If President-elect Barack Obama nominates Hillary Clinton to be secretary of state, should it be considered a diversity hire or a case of choosing the best person for the job?

The question is ridiculous. People should debate whether Clinton, after eight years in the Senate, is qualified to be the nation's top diplomat. They should debate whether her husband's international business dealings produce too many conflicts of interest. They should debate whether there aren't better candidates with less baggage and more experience.

Those discussions are important. But most Americans realize it would be silly to waste even one minute debating whether Hillary Clinton got the job because of her gender. Never mind that her nomination could alleviate the pressure on the Obama transition team from women's groups who worry that his initial appointments have been dominated by men and that there aren't enough women in the running for other top jobs.

This happens to be the view of Kim Gandy, president of the National Organization for Women, who said recently that she would like Obama to appoint more women. It is also the opinion of Amy Siskind, co-founder of The New Agenda, a nonpartisan women's group founded by former Clinton supporters, who would like to see Hillary in a prominent position in the administration, but who would also like to see "parity in the representation of women in the Cabinet."

That sounds like a quota, and it would be the wrong way to go. There should not be a one-for-one matching of female applicants with male applicants. But we take the wider point that one can find qualified applicants with a variety of backgrounds, and that any administration would be foolish not to tap into that valuable diversity, provided it doesn't come at the expense of qualifications.

Obama's transition advisory board consists of eight men and four women. His agency review team has 13 men and seven women. His key economic advisers consist of 13 men and four women. The first three White House jobs all went to white males - Rahm Emanuel as White House chief of staff, Robert Gibbs as press secretary, Gregory Craig as White House counsel.

Valerie Jarrett, a close friend of the president-elect, was named a senior adviser, and she certainly is qualified for that job. Obama said during the campaign that he doesn't make major decisions without talking to her first.

This week Obama selected Eric Holder, a veteran of the Clinton Justice Department, to be the nation's first African-American attorney general.

It was Jarrett who laid out the expectation that Obama would assemble a Cabinet, White House and administration that looks like America. During an appearance on "Meet the Press," Jarrett compared the process to a "jigsaw puzzle" where the president-elect would strive to represent "the diversity of our country, diversity in perspectives, diversity in race, diversity in geography" while picking "the best person for each position."

That's the key point. Too many Americans are caught up in a false choice between diversity and quality. They honestly think that striving for one means sacrificing the other. It doesn't.

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