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With the race over, and with a new president taking office soon, it's time to look to the future. We did it the other day with the panel's expectations from the next president, and today we have an answer to a more personal question: whom does the panel wants as Secretary of State?

In short: Joe Lieberman. But that's no longer relevant. On the Democratic side - and not for the first time - Bill Richardson is the person this panel would vote for. Richardson, as far as the Israel Factor goes, is a good candidate both for Mideast peace envoy, and as Secreatry of State.

The question was straight forward: from this list of candidates, who would you like to see as the next State Secretary? The names were chosen based on speculations that appeared in American publications in the last couple of months. Obviously, we don't know if these are the men on the candidates' minds. We also didn't include all possible names (for example: Dennis Ross was included in the "special envoy" list, but not in this one). However, this list does give some sense of this panel's preferences as to the personality it would like to see in the seventh floor at Foggy Bottom.

Here's the table, followed by short commentary.

First, 6 candidates for Obama, the next president (1, not a good candidate, 5, the best candidate possible):

John Kerry 2.143
Richard Holbrook 3
Anthony Lake 2.429
Chris Dodd 2.571
Chuck Hagel 1.857
Bill Richardson 3.429

And for comparison, 3 McCain candidates, no longer viable:

Joe Lieberman 3.857
James Woolsey 3.429
John Negroponte 3.286

1. Clearly, the McCain list is much more popular. This might be our fault - we might have picked the wrong people - or just reality - Obama's options aren't as good (from the Factor's point of view). In truth, finding Lieberman at the top of this list is not really a shocker. But the overall picture can somewhat explain why this panel - as much as it did get used to Obama and learned to almost like him - still tended to prefer McCain (on average, some panelists wanted Obama to win). The panel apparently believes that the people surrounding the Republican candidate could have been friendlier to Israel. This should also not be surprising for all those following closely all the brouhaha of recent months over Obamas advisors and their positions on Israel-matters.

2. Senator Chuck Hagel was never popular with this panel. Chances are that Hagel will not get the job though. Not in the likely case that Robert Gates remains as Defense Secretary under an Obama administration (can you imagine Obama nominating two Republicans to the two top positions he has to offer?)

3. Israelis were quite clear back in 2004. They supported Bush over John Kerry by large margin. If this panel is to be trusted, Israelis still think that Kerry isnt their best possible counterpart.

Rosner's Domain readers:
If you missed the two earlier posts from our latest Israel Factor survey, here they are:
Obama likely to encourage settlement evacuation, McCain committed to settlement blocks, neither will stop Iran
Richardson best candidate for special peace envoy, Rice worst
More explanation about The Israel Factor here.
More about the panelists here.
Previous surveys of The Israel Factor here)