Why Hillary Clinton Would Be Strong in 2016 (It\'s Not Her Favorability Ratings)

Let's start by stating the obvious: Hillary Rodham Clinton would be a formidable presidential candidate in 2016.

Mrs. Clinton's credentials as secretary of state, as a United States senator and as a politically engaged first lady would be hard for any of her Democratic or Republican rivals to match. She would have little trouble raising funds or garnering support from the Democratic officials, and she might even come close to clearing the Democratic field of serious opposition.

Mrs. Clinton made some tactical errors during the 2008 campaign - particularly, in her staff's failure to understand the importance of contesting caucus states. But she improved considerably as a candidate over the course of the long primary, and the experience she gained would undoubtedly help her if she were to run again.

But if Mrs. Clinton runs for president in 2016, one thing is almost certain: she won't be as popular as she is right now. Recent polls show that about 65 percent of Americans take a favorable view of Mrs. Clinton, while only about 30 percent have a negative one. Those are remarkably high numbers for a politician in an era when many public officials are distrusted or disliked.

But part of the reason for Mrs. Clinton's high numbers is that, as secretary of state, she has remained largely above the partisan fray that characterizes elections and fights over domestic policy.

Over the course of her long career, the public's views of Mrs. Clinton have shifted along with her public role. When she has been actively engaged in the hand-to-hand combat that characterizes election campaigns and battles in Congress, her favorability ratings have taken a hit, only to recover later.

Mrs. Clinton might be the most polled about figure American in history, other than those who have actually become president. Between the PollingReport.com database and other publicly available polling archives, I was able to identify about 500 high-quality telephone surveys that tested her favorability ratings with the public.

In the chart below, I've taken a moving average of Mrs. Clinton's favorable and unfavorable ratings dating back to 1992. (The average is based on the 10 surveys that were conducted closest to the given date). The chart also highlights some of the most important moments of Mrs. Clinton's career.

Mrs. Clinton, like her husband, began the 1992 campaign as a relatively unknown figure, but grew more popular as the campaign wore on. By the time Bill Clinton was inaugurated in January, 1993, about 50 percent of Americans took a favorable view of Mrs. Clinton against 20 percent who had an unfavorable one.

But Mrs. Clinton took a far more active role in seeking to affect public policy than most first ladies. In September 1993, she appeared before Congressional committees in an effort to advance the health care bill that she and Mr. Clinton had helped to design. No longer subject to the deference that first ladies typically receive from politicians and from the news media - and associated with a health care bill that would soon die in Congress - Mrs. Clinton saw her unfavorable ratings rise sharply, increasing to about 35 percent.

Adding to the pressure was the Whitewater investigation. In April 1994, Mrs. Clinton gave an unusual news conference in an effort to respond to her critics. The next two years were among the most difficult periods in Mrs. Clinton's career, with her favorable ratings often barely exceeding her unfavorable ones. During stretches of early 1996, more Americans viewed Mrs. Clinton negatively than positively.

The release of the Senate Whitewater committee's report in June 1996, which largely lacked substantive proof of wrongdoing by Mr. or Mrs. Clinton, seemed to help relieve the strain on her popularity, with Mrs. Clinton's favorability ratings increasing, and her unfavorable ratings declining, throughout 1997.

Another set of accusations, which would become the Monica Lewinsky scandal, would work to Mrs. Clinton's bene fit, with her favorability ratings reaching a new high of about 60 percent after the impeachment of Mr. Clinton by the House of Representatives.

But Mrs. Clinton's favorability ratings declined sharply in early 1999, after she declared her interest in running for the United States Senate, again making herself an explicitly political figure. After a brief “bounce”in her favorability ratings following her election to the Senate from New York in November 2000, Mrs. Clinton's image entered into a long period of relative stability, with her favorable ratings averaging just below 50 percent, and her unfavorable ratings just above 40 percent, for most of the next six years.

Mrs. Clinton's popularity would come under further pressure when she pursued her next ambition, announcing her candidacy for the presidency in January 2007. Over much of the next 18 months, as she came under increasing scrutiny from Barack Obama and other Democrats along with Republicans, her fav orable and unfavorable ratings ran even with one another at about 45 percent.

Her favorable ratings would rebound in the late stages of the Democratic campaign, climbing to about 50 percent at about the time she withdrew from the race on June 7, 2008. They continued to move upward throughout the rest of 2008.

Then Mrs. Clinton received a further boost after accepting the job as Mr. Obama's secretary of state. Her favorability ratings have been stable - and strong - throughout most of Mr. Obama's first term, with 60 or 65 percent of Americans taking a favorable view of her against 30 percent who have a negative one.

What is the moral of the story - other than that Mrs. Clinton has had a remarkably interesting political career?

The theme is that a politician's favorability ratings are a function, to a large degree, of the extent to which the other political party, and perhaps also the news media, feels as though they have license to criticize her.

During her tenure as first lady, Mrs. Clinton's favorability ratings were lower when she was more actively engaged in policy making, as she was during the negotiations on the health care bill. And her popularity came under more strain during the Whitewater allegations, in which she was implicated, than during the ones involving Ms. Lewinsky and Mr. Clinton.

There was also less benefit of the doubt afforded to Mrs. Clinton after she became a candidate for public office, and then an influential Democratic figure in the Senate. And her popularity especially suffered during the early stages of presidential campaign, when she came under intense scrutiny not only from Republicans, but also from her fellow Democrats.

The surge in Mrs. Clinton's favorability ratings late in the 2008 campaign, although perhaps partly testifying to her steadily improving skills as a campaigner and to her new role as an underdog in the Democratic primary race, may also have reflected the f act that Republicans had less incentive to criticize her. Instead, they were trying to woo her supporters - or bolster her chances to prolong the Democratic nomination process.

Mrs. Clinton has been highly popular as secretary of state, but so were her predecessors during George W. Bush's administration, Colin L. Powell and (to a slightly lesser extent) Condoleezza Rice.

A secretary of state is not necessarily above partisan criticism, but attacking a secretary of state can potentially backfire on the opposition party. As Mitt Romney discovered during the presidential campaign foreign affairs can present an unlevel playing field to the opposition party. The White House and the Department of State have a number of defenses that they can employ to shield themselves from criticism, from claiming that they are pro tecting the national interest, to accusing their opponents of being unpatriotic, to arguing that their opponents lack knowledge of the situation on the ground. The secretary of state, like the president, also enjoys the symbolic trappings of incumbency when she conducts diplomatic affairs.

Were Mrs. Clinton to run for president again, she would lose most of these advantages. Republicans would begin to criticize her, delicately at first, and then more expressly as the election drew nearer.

None of this is to argue that Mrs. Clinton would not have some unique strengths as a candidate. For all the reasons I mentioned at the top, she seems like Democrats' best bet, perhaps by some margin, to extend their winning streak to three or more terms in the White House. If she ran even a point or two stronger than a “generic” Democrat, the odds would shift meaningfully in her favor, holding other circumstances equal.

But elections in which no incumbent is running ar e usually fairly close. And in an era of intense partisanship, there is a relatively low ceiling (and perhaps also a relatively high floor) on the favorability ratings that any politician can have in the most active stages of a presidential campaign.

Perhaps Mrs. Clinton's most impressive attribute is her ability to withstand criticism - and often emerge the stronger from it. If she runs for president again, she will surely receive plenty of it.

Penguin to Publish 2012 Campaign Book From Authors of \'Game Change\'

Evan Agostini/Associated Press John Heilemann, left, and Mark Halperin attended the premiere of the film version of their book, “Game Change.”

5:14 p.m. | Updated Mark Halperin and John Heilemann, the political journalists behind the best seller “Game Change,” about the 2008 presidential campaign, will publish a book about the just-concluded election under the title “Double Down: Game Change 2012,” Penguin Press announced on Tuesday.

Penguin also said that HBO had optioned the rights to the book, which is set to appear in fall 2013.

“Game Change,” which made its debut at No. 1 on the New York Times best-seller list in 2010, featured behind-the-scenes machinations within the Obama and McCain campaigns.

Mr. Halperin is a senior political analyst for both Time magazine and MSNBC and Mr. Heilemann is national affairs editor for New York magazine and political commentator on MSNBC.

Their earlier book was the basis of an HBO film starring Julianne Moore as Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska and Woody Harrelson as the Republican strategist Steve Schmidt. The film, which focused exclusively on the book's revelations about Senator John McCain's unexpected decision to pick Ms. Palin as his running mate, won five Emmy awards.

The book is being handled by the power duo of Ann Godoff at Penguin and Andrew Wylie at The Wylie Agency.

In making the announcement, Ms. Godoff said that “Double Down” would break news about the campaigns.

Leslie Kaufman writes about the publishing industry. Follow @leslieNYT on Twitter.

Don Imus Signs a 3-Year Extension for His Radio Show

On his syndicated radio show, “Imus in the Morning,” the 72-year-old Don Imus sometimes talks about retiring to his ranch in New Mexico. And maybe he will someday, but not for at least three years.

Mr. Imus has signed a deal with Cumulus Media, the owner of his home station, WABC-AM in New York, to extend the show through 2015, Cumulus announced. The terms were not announced.

The Fox Business Network, which simulcasts the show, said it had also extended its deal with Mr. Imus.

Mr. Imus, who on his show recently discussed the impending end of his current five-year contract with Cumulus, commented on the extens ion with uncharacteristic pith: “I love it,” he said. “Let's do it.”

“Imus in the Morning” is syndicated to 74 stations around the country, and heard by about 2.25 million listeners each week, according to Talkers, a radio trade publication. That is far fewer than some of the giants of talk radio, like Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity, whose audience is 14 million to 15 million.

But Mr. Imus's prominence in New York, where his show has been running for most of the last 41 years, and the loyalty of his audience mean that stations can charge higher advertising rates on his show than others with comparable aud iences, said Michael Harrison, the editor and publisher of Talkers.

“Although ratings count, they don't count as much with Imus,” Mr. Harrison said. “He's always had a very loyal and upper-echelon clientele. They're active, affluent, and tuned-in to politics, business and popular culture on the kind of level that radio companies and ad agencies like.”

Mr. Imus began his show in New York in 1971, and was canceled by CBS in 2007 amid a national furor after Mr. Imus made comments about the Rutgers University women's basketball team that were called both racist and sexist.

By the end of 2007, however, he returned to the air on WABC, 770 AM, with a five-year deal with Citadel Radio, then the station's owner. Last year, Citadel merged with Cumulus, whose other talk show hosts include Michael Savage, Geraldo Rivera and Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas.

Ben Sisario writes about the music industry. Follow @sisario on Twitter.

PBS Names Beth Hoppe as Programming Chief

PBS Beth Hoppe

PBS has a new head of programming.

Beth Hoppe, who joined PBS in August 2011 as a vice president in the programming department, has been promoted to the top programming job, according to an internal memo distributed Tuesday.

Ms. Hoppe previously worked at Discovery Studios, the production arm of cable's Discovery network, and at WNET, the New York public television station. Her new title will be chief programming executive and general manager, general audience programming.

She replaces John Wilson, who is moving to a new job as senior vice president, pledge strategy and special projects, where, according to the memo, his role will be to “reinvigorate pledge programming,” those shows that PBS stations use to solicit viewer donations. Mr. Wilson has worked in the PBS programming department since 1994.

In a statement, Michael Jones, chief operating officer at PBS, said, “As we continue to execute on our strategic plan to revitalize our content, strengthen stations and encourage innovation, we are evolving our structure to better enable us to execute against our priorities and capitalize on opportunities.”

The Breakfast Meeting: What\'s Tracked in Apps for Children, and \'America - What a Life!\'

A report from the Federal Trade Commission found that hundreds of the most popular educational and game mobile apps for children failed to inform parents about the information the apps gathered during use, Natasha Singer reports. That information can be used to track children as they use different apps and browse the Internet. The report did not disclose the names of the apps that were studied, because, in the words of Jessica Rich, an official at the commission, the point was to emphasize that parents could not navigate the system themselves, thinking “if they avoid certain apps, they are home free.” The commission is preparing stronger rules on parental notification.

Ayana Mathis's path to becomi ng a celebrated author was hardly by the book, even if it culminated in acceptance at the Iowa Writers' workshop, Felicia Lee writes. At 39, she is publishing her first novel, “The Twelve Tribes of Hattie,” after years of trying to find her voice in writing. “Twelve Tribes” tells the story of an extended family that experienced the Great Migration, which carried waves of African-Americans from the terror of the South to the promise of Northern cities. Now that the novel has been selected for Oprah Winfrey's book club, its first printing was increased to 125,000 copies from 50,000; and she will be discussing a work in which “I also set out to write a novel about family, but being alone.”

Jenni Rivera, the Mexican-American singer who died in a plane crash on Sunday outside of Monterrey, Mexico, was born and raised in California but also a “proud citizen of Latino America,” Lawrence Downes writes in an appreciation for The Times's Opinion Pages. In 2010, he writes, Ms. Rivera marched five miles along with tens of thousands of protesters who converged on Phoenix to denounce Arizona's tough new immigration law, while “other big musicians stayed away, or just signed the petition.”
He writes:

When a worried organizer texted her - “are u still marching?” - she replied: “Of course. … I'm a gangster chick.”

The Russian best seller “America - What a Life!” by Nikolai V. Zlobin offers a guide to the strange customs of the United States, Ellen Barry writes, including grandparents who “are busy with their own lives” and thus don't raise their grandchildren, and a generalized fear of losing personal space. For example, of Russians' reactions to the American ideal of living on a cul-de-sac, Mr. Zlobin writes: “It's such a new concept for them, that you can get security by putting distance between yourself and the others. The Russian concept is that you're safe when you're with the crowd.” There is now a fifth print run of “America - What a Life!” and second volume is planned.

Noam Cohen edits and writes for the Media Decoder blog. Follow @noamcohen on Twitter.