Obama Administration

Hillary Clinton's favorable rating is at nearly the highest it has been in the 17 years that Gallup has been polling people about her. In a poll this month, 62 percent gave her a favorable rating, higher than President Obama's 56 percent. Clinton's highest rating -- 67 percent favorable -- was in December 1998, soon after her husband, then president, was impeached by the U.S. House of Representatives.

Among Democrats, 91 percent have a favorable rating of Clinton. For Republicans it's 35 percent, and for independents it's 55 percent.

Meanwhile, Obama's 56 percent favorable rating is the lowest it has been since late 2007, and his unfavorable rating -- 40 percent -- is his highest ever. (The telephone poll of 1,013 American adults was conducted Oct. 1 to 4, before the announcement of his Nobel Peace Prize, which might have temporarily lifted his favorable rating.)

(The margin of error for 95 percent confidence is ± 4 percentage points.)

Secretary Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert Gates are in harmony on many foreign-policy issues, according to a recent New York Times article. Tensions between the secretaries of state and defense have often been "epic" in previous administrations, but the two get along remarkably well, even talking Afghanistan policy over a long private dinner at the Blue Duck Tavern last week after their joint talk for CNN.

Over at FP's Shadow Government blog, Peter Feaver comments.

Secretary Clinton was on NBC's Today show this morning. She made some boilerplate remarks that President Obama received the Nobel Peace Prize due to "his attitude toward America's role in the world" and that the award is "not going to influence" his decisions regarding Afghanistan. (She of course has to say those kinds of things; Obama's her boss.)

Then Clinton addressed the thorn-in-her-side issue that she supposedly has too low a profile in the Obama administration. She said the claim was "absurd" and that it was "so at variance with what I do every day." (She did just save the day on the Turkey-Armenia accord and promote peace in Northern Ireland -- all in the one weekend after Obama won the Nobel.) She explained that U.S. foreign policy doesn't have to be "me, me, me" 24/7, stating:

Maybe there is some misunderstanding which needs to be clarified. I believe in delegating power. … I am not one of those people who feel I have to have my face in front of the newspaper and on the TV every moment of the day. … It's just the way I am. My goal is to be a very positive force to implement the kind of changes that the president and I believe are in the best interest of our country, but that doesn't mean that it has to be me, me, me all the time. I like lifting people up."

When asked if she'll run for president again, she laughed and simply stated, "no."

Video: Today show, NBC

A Fox News/Opinion Dynamics telephone survey of 900 registered American voters conducted Sept. 29 and 30 found that 27 percent think Hillary Clinton would have been doing a better job than Barack Obama had she won last year's presidential election. On the other hand, 28 percent said she would be doing worse. The margin of error is 3 percentage points, so that's probably not a statistically significant difference. Overall, it appears people, regardless of their political affiliation, are more or less divided on who would be a better president, though Republicans skew a bit toward Clinton and Democrats a bit toward Obama.

Graphic created by Bradley Amburn, Foreign Policy

Fortune magazine just ranked Secretary Clinton as the No. 2 most powerful woman in Washington, after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. (The magazine says it excluded first lady Michelle Obama because she "exercises her own brand of influence.") Clinton's No. 2 position makes a lot more sense than her No. 36 ranking on Forbes' list last month of the 100 most powerful women in the world.

Fortune did bring up the discussed-to-death topic of "Clinton in the shadows," stating: "As she travels the globe, wielding clout with America's trading partners, many question how strong a voice she has in Obama's inner circle." I'm sick of blogging on this topic! Clinton and President Obama get along very well. Above, the two hug right before Obama's health-care speech last Wednesday, Sept. 9. And look at the photo below of Thursday's cabinet meeting -- the meeting of the "inner circle." Clinton is literally Obama's right-hand woman (albeit Obama is left-handed).

Photos, top to bottom: JEWEL SAMAD/AFP/Getty Images, Olivier Douliery-Pool/Getty Images

A Harris Interactive poll of 2,498 American adults conducted online from Aug. 10 to 18 found that of the Obama administration officials asked about, only Secretary Clinton received an overall positive rating:

• 51% positive (with 16% "excellent" and 36% "pretty good")
• 31% negative (with 19% "only fair" and 12% "poor")
• 18% not familiar enough to have an opinion

President Barack Obama was not included in the poll. Also, some of the percentages don't add up exactly due to rounding.

Here's how Clinton has done by month, with percentages in the order of positive, negative, and not familiar:

• August: 51%, 31%, 18%
• June: 47%, 34%, 19%
• May: 50%, 33%, 17%
• April: 51%, 32%, 17%
• March: 49%, 36%, 15%

Overall, pretty stable.

Photo: INDRANIL MUKHERJEE/AFP/Getty Images

Secretary Clinton should drink "Mad Bitch" beer suggests Washington Post journalist Dana Milbank in a video that was later pulled from the newspaper's Web site. [Foreign Policy, by the way, is owned by the Washington Post Company.]

The humorous video related to the discussion about what type of beer would be consumed at last week's "beer summit" between President Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, Prof. Henry Louis Gates Jr., and Sgt. James Crowley. "We won't tell you who's getting a bottle of Mad Bitch," Milbank says while dispaying a photo of Clinton about 2:35 into the video.

The Washington Post's communications director told Talking Points Memo via e-mail: "The video was a satirical piece that lampooned people of all stripes. There was a section of the video that went too far, so we have removed the piece from our website."

The video isn't that funny, and Clinton laughs off this kind of ridicule anyway. It's probably getting pretty old for her by now.

Note: I tried to embed the video above, but it isn't working. You can view it at Media Matters or YouTube, though.

When Tina Brown wrote in belittling fashion that President Obama has Secretary Clinton in a burqa, it revealed just how difficult it is to comprehend how foreign policy gets made in the United States, writes Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum today.

Applebaum writes that Obama doesn't send detailed instructions to Clinton, controlling what she does -- that kind of stuff only happens in dictatorships, like North Korea. Rather, she is granted a lot of leeway in deciding how to engage the world. Obama doesn't force her to keep quiet; rather it's up to Clinton to engage the world as she sits fit.

And Clinton has been outspoken many times during her first six months. In April, she said Pakistan was "abdicating" to the Taliban; she made controversial statements about China and human rights in February; she discussed a possible "defense umbrella" in the Persian Gulf region. She has held town-hall meetings overseas and spoken in TV interviews both abroad and in the United States.

Ultimately, Applebaum concludes, the ball -- not the burqa -- is in Clinton's court: "It is up to her to tell us what she thinks is important, and why. If she hasn't done so yet, that isn't the president's fault."

Photo: SHAH MARAI/AFP/Getty Images