Madeleine Albright’s Four-Month Report Card Is Practically All A’s

WASHINGTON — Four months after becoming America’s top diplomat, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright can look back on a remarkable start. Even her critics preface their comments with praise as they review a period in which she has:

* Established herself as the most visible, colorful figure of President Clinton’s second-term Cabinet, whose Stetson hats have become an unlikely symbol of U.S. diplomacy on the move and who has used her considerable communication and diplomatic skills as much to connect with the American public and to woo congressional support as to negotiate with foreign powers.

* Surmounted most early challenges by helping win Senate ratification of a controversial treaty banning chemical weapons, nudging Russia toward a formal relationship with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and pushing through a long-debated reorganization of the government’s foreign policy establishment.

* Boosted morale in the diplomatic service with an infectious enthusiasm, a bevy of top-quality staff appointments and energetic courting of the State Department’s traditional opponents in Congress.

Along the way, she has hardly put a foot wrong.

“She’s made a very strong start,” said former Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.). “It may still be a honeymoon period, but she’s certainly avoided mistakes.”

What criticism Albright has drawn--and there has not been much--focuses not on what she has done but on what she hasn’t. Detractors question, for example, why she has not traveled to the Middle East, devoted more time to the important relationship with China or addressed the problems of Iran, Iraq and the rest of southwest Asia.

Her quick start stands in sharp contrast to the initial months of her predecessor, Warren Christopher, whose trouble-plagued early tenure included a disastrous European swing that left key allies questioning America’s will to lead.

To be sure, Albright has had luck and circumstance on her side. While Christopher began his tenure serving a president who knew little about foreign affairs and in an administration whose priorities were almost exclusively domestic, Albright’s very selection indicated that the world outside had, after four years, become significant to Clinton.

When Christopher came to Washington, he was immediately confronted by simmering crises in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Middle East and Somalia. Albright’s early months, by contrast, have been so tranquil that her ability to handle a sudden crisis remains untested.

Taking advantage of the lull, she has made three trips to Europe and one to Asia, in addition to accompanying Clinton to Latin America.

In the process, she has established personal relationships with some of her notoriously prickly counterparts, including Russia’s dour Yevgeny M. Primakov and France’s Herve de Charette.

Closer to home, she has made seven trips to Capitol Hill to give formal testimony, has conducted about 25 meetings with congressional groups or individual members (mainly to lobby for more money to carry out the country’s foreign affairs) and has worked to build bipartisan support for Clinton’s foreign policy agenda by visiting prominent Republicans in their home states.

Her high-profile courtship of Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) appears at least temporarily to have disarmed one of the most powerful critics of the nation’s foreign policy establishment.

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She has also carried issues to the electorate, making nearly 20 major public appearances and showing up on TV’s “Meet the Press” and “60 Minutes,” among many other programs. She even turned up to toss out the first ball at the Baltimore Orioles’ opening game of the 1997 season last month.

The result of all this? Recognition.

“Despite the lack of attention to foreign affairs, Madeleine Albright has become the star of the administration,” according to a study by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. “The secretary of State’s latest favorability ratings top those of the president and the vice president.”

Coit Blacker, a Russia specialist at the National Security Council in Clinton’s first term, said: “I’m a huge fan of Warren Christopher, but . . . he had a lawyerly, low-keyed way of expressing things. Madeleine is fast, articulate, quick on the rebound, and she’s got a sense of humor.”

Some observers have questioned how much of this style is substance and how much is mere pizazz, but Albright says her public appearances and congressional lobbying are part of a larger strategy.

“What I have tried to do is create the platform that is going to enable the United States to be able to carry out some very far-reaching foreign policy initiatives,” she said. Among these, she quickly listed efforts to unify Europe, establish a more rounded relationship with China and reinvigorate ties with Latin America. Moments later, she added to the list the search for a way forward in the Middle East.

Despite her obvious successes, however, some foreign policy experts see troubling shortcomings. They applaud her appointments of key people, but they note that numerous respected appointees are not yet in place. (Senior State Department officials say mandatory background checks have slowed the process.)

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Others claim that she has allowed dangerous trouble spots, including the Middle East, to fester. (Senior State Department officials retort that she is waiting to travel to the region until her presence there can help propel the peace process.)

“She’s done sensationally on the public diplomacy side of the job, but there are too many areas where the administration is not engaging in the debate, where it’s not taking the initiative,” said Richard Haass, a Middle East specialist in the George Bush administration.

Haass cited Iran, arguing that Albright should have pressed harder to exploit a recent hardening of European attitudes about Iranian state-sponsored terrorism to fashion a new transatlantic policy on the issue. “This appears to be an opportunity lost,” he said.

Blacker contends that, in a very different way, Iran could be the biggest test of Albright’s considerable diplomatic skills. Although the effectiveness of the U.S. policy that tries to isolate Iran is now being called into question by such figures as former national security advisors Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski, Blacker argues that moving away from this hard line would be a difficult task.

“The Iran issue is so hot, so radioactive that no one’s willing to take it on,” he said. “In the end, part of her legacy will turn on how she approaches this and the whole complex of issues in that region.”

Times staff writer Stanley Meisler contributed to this report.