Is the White House keeping Clinton off Sunday TV?

My colleague Laura Rozen over at The Cable posted a quote from a “plugged-in Washington Middle East hand” saying that the White House won’t let Secretary Clinton on Sunday morning talk shows. Referring to Clinton and White House senior advisor David Axelrod, the post reads:

“The White House won’t let her on TV on the Sunday morning talk shows,” a plugged-in Washington Middle East hand observed. “Who is talking about foreign policy on those shows? Axelrod. Who is showing up at the meeting with Obama-Peres? Axelrod. They are controlling the message.”

“They’ve never even had her even on Charlie Rose,” he added. “You have not really seen the secretary of state in the U.S. media; you’ve seen her in the international media. Who is their main messenger on foreign policy?”

(An aide confirmed Clinton hadn’t been on the Sunday talk shows since the campaign.)

An update to the post says:

White House and State Department officials wrote to strongly dispute that Clinton was being kept off the Sunday news talk shows. A White House official said Clinton is an “absolutely critical voice” in the effort to develop and communicate the administration’s foreign policy.

The “plugged-in Middle East hand” also noted that the Obama administration did not send Clinton to the AIPAC conference. Instead Vice President Joseph Biden was sent. Steve Cohen, president of the Institute for Middle East Peace and Development, said:

“Biden is the person who is perceived as a very experienced foreign-policy hand who has a very solid relationship with Israel, but that relationship is solidly based on American strategic analysis,” Cohen said. “And not affected so much by the Clinton experience of being a [former] New York senator.”

(In the photo at top, Clinton, then a Democratic presidential hopeful, performs a comedy sketch with U.S. television personality Stephen Colbert during the taping of his comedy show The Colbert Report in Philadelphia on April 17, 2008.)

Photo: ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images