It pains me but Palin's comment on Crane tells me she has been rejected for anything important. Just my opinion.
Until Trump came on line I was going to write Palin in no matter who won the primary, so I am by no means a Palin detractor.
One point I was trying to make (ahem) was that the article frames the boundaries of the solution space— the “box.”
People can argue and argue what is inside the box. Some folks are even well adapted to arguing what is inside boxes that they are given.
Arguing (or arguing endlessly, lol) about what is inside the box ignores the potential of what lies outside the box.
I think Trump is an outside-the-box thinker.
I also think that Palin is an outside-the-box thinker.
I also think or at least hope that outside-the-box thinkers tend to value each other more than others do.
For this reason I hope that Palin is not out of the running for a Trump Cabinet position. Given her out of the box thinking— to my mind, a valuable asset that still attracts flak from most if not all directions— and her willingness to speak out instead of being merely a yes-person, I would hope that she is still under consideration for something. Furthermore I think giving her Secretary of the VA, a relatively thankless position, would be OK but yields all the drawbacks of the negative MSM gauntlet while relatively little of the advantages of her O-O-B skills (this is just my current view, subject to revision as I learn and understand more). She’d be good in VA, but State needs someone fearless to shake it up, and IMHO over the years Palin has proven in spades that she is fearless.
For these reasons I am not as skeptical as you. Nor am I tracking the latest breadcrumbs since I think it would be like Trump to lead a false trail to put the MSM off the scent (so to speak) of his true intentions, giving him more motion to play the entire field instead of the few that will inevitably be held by others (eg in the MSM or even in the GOP) who presume they know more than he does.
To answer the question narrowly, I see less differences between the four folks listed than most. I think there is a chance that they all might work out, though I agree with the previously expressed doubts about Petraeus due to his role in Benghazi— puzzling to me to this day. A “problem” with someone like Guiliani or Bolton is that they are sometimes “too close” to the action, and therefore have a certain amount of relevant political baggage, or at least perceived political baggage. Such baggage leaves the field free for an able relative outsider to come in and “clean house.”