Hillary’s Approval Soars
Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama led an opposition party to victory in August elections, ending an almost uninterrupted five decades of rule by the Liberal Democratic Party. Since then, the relationship with Japan recently has recently turned a bit sour. According to The Washington Post, there has been a series of canceled dinners, diplomatic demarches, and publicly and privately broken promises from the new government.
It may well be that the toughest guy on the Obama team is its Secretary of State. The Post reported that while most of the federal government was shut down by a snowstorm last week, there was one person in particular whom Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called in through the cold: Japanese Ambassador Ichiro Fujisaki.
Once he arrived, the Post stated, Clinton told him in blunt, if diplomatic, terms that the United States remains adamant about moving a contested Marine base from one part of Okinawa to another.
This and other examples may be the reason that Clinton’s approval rating has soared even while The President’s has declined.
According to Politico, in the nonpartisan Clarus Research Group poll of 800 registered voters who are self-identified “news watchers,” Clinton had a 75 percent approval rating and a 21 percent disapproval rating overall. Obama, in contrast, had a 51 percent approval and a 45 percent disapproval rating.
Clinton had 96 percent approval among Democrats, a healthy 57 percent approval among Republicans, and 65 percent approval among Independents. Politico exclaimed that Clinton’s Republican numbers are striking, given how intensely disliked she has been in the past among GOP voters.
“Republicans may see her as being more hawkish than other Democrats on foreign policy issues,” said Clarus president Ron Faucheux. “It may be a way for them to bolster that position within the administration.”
Asked about any future Clinton presidential bid, he said, “She’s in good shape now.”
