LIGHTNING ROUND: REAL MEN GO TO BAGHDAD.

• Barack Obama's meeting today with John McCain revealed little of how the two former rivals would work together, but Chris Cillizza has put together a reasonable list of political roles McCain could play until his Senate seat comes up for reelection in two years.
• It seems as though Obama has offered Hillary Clinton a post as Secretary of State, although the vetting of Bill Clinton's foundation funding sources is the biggest impediment at this point.
• On Capitol Hill, Sens. Byron Dorgan and Tom Carper have become the latest Democratic Senators, following Patrick Leahy and Independent Bernie Sanders, to call for punishing Sen. Joseph Lieberman for his behavior on the campaign trail. Given that the actual vote on Lieberman's fate will be a secret ballot, I'm pretty sure that Lieberman's not going anywhere until Connecticut gives him the boot in 2012.
• It appears that only half of the $700 billion in bailout money sought by the Bush administration will be used during the lame duck session, leaving Incoming president Obama with $350 billion to spend as he pleases, AP reports, although Treasury has denied this is the case.
• Sen. Ted Kennedy made an informal visit to the Hill to signal he's ready to work on comprehensive health care reform.
• Mike Huckabee has written a book called Do the Right Thing: Inside the Movement That's Bringing Common Sense Back to America, to be released on Tuesday. For fans of politics as contact sport, the book has Huckabee going all Chuck Norris on many of his former presidential rivals: "Mitt Romney, Huckabee's principal rival in Iowa, receives the roughest treatment. Huckabee writes that the former Massachusetts governor's record was 'anything but conservative until he changed the light bulbs in his chandelier in time to run for president.' He notes that Romney declined to make a congratulatory phone call after Huckabee beat the odds to win the Iowa caucuses, 'which we took as a sign of total disrespect.'"
• The New York Times looks at the meltdown of National Review during the presidential race, and the departure of less doctrinaire figures like Christopher Buckley and David Frum. Dana hopes The Corner gets its act together and returns to "the model of a blog that fosters debate among its contributors," but I don't think that's quite the problem. Rather, The Corner needs to learn how to engage with serious debate among its competitors, i.e. other bloggers, lest it doom itself to irrelevance.
• Speaking of irrelevance, Rep. Eric Cantor, soon likely to be number two in the GOP House, says the Republican party is no longer relevant to voters. 
• And finally, Richard Perle is keeping the faith alive, telling Foreign Policy that he still holds out hope that there will be a square in Baghdad named after George W. Bush for the liberation of Iraq: "I think [Iraqis] will look back and say, we paid a terrible price, but it’s worth it."

--Mori Dinauer