'Selling' America to the world

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Returning from a diplomatic trip around Asia with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Kim Ghattas reflects on the success of the visit.

Asia was Hillary Clinton's first overseas trip as US secretary of stateShe was wearing her trademark pantsuit. On this occasion, black trousers and a red jacket.

There were gigantic banners all around the stage welcoming her.

Massive TV screens on the walls of the packed auditorium. Our press passes included a huge picture of her.

She was the star, smiling, waving to the crowd full of excited women, answering their questions with humour and charm for an hour.

In the audience, a woman was proudly showing her friends a picture of herself with Hillary and Bill Clinton in the 1990s.

You could have been forgiven for thinking that the former First Lady was back on the campaign trail. But Hillary Clinton was now acting as America's top diplomat.

Personal questions

This was the Ewha Women University campus in Seoul and the questions were not about tax cuts or US healthcare, or even about North Korea's nuclear weapons or the global economic crisis.

Hours into her first foreign trip Hillary Clinton had already put her unique stamp on the role The gushing students asked about her daughter Chelsea, about how to balance a career with motherhood, and the best of all, how did she know Bill was the man for her. Hillary laughed and said she felt more like an advice columnist than a secretary of state.

This was no Condoleezza Rice, the stern academic who stuck to meetings with officials, and who knows how Henry Kissinger would have reacted to such questions.

But hours into her first foreign trip, Hillary Clinton had already put her unique stamp on the role, one that may bring opportunities, but one that may also cause tensions.

Political machine

While I sat through the explanation of why she had become a lawyer and not an astronaut, I could not help but think this did feel and look like an election campaign and that Ewha sounded strangely like Iowa, where it all kicked off for Hillary just over 12 months ago.

Hillary Clinton spoke about ties between the US and IndonesiaAnd perhaps as they planned her tour of Asia, this is how her staff had envisaged it as well.

After all, she was still surrounded by some of the same people. The young lawyer Jake Sullivan, her national politics adviser, Huma Abedin (her glamorous aide de camp) and Kiki McLean, a veteran Democratic strategist who kept asking us - the travelling press - how we thought "Madame Secretary" was doing or what our headlines would be for the next day.

The Clinton political machine was in full swing and it seemed to be more about Hillary and less about foreign policy.

She drew excited crowds everywhere she went from Japan to South Korea and on to Indonesia, where she mingled with people on the streets.

She said her role was not just about repairing relations with governments around the world but also to talk to people But the journalists accompanying her were given incredibly short TV and radio interviews, the kind of quick appearances presidential candidates make with local reporters in American towns as they criss-cross the country.

'Diplomatic subtleties'

When she finally sat down with us in Seoul for a more lengthy conversation before flying off to Beijing, the questions were mostly about her style as a secretary of state.

She said her role was not just about repairing relations with governments around the world but also to talk to people, to try to influence their view of America by meeting Japanese students or chatting to Indonesians about the clean water and healthcare projects the US was funding in their country.

It may be trickier to navigate the fog of Middle Eastern diplomatic talk and Arab niceties And she made clear she had little patience for diplomatic subtleties.

She had caused a bit of a stir earlier when she openly discussed the looming leadership change in North Korea and Washington's contingency plans, a subject that US officials usually avoid discussing in public.

Mrs Clinton said simply it was "evident" she would talk about the obvious and that doing otherwise was "counter-productive and an impediment to clear thinking."

Restoring reputations

But will this candour help inject some energy into the stalled Middle East peace talks?

She will be heading there next week on her second foreign trip, but it may be trickier to navigate the fog of Middle Eastern diplomatic talk and Arab niceties.

One official who was expecting to travel with her asked me what she was like during the trip and if I had any tips for him.

A sign perhaps of the tensions between the Clinton political machine and the career diplomats inside the sleepy State Department building.

But her visit to the troubled region, where America most needs to revamp its image, will likely be more subdued. Her audience may be less exuberant, and more sceptical.

It will have to be more foreign policy, less Hillary.

The cynics will tell you that she is back on the campaign trail with an eye on her legacy and maybe even her political future.

But perhaps she really is on a world campaign for the United States.

She won over Asia, but selling America in the Middle East will be a much tougher task.

From Our Own Correspondent was broadcast on Thursday, 26 February, 2009 at 1100 GMT on BBC Radio 4. Please check the <a class="inlineText" href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/3187926.stm">programme schedules </a>for World Service transmission times.