Presidential Appointments to Keep

WASHINGTON - The next president will make many appointments with important policy implications. Three stand out: the secretaries of state and Treasury and later, the next chairman of the Federal Reserve Board.

If Mr. Obama is re-elected, the leading candidates to replace Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is stepping aside, are the United Nations envoy, Susan Rice, and Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Ms. Rice had been considered the favorite until she became ensnared in the controversy over the deaths of U.S. diplomats in Libya.

The most frequently mentioned appointee for secretary of state in a Mitt Romney administration is Robert Zoellick, the former deputy secretary of state in the George W. Bush years and later the head of the World Bank. He's the choice of the Republican foreign policy establishment, though the more unilateralist and aggressive neo-conservatives already are wag ing a campaign against him - part of the intra-party debate over foreign policy that I address in my latest Letter from Washington.

A Romney favorite is his top foreign policy adviser, Richard Williamson, who has held numerous diplomatic posts. Nonetheless, some question whether he has the gravitas for the job.

For Treasury, if Mr. Obama takes the conventional approach, he'll probably select Jacob Lew, White House chief of staff; some insiders speculate the president would have to go with someone with good ties to the business community.

Mr. Romney is likely to either choose a business executive or his top economic adviser, Glenn Hubbard, the dean of Columbia University's business school, who is lobbying for the job. Senator Rob Portman of Ohio, who is respected by Democrats as well as Republicans, is mentioned as a candidate for several top jobs.

Ben Bernanke's term as chairman of the Fed ends in a little more than a year, and Mr. Obama would probab ly pick either Janet Yellen, the vice chair of the Fed's Board of Governors, or a former vice chair, Roger Ferguson, as a way to ensure continuity.

Mr. Romney would likely go with the conservative Stanford University economist John Taylor, or Mr. Hubbard. Both have been highly critical of the Fed's efforts to stimulate the economy.