More from the “We could hadda Hillary” File

While the latest polls on the President aren’t so good, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s popularity is way up there. There’s a big case of buyer’s remorse floating around the country.

She lost the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008, but over a third of Americans said the U.S. would be better off now if Secretary of State Hillary Clinton were president, according to a new poll.

The Bloomberg survey released Friday showed 34 percent of those questioned said America would be superior under a Hillary Clinton administration, while 47 percent said it would be about the same and 13 percent said it would be worse.

A quarter of respondents held similar wishful thoughts in a July poll.

Clinton remains the most popular American political figure with nearly two-thirds of Americans holding a favorable view of the former first lady and New York senator. Half of the respondents felt the same way about President Barack Obama, who received the lowest job approval rating of his presidency, at 45 percent.

Moments like the one pictured to the left at the Asian Pacific Economic Community summit remind me why.

Women are the great untapped resource that can help the global economy recover and expand, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Friday as the U.S. and 20 other nations pledged to try to lower barriers to women in the workforce.

Clinton and diplomats from 20 Asia-Pacific nations pledged to try to improve women’s economic participation, a task Clinton said will take a generation and will mark one of the most profound transformations of the world economy. The agreement is a run-up to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Hawaii later this year, which President Barack Obama will attend.

“With economic models straining in every corner of the world, none of us can afford to perpetuate the barriers facing women in the workforce,” Clinton said.

Barriers of law and custom mean that women in developing economies may have no right to inherit land or businesses, or less access than men to land and good quality seed, Clinton said. In more developed economies women still earn less than men, and have fewer opportunities, she noted.

She cited private studies to show what could happen if women were afforded fuller economic participation.

Recent elections appear to be strong reactions to the Obama Presidency.  All of the President’s domestic policy polling is pretty dismal.  However, there’s a difference in the polling in foreign policy.  Little wonder why! 

Clinton’s international sphere of influence offers some of the only areas where Obama scores well in the poll. On Libya, 42 percent approve of his job performance, while 65 percent like his efforts on terrorism, which include the May capture and killing of al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden.

Every day I read headlines that show these are very challenging times.  It appears that more and more people are realizing we need a real leader.  Unfortunately, there aren’t any leaders on the presidential horizon at the moment. There is only worse and more of the same.