Hillary as Senate majority leader instead?

From Richard Bond in the WSJ with an innovative although seemingly-highly-implausible scenario-- given what it would require of two power-hungry politicians...

Democrat Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, is in a unique position to settle his party's presidential nomination battle between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama....

The solution that is within his power is simpler, yet more profound than any of the extraordinary political events America has witnessed this election year. It requires only the rarest of things: an individual willing to set aside his own power and ambition for the good of his party and his country. It is this: Mr. Reid could step aside as leader of the Senate and hand the post to Mrs. Clinton. Only the proffer of this consolation prize would likely persuade Mrs. Clinton to drop her divisive, and now futile, quest for her party's nomination.

Make no mistake – because of the increasingly bitter Clinton-Obama fight, the Democrats are poised to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory....

Enter Harry Reid. He well knows that Mrs. Clinton would never accept the vice presidency under Mr. Obama. Mr. Reid also understands Mrs. Clinton's naked ambition and drive to win. He knows her calculating nature, and senses her need for an out. His years of experience tell him that if Mr. Obama loses to Mr. McCain, Mr. Obama will be finished, much in the same way that Al Gore and John Kerry have been swept into history's remainder bin of failed Democrat presidential hopefuls.

But has Mr. Reid thought out the power equation? If Mrs. Clinton were Senate majority leader during a McCain presidency, then she and she alone would be the leader of the party and first in line for the nomination in 2012.

It is very likely that this is what Mr. Reid, and perhaps a number of other party elders, is thinking. After all, the simplest way to prevent a train wreck is to switch the runaway train onto another track.

So will Mr. Reid, like Henry Fonda in the 1964 film "The Best Man," nobly put aside his own ambition for a greater good? If he considers all the facts, he might. Mr. Reid has to know that, in this most peculiar of election years, only one individual has the power to end the Clinton-Obama war, and that is he. If he voluntarily passes his position to Mrs. Clinton in exchange for her withdrawal, history will likely remember him as his party's best man.