In admitting past American mistakes, Hillary Clinton is making amends around the world, the author says.

Question: How has Secretary Clinton performed so far?

Leslie Gelb: She's going around the world, I think, saying, by and large, good things to leaders and to people around the world, like President Obama, to try to dispel this anti-Americanism that built up over the last eight to ten years, the sense that America didn't know how to be a leader, thought of itself solely as a dictator. So anti-Americanism reached terrible proportions. And they're doing it by acknowledging that the United States, we can't bear to admit this, actually made mistakes, didn't understand them, didn't spend much time trying to understand them. So, I think, they're taking the right first step. I know they've been accused of abandoning American power because they admitted past mistakes and they shook hands with people we disagree with. But they haven't given away a thing yet, and they are getting the publics around the world on our side, which as I said, is good foreplay for the real things that will come later, I hope.

Recorded on 5/1/09.