Hillary is More Popular Than Her Boss

It was not quite the tempest triggered by John Lennon claiming in 1966 that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus. But the Gallup Poll got the winds racing through the world's TV studios Thursday with a new survey headlined, "Hillary Clinton Now More Popular Than Barack Obama." According to the Gallup numbers, 62 percent of the voters view Clinton favorably while Obama's thumbs-up rating is down to 56 percent.

Most Americans do not know that Nicholas Sarkozy is the president of France and are shaky on the question of whether Israel and Iran share a common border, according to polls by the Pew Research Center. (The answer to the geography question is "no" but that probably will not matter if Iran tests a nuclear device.) More flat-screen televisions perched above the bottles in the nation's bars undoubtedly were tuned to the baseball playoffs than CNN International for the latest on Clinton's current road trip that has carried her from Moscow to Belfast. So, it is a safe bet that she is not the beneficiary of any newfound media glow from her Cabinet role as secretary of state.

In fact, the closer you look at this Gallup Poll competition between Obama and his chief diplomat, the less surprising the outcome becomes. Obama's popularity has succumbed to the force of gravity (although it remains above 50 percent) because he is in the middle of a divisive fight over health care reform. The president is also saddled with the problem that people filling out unemployment claims are more likely to be looking under the couch for spare change than burbling about "Change you can believe in."

The woman who ran for president as "Hillary" with no last name needed has become about as noncontroversial as, say, Meryl Streep. When she pops into view, she is generally talking about issues that unite Americans such as toughening international sanctions against Iran and punishing rapists in the Congo. Depicted in the press as one of the administration's stay-the-course hawks on Afghanistan, she has undoubtedly confounded conservatives who were convinced that her foreign policy views were a little to the left of Hugo Chavez's. Even her one sharp-edged moment in the Cabinet (responding to a student questioner in Africa by snapping, "My husband is not the secretary of state. I am.") underscored her independence from the former president.

Despite the polarizing image left over from her malpractice during the 1993-94 quest for health care reform, Hillary Clinton has consistently scored well in the national surveys since Obama was elected president. Sixty-two percent of the voters viewed her favorably in a mid-September Bloomberg Poll and an August Fox News/Opinion Dynamics Poll awarded her a 66 percent approval rating. In that just-released Gallup survey, 55 percent of independents and 35 percent of Republicans – plus an overwhelming 93 percent of Democrats – accentuate the positive when asked about her.

If there is a larger moral here, it is the virtue of resilience. Aside from Al Gore and maybe John Kerry, there is no living political figure who came closer than Hillary Clinton to being president. As my friend Elaine Kamarck, a former top adviser to Gore who teaches at Harvard's Kennedy School, points out in her new book Primary Politics, Clinton had a delegate lead over Obama based on the primaries alone. Since 2008 was obviously, in retrospect, a Democratic year, her failure to successfully contest the caucuses probably cost her a four-year lease on the Oval Office. The point here is not to cast doubt on the legitimacy of Obama's presidency, but to offer a window into Hillary's mood and style. Other losing candidates sulked and disappeared (think of Gore heading to Europe in 2001 and growing a beard). She became secretary of state without any public hint of dwelling on the might-have-beens.

There are those close to her who wonder if she might have been more influential had she stayed in the Senate and become the public face of health care reform following the death of Ted Kennedy. She and Defense Secretary Robert Gates are probably the most influential Cabinet members, but this is an administration (even more than most presidencies) in which decision-making power is centralized in the White House. For all the references to Lincoln's Cabinet and Doris Kearns Goodwin's book, Team of Rivals, it might be more apt to describe Obama's top appointees as a Team of Sub-Ordinates.

Still, there is an odd tenor to Hillary Clinton's sudden talk of – gasp! – retiring someday. She told ABC's Cynthia McFadden during a Wednesday interview for Nightline that she was "looking forward at some point to maybe slowing down a little bit. Having some time to, you know, just collect myself." This does not sound like a woman looking for an exit strategy from the Obama administration since she also unequivocally dismissed the notion that she might run for governor of New York in 2010.

Maybe we are on the cusp of another reinvention by the 61-year-old former Wellesley College antiwar commencement speaker, Arkansas corporate lawyer, first lady and New York senator. This time around it might be the free-from-ambition Hillary Clinton who reclines on a sofa reading novels in her home in Chappaqua, New York. Sure, the notion seems outlandish. But then 10 years ago, so did the idea of "Senator Clinton." Whatever happens – and a four-year tenure as secretary of state remains the most likely outcome – her buoyant popularity will probably keep her afloat in the polls.