Audrey Young: Connecting in all the right ways

Clinton wants to show she is willing to listen, the other countries' views matter, and that the US is not a bully. Photo / Simon Baker

It is impossible for any visit by a US Secretary of State to New Zealand to be anything other than memorable - they happen so infrequently.

But Hillary Clinton's visit, which ends today in Christchurch, will be especially so for a host of reasons.

The first is her sheer global fame.

She was a famous wife and a famously wronged wife well before she entered electoral politics.

No one mentions the unmentionable in polite company, but it is the reason people the world over feel they know her so well, and so sympathetically. But after two terms in the Senate and a bid to seek the presidency, she has been Secretary of State for over 20 months now and is carving out a unique style of connection and conviction. Her ability to connect with people was on display at the Christchurch Town Hall event yesterday. She spent an hour taking questions from an audience of 300 on any subject.

To a question about violence against women her answer touched on people's homes, community groups and Government awareness, culture and crime, wars in Africa, development in the Pacific, and her own feminist ideals and earlier activism.

The Town Hall events are a common feature of her itineraries in many countries. They combine Mrs Clinton's communication talents with an extensive outreach programme aimed at restoring the good name of the United States among ordinary citizens of the world.

She wants to show she is willing to listen, that other countries' view matters, and that the US is not a bully or a unilateralist.

It is a perfect combination of Mrs Clinton's personal skills and Barack Obama's foreign policy objectives.

After reluctantly accepting the post from President Obama - and a lacklustre starting year - Mrs Clinton is winning admiration.

Objectives are clear, relationships are clearer, and she and Mr Obama are focused on the Asia-Pacific area.

The "atmospherics" around Mrs Clinton's visit are much warmer than those surrounding Condoleezza Rice in 2008, working for Republican President George W. Bush.

Helen Clark was Labour Prime Minister and the US had only just decided in the previous 18 months to bypass the "rock in the road", as they called the anti-nuclear impasse with New Zealand. The atmospherics with Dr Rice were left to the Foreign Minister at the time, WinstonPeters.

Labour's contempt for the invasion of Iraq (and the fact that Dr Rice demanded an apology from Helen Clark for suggesting the war would not have happened with Al Gore as president) meant limits on the atmospherics.

No one could be more admiring of Mrs Clinton than Prime Minister John Key and Foreign Minister Murray McCully. Not only has National got an Administration - blue or red, it doesn't matter - that wants a close relationship with New Zealand, it has one that wants to commit it to paper and put a seal on it.

Mr Key and Mr McCully can espouse an independent foreign policy but their smiles about the "strategic partnerships" with the US tell another story.

* Before Dr Rice's visit in 2008, the previous visit had been 10 years before that; and 12 years since the one before that.