While being mindful of President-elect Obama’s admonition yesterday against the Obama-versus-Clinton meme, Steinberg almost assuredly isn’t whom Clinton would have picked on her own. Like Greg Craig, Steinberg has roots in the Clinton administration but gravitated toward Obama during the primaries. Steinberg, who was on the progressive side of the Clinton administration, can hardly be considered a loyalist. If anything, he’d be a good bridge-builder between the two of them, and a likely candidate to smooth over any feathers that get ruffled. The pick probably portends a healthy working relationship, as the Washington Post indicated today.

But perhaps the more interesting aspect of Greg’s reporting is that the Obama people don’t want to see progressive bete noire Richard Holbrooke in the deputy job:

“They don’t want him,” the source said of the Obama team. “The collateral damage that he brings is too great for them to want to deal with. There will be a role for Holbrooke, but not as deputy.”

May I suggest a role for Holbrooke? This speaks very, very well of Obama. Holbrooke is an extremely talented diplomat — possibly the best of his generation when it comes to crisis management — who is better suited to forcing implementation of Obama’s policies than helping shape it. (How’s that for diplomatic?)

It should be said that lots of presidents appoint their deputy secretaries as well as cabinet secretaries. If President-elect Barack Obama is doing so here, he’s not venturing outside the norm. And it’s also true that Steinberg became the foreign policy equivalent of a made man under Bill Clinton, where he served as deputy to national security adviser Sandy Berger. But it’s interesting to wonder whether Clinton would rather have put, say, a true loyalist like Richard Holbrooke as her second-in-command. And whether she thinks Obama is planting one of his people at Foggy Bottom to keep tabs on her — much as Dick Cheney did when he made John Bolton undersecretary of state to watch over the wily Colin Powell.

For that matter, where does Holbrooke in particular land? As perhaps the noir-est of progressive foreign-policy betes noire, a man of Holbrooke’s stature can’t easily take a position lower than deputy secretary. As U.N. ambassador in the Clinton administration, he was practically a cabinet secretary; and before that he was an assistant secretary of state, so he can’t go back to that. (Or, at least, “can’t” according to the odd social rules of the Washington foreign-policy establishment. Logically there’s no reason why he can’t.) Holbrooke is distrusted by the left for a variety of reasons — he’s pretty much the definition of an establishment Democrat, although he has a record of accomplishment few can match — but he’s a first-class troubleshooter. If you wanted to, say, negotiate a broad accord with Iran or broker a cross-sectarian political settlement in Iraq, he’s top of the list of the guys you send.

And for similar reason, he’s also the guy you want watching your back in a cabinet post. The man’s nickname is The Bulldozer. You want a guy like that chewing up your rivals in deputies’ meetings — er, I mean, forcefully asserting the interests of your department as you productively debate with your counterparts across the government. Wendy Sherman and Jamie Rubin and Lee Feinstein are all talented people and loyal Clintonites, but none of them ever got dictators to lift sieges on cities.