Eclipsed by a globe-trotting president, a foreign policy-savvy vice president and a bevy of special envoys, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is struggling to re-emerge this week as the Obama administration's diplomatic heavyweight.
Clinton is trying to retake center stage as the top foreign policy voice of the U.S. government after four frustrating low-profile weeks during which a fractured elbow forced her to cancel two overseas trips.
Her diminishing presence abroad and at home, followed by her startling public criticism of the White House this week for delaying a major State Department appointment, has prompted a flurry of speculation whether her influence is waning inside President Barack Obama's Cabinet.
Clinton is set to deliver what aides bill as a major policy address at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington on Wednesday. A day later she heads off on an around-the-world trip as she attempts to shake the perception among a growing number of foreign policy observers that she has been sidelined as a major player inside the Obama Cabinet.
"Her role so far has been more in the field of public relations than in policy formation," said Reginald Dale, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "She is seen as glamorous and in many countries as a valuable symbol of the United States, but it is not at all clear that she has an in-depth influence on foreign policy."
"She needs to decide if she wants to be the administration's mascot or have an impact on actual policy," he said. "If she wants to have an impact the speech may be a way of claiming her stake."
Clinton's frustration was perhaps evident on Monday when in a rare fit of pique, she lashed out at the White House for failing to quickly nominate someone to lead the U.S. Agency for International Development.
The post is considered critical to what Clinton refers to as "smart power," the combination of defense, diplomacy and development that the administration wants to guide its foreign policy. "Smart power," which Clinton spoke about frequently in her early days as the nation's top envoy, will be the focus of her speech Wednesday.
"She's not trying to announce a grand doctrine," said Anne-Marie Slaughter, Clinton's director of policy planning. "That is not the point. The point is to provide a coherent strategic framework" to explain the administration's foreign policy approach thus far and set the stage for future policy decisions.
In rather undiplomatic comments on Monday, Clinton criticized the White House vetting process as a "nightmare," "frustrating beyond words" and "ridiculous." She added that overly burdensome financial and personal disclosure requirements had led several candidates to withdraw.
And, in an unusually blunt description of an interagency squabble, she allowed that she had "tried very hard" but had been denied permission by the White House to tell USAID employees that they would soon get a new boss.
The White House would not comment on her remarks.
Though they deny any rivalry in the administration's foreign policy team, Clinton aides say she is eager to get back to what had been a frenetic pace of travel and events.
Clinton aides soundly reject suggestions that she has been forced into a back-seat role but acknowledge that she has chafed under the limitations imposed by her injury, which notably caused her to miss important multilateral conferences in Europe in late June and not to accompany Obama to Russia last week.
The impression persists, however, that she lost clout in her absence as Obama traveled frequently in an elevated foreign policy role that some observers have described as "diplomat in chief." At the same time, Vice President Joe Biden also has assumed an increasingly public role in diplomacy in Iraq and has waded into both the delicate Middle East peace process and into American relations with Iran. And national security adviser James Jones has shaped his own high-profile presence while a group of globe-trotting special envoys have pursued shuttle diplomacy from Khartoum to Jerusalem to Kabul.
Michael Mandelbaum, a professor of American Foreign Policy at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, said it remains too early, six months into the administration, to assess Clinton's influence.
He noted she has yet to take on a specific significant project or projects to distinguish herself as the nation's chief diplomat.
"Every president always overshadows every secretary of state; that's just the nature of the beast," he said. "But a secretary of state carves out a niche by picking out an issue, or two, or three, and taking it as his or her own. She hasn't yet done that, at least not yet."
Clinton's departure for India and Thailand on Thursday will mark her first trip abroad since a one-day visit to Niagara Falls, Canada, on June 13. Only in recent days has she begun to resume a more robust schedule in talks with visiting foreign officials and "town hall" meetings with employees.
"Her name hasn't been up there in lights," said Dale.
In the address, which was still being written on Tuesday, Clinton planned to highlight "smart power" along with the importance of dealing with the spread of weapons of mass destruction, the threat posed by Iran and North Korea, the need for compromise to forge Middle East peace and an initiative on international food security, aides said.
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AP National Security Writer Robert Burns contributed to this story.
