama should do in his first 100 days, he warns against getting bogged down in the closure of Guantanamo Bay. “Where in America should he put suspected terrorists? What should be done with released suspects whose home country doesn’t want them back? Mr. Obama could spend his first 100 days explaining why enemy combatants picked up on battlefields abroad should be released here,” he writes in The Wall Street Journal. And he thinks Obama has painted himself into a corner with Hillary at State. “Any other selection now would embitter her supporters, even if she publicly declines the appointment.” And he also points out “a thorny local controversy”: “Should the new president replace U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, who prosecuted Mr. Obama's fund-raising patron, Tony Rezko, and is investigating high-profile Democrats?”