Details on Hillary-Barack Meeting: No hard offer

By GottaLaff

Here we go:

ABC News' Martha Raddatz reports: President-elect Barack Obama met with Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., Thursday in Chicago to discuss the possibility of the senator becoming secretary of state.

A source with knowledge of the transition process describes the meeting as not a hard offer. Obama is more cautious than that.

He is doing this more elegantly, but a source said Obama took a big step toward Hillary. They had a long private meeting in which they talked about their philosophies and what had transpired during the campaign.

He was extremely respectful, saying she was great, and giving her a huge amount of support. He said that he knew how much she cared about health care but said there are other challenges, and wanted to reach out to her about secretary of state.

They were both cautious but again took a big step toward her. She reciprocated.

Obama does not want to be seen as being rejected by her, but it is “hers to turn down,” one source put it.

They have an agreement to have another meeting or phone conversation about this very soon.

As I've been saying, let's just give him some rope here. We trusted him enough to elect him, so let's trust him enough to be our president.