Hillary has often said that this is the hardest job she’s ever had. It’s

29 Uncommon Ground Hillary has often said that this is the hardest job she’s ever had. It’s not just the constant travel but also the speed and range of the issues she must master. She finds being secretary of state even more taxing than the 2008 campaign, where she could go on autopilot and give the same speech six times in a day, and had heard all the questions before. “With each month there’s more wear and tear,” says Jake Sullivan, a young lawyer and former Rhodes scholar, who has emerged as one of her closest advisers. “But she also gets more energized and comfortable.” A half-dozen of her friends agree that they have never seen her more in her element. “She seems engaged, happy, focused, determined, and very tired from all the travel,” observes Tom Vilsack, an early supporter from his days as governor of Iowa, who is now the secretary of agriculture. “I can’t remember her ever working this much,” says Dr. Irwin Redlener, who has advised her for many years on children’s issues. Despite running against each other, the president and secretary of state have a lot in common in the way their minds work—more, arguably, than either has in common with Bill Clinton. Staffers have noticed that both Obama and Hillary are methodical, secure, and human-scale when you talk to them; they’re deductive thinkers who drill down into a problem. The former president, by contrast, is discursive, needy, and larger-than-life; he’s an inductive thinker with a connective mind. Of course, the sense of order and discipline that Obama and Hillary share belies significant differences that may yet re-emerge. Hillary long ago instructed staffers not to look back to the bitter 2008 primaries or criticize Obama, and for the most part they don’t. But late at night, when they’re safely distant from “the seventh floor” (the mahogany-lined part of the State Department where Hillary and the other power players work), aides complain that Hillary’s creative HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_024986