The Associated Press notes in one of its latest reports on Senator Hillary Clinton’s future in Barack Obama’s administration that the Obama campaign did its best to ridicule Clinton and her foreign policy credentials during the primaries but that all top advisers and staffers are now suddenly embracing and heralding her as some kind of foreign policy genius.

The report, which is more an opinion piece than anything else, points out that Obamites blasted Clinton only a few months ago.

“What exactly is this foreign policy experience?” Obama said mockingly of the New York senator. “Was she negotiating treaties? Was she handling crises? The answer is no.”

Greg Craig, selected to serve as White House counsel in the Obama administration, also attacked Clinton earlier this year saying: “She did not sit in on any National Security Council meetings when she was first lady.”

And he wrote in a memo: “There is no reason to believe … that she was a key player in foreign policy at any time during the Clinton administration.”

Susan Rice, a top Obama adviser likely to land a spot in his administration, made fun of Clinton back in March. “There is no crisis to be dealt with or managed when you are first lady,” Rice sniffed last March. “You don’t get that kind of experience by being married to a commander in chief.”

All that has changed considerably in recent weeks.

Obama adviser William Daley over the weekend said, for instance, that Clinton would be “a tremendous addition to this administration. Tremendous.”

Senior adviser David Axelrod called Clinton a “demonstrably able, tough, brilliant person.”

So, what happened?

Well, what happened is simple: they were campaigning back in the early spring and late winter. During campaigns hyperbole is used quite frequently. As David Gergen, who has served as an adviser to both Republican and Democratic presidents said: “That was then; this is now. Campaigns are thus.”

“Generally speaking,” Gergen said, “there is a recognition that campaigns bring a certain amount of hyperbole, and when it’s over you try to find the most talented people you can find to work with you.”

And that is what happened between Obama and Clinton: months ago, Obama had to ridicule Clinton just as she had to ridicule him. The goal was to win the presidential nomination of their party, not a role in the administration of a rival. During campaigns you will have to spin everything in as negative a manner as possible for your opponent.

It’s not personal. It’s politics.

Now that the campaign has ended and Barack Obama has become the president-elect, there is no need to continue ridiculing each other. Now, both sides are only interested in furthering their own career and, of course, improving the Democratic administration which will be in power for at least four, possibly even eight years.