Senior Fellow Karlyn Bowman

In 1938, two-thirds of those surveyed by Gallup approved of the way "Mrs. Roosevelt [was] conducting herself as first lady." For another 50 years, the pollsters didn't show much interest in first ladies. The Roper Center poll archive at the University of Connecticut has 85 questions about Nancy Reagan and 57 about Barbara Bush. But there are more than 3,000 questions about Hillary Clinton spanning her 16 years in the public eye, and they provide a nuanced portrait of a possible secretary of state.

Several polling organizations started tracking opinion about Clinton in early 1992. Not surprisingly, in March of that year, just 50 percent in an ABC News/Washington Post poll ventured an opinion. Of those who did, 28 percent rated her favorably, and 22 percent unfavorably. Despite her controversial campaign comment about preferring her professional career to staying home, baking cookies and having teas, and her husband's comment, "buy one, get one free," Hillary Clinton's favorability ratings rose over the course of the campaign. Nearly 60 percent greeted her positively after President Clinton's inauguration.

During the first two years of the Clinton presidency, the president and the first lady's ratings moved in tandem, but they diverged significantly several times after that. In both the ABC News/Washington Post and Gallup polls, her ratings fell to a low point in 1996 after the health care and Whitewater debacles. The country rallied to the wounded spouse during the Lewinsky scandal, giving her her highest favorable rating (64 percent) during the White House years in an April 1998 ABC News/Washington Post poll.

Evaluating her first 10 years in public life, Gallup reported that her highest unfavorable rating came shortly after the Clintons left the White House when issues of last-minute pardons and gifts to the first family were in the news.

When she began her listening tour in New York in 1999, Americans pronounced her qualified for a Senate run but they were not uniformly enthusiastic about it. In polls conducted by Yankelovich from February 1999 to January 2000, nearly 40 percent said they would not vote for her if she were running in their state. But New Yorkers have warmed to her.

In both the Marist and Quinnipiac polls of New Yorkers, her approval rating is above 60 percent today. A new Marist poll finds that 55 percent of registered voters there would like her to become secretary of state, while 31 percent want her to stay in the Senate.

In 2007, when Karl Rove raised doubts about her presidential prospects in part because of her high "negatives," Gallup noted that other candidates had unfavorable ratings comparable with hers. Her unfavorable ratings were high, but they were only one of many factors contributing to her defeat. An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll from June 2008 found that 41 percent thought her husband had hurt her campaign, while only 19 percent said he had helped it.

Early impressions of secondary characters in politics tend to stick, and that is the case for Hillary Clinton. Americans have acknowledged her intelligence and work ethic from the 1992 campaign onward. But her weaknesses have long been apparent.

In a 2003 Gallup poll, when asked about qualities that strongly applied to her, 72 percent said "intelligence," but only 24 percent said "honest and trustworthy." In a March 2008 Gallup/USA Today poll, 67 percent thought the phrase honest and trustworthy applied to Barack Obama. Only 44 percent said it applied to Clinton.

It's also not clear how much Americans admire her, although they see her as a positive role model. In seven questions asked by Yankelovich between 1992 and 1998, only once did a majority say she was someone they admired. In an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll in 1992, 66 percent said she was a positive role model, while 21 percent disagreed. The last time they asked the question in 2007, those responses were 56 and 38 percent, respectively.

New role or not, pollsters will continue to track her powerful persona.

Karlyn Bowman is a senior fellow at AEI.