Hillary Rodham Clinton, like her boss, is in something of a honeymoon period as well.

Today, the secretary of state is in Mexico to sell the Obama administration's revamped plan to deal with Mexican drug cartels. She made her first big foreign trip to Asia, where she won generally high marks, though she dismayed human rights advocates when she seemed to soft-pedal the issue in China.

And she's riding high in the polls.

According to the CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll, 71 percent of Americans approve of her job performance and 23 percent disapprove.

Her predecessor, Condoleezza Rice, had lower approval ratings in similar polls, weighed down by the unpopular war in Iraq. In December 2006, her rating was 57 percent, and in March 2005 it was 61 percent.

The new survey, conducted March 12-15, has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.




By Foon Rhee, The Boston Globe, March 25, 2009