24 state requires more than energy, brains, and celebrity. Dean Acheson helped rebuild Europe after World War II. Henry Kissinger, who acted like the secretary of state for Richard Nixon even before he got the job, engineered the opening to China. But does anyone think Colin Powell left State with a better reputation than he had before becoming secretary? Madeleine Albright and Condoleezza Rice broke the gender barrier and were competent enough, but left no historic imprint. The State Department isn’t called “Foggy Bottom” for nothing. For any secretary of state, the prerequisite for success is a strong relationship with the president. “He’s hard for her to connect with,” admits one of her top people. “It’s hard for her to break through to the more-than-polite level.” That isn’t meant to suggest chilliness or dysfunction. “Is it Bush-Baker?” the aide continues, referring to the relationship between the first President Bush and James Baker, who was so tight with his boss that he felt obliged to resign as secretary of state to run Bush’s ill-fated re-election campaign in 1992. “No. But there’s a lot of mutual respect, and she feels like she’s always got a shot with him.” Imagine how it feels to be a supplicant, looking for her “shot” at impressing the president. It was only four years ago that Hillary said her main opponent in the Democratic primaries was “irresponsible and frankly naive” when he promised to meet with the leaders of Iran, North Korea, and other rogue regimes without preconditions during his first year in office. She hasn’t forgotten who turned out to be right on that one. One day I asked Hillary point-blank how she gets along with Obama, with whom she meets a few times a week when neither is on the road. She gave me a predictable answer, that her relationship is “not only very good professionally but very warm personally.” Of course, “warm” is just another term of art in Washington, where the advice to anyone looking for a friend has long been to get