McCaskill and Obama on the campaign trail last year

WASHINGTON– Her decision to spurn fellow Sen. Hillary Clinton for Barack Obama is paying dividends for Claire McCaskill when it comes to rubbing elbows with the power elite.

Tomorrow, McCaskill is among a handful of invitees to the president’s prayer service just before he makes his way to the Capitol to be sworn in.

Tonight, Missouri’s junior senator introduced Obama at a dinner for Colin Powell at the National Building Museum.

McCaskill welcomed the president to the stage “with a very full and grateful heart,” as she put it. She observed that the Obama forces worked hard in Missouri but came up just short.

Powell, a Republican and the secretary of state earlier in the Bush administration, hazarded a risky endorsement of his own during the campaign when he came out for Obama in a late but well-timed televised statement.

Obama said of the famed general that “it’s easy to slip into superlatives when you talk about Colin Powell.” Obama did just that, speaking of Powell’s quiet, remarkably consistent loyalty to a set of principles — truth, loyalty and determination.”

The president had one more stop — at a dinner for Joe Biden at Washington’s Union Station — to offer some superlatives for his No. 2.

“He’s stared down dictators. He’s spoken up for cops and firefighters that he grew up with down the street,” Obama said.

Then it was back to the Blair House for the president, the last night for at least four years he’ll lack a permanent address in D.C.