Clinton to raise her profile with speech next week

Secretary Clinton will be delivering a major foreign-policy speech next week at the Council on Foreign Relations, my colleague Laura Rozen reports over at FP‘s The Cable.

Although the speech will address many foreign-policy issues, it is also meant to raise Clinton’s profile and prove that she is loyal to President Obama, her rival during last year’s Democratic primary. Clinton has a tricky balancing act: She must be loyal to Obama’s vision while also making the secretary-of-state job her own and giving it her own personal touch.

A couple of interesting side points from Rozen’s article:

•Clinton’s hard cast has been removed, and she’s in physical therapy six days a week for the next six to eight weeks. (It really must have been quite a fall. I’m assuming she is fortunate enough to have health insurance that covers all those sessions.)

•White House aides have nixed plans to hire Sidney Blumenthal — a longtime advisor to Bill Clinton — as a State Department consultant and speechwriter. Secretary Clinton had sought to hire him to raise her profile.

[Update: Based on the comment by Laura Rozen below, I deleted text that said The Cable “originally reported” that Clinton sought to hire Blumenthal to raise her profile. It appears that the Washington Post‘s Al Kamen originally reported the news, despite what the New York Times says.]

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