APPRAISAL

Hillary's 'Mixed Record'

Joe Klein on Clinton's first 10 months.

What's the state of the secretary of State? Time magazine's Joe Klein takes a look at the first 10 months of Hillary Clinton's tenure and finds a "mixed record." Clinton has three traits that could make her term "memorable," Klein writes: Her "vision of departmental reform," her political acumen, and, "most important," her "international celebrity." Those assets combined for a knockout trip to Pakistan, where Clinton made herself available to hostile lines of questioning and gave candid and honest answers to her audiences. But her overly blunt recent pronouncements on Israeli settlements are "perplexing," says Klein, and at this point it's still unclear whether the White House's foreign-policy goals are being advanced. Hillary, Klein writes, "will have to become a more sure-handed negotiator, and, most important, a trusted adviser to a president who knows where he wants to go in the world but hasn't quite figured out how to get there."